Nobel Prize

Family Background I was born in Pretoria, the executive capital of South Africa, on 9 May 1947. My mother, Gertrude, was also born in South Africa, in Johannesburg to parents who had emigrated from Czechoslovakia. My father was born in Plungė, Lithuania, and came to South Africa when he was 10 years old. My childhood…

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1940, and my family lived in an apartment above a paint store in the downtown area until 1949. Although my father had obtained a law degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, he became the administrator in charge of personnel at the Milwaukee County Hospital. My mother grew up…

From Chidambaram to Cambridge: A Life in Science ChildhoodI was born in 1952 in Chidambaram, an ancient temple town in Tamil Nadu best known for its temple of Nataraja, the lord of dance. When I was born, my father, C.V. Ramakrishnan, was away on a postdoctoral fellowship in Madison, Wisconsin, with the famous enzymologist David…

I was born on February 19, 1956 in the middle of a snowstorm. It remains one of those humorous family stories that my mother likes to tell. My father the planner had rehearsed the way to the hospital but apparently things looked a lot different at night in a blizzard. Eventually they made it and…

From 6th through 12th grades I attended a Quaker school on the Philadelphia city line. Twice a week the entire school attended Quaker Meeting, silent gatherings except when someone received a personal call to speak. I never got a call, but nonetheless my head was full: I thought about fishing and boats. Or else I…

I was born in Aarberg, Switzerland, on October 4, 1938, and during my childhood I lived in the small town of Lyss in the Berner Seeland. At the time this was a rural area of farmland, forests and rivers. The roots of the Wüthrich family are in an even more rural, mountainous area, the farming…

I was born on 10 October 1936 in Bad Cannstatt which is part of the city of Stuttgart in the southwest of Germany. When I was 3 years old, the family moved to the nearby village of Schmiden where I entered elementary school in 1942. In summer 1946, I was admitted to Johannes Kepler Gymnasium…

A wartime childhood I was born on August 27, 1928, in the town of Fukuchiyama, Kyoto-Fu, Japan. My father Chikara was an army captain of the Fukuchiyama regiment. In the spring of 1933, my father took a post in Manchuria, which was under Japanese occupation. Because there were some insurgents in the Manchurian area, my…

I was born in Berne, a northeast Indiana farming community proud of its Swiss heritage. Life was not easy for my parents, Noah J. Schrock, the second of six children, and Martha A. Habegger, the second of ten children. They married in 1933 during the Depression. My oldest brother, Luther, was born in 1934, Theodore…