Nobel Prize

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, on June 5, 1900, the oldest son of Bertalan Gabor, director of a mining company, and his wife Adrienne. My life-long love of physics started suddenly at the age of 15. I could not wait until I got to the university, I learned the calculus and worked through the…

I was born in Copenhagen on June 19, 1922, as the fourth son of and Margrethe Bohr (née Nørlund). During my early childhood, my parents lived at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute), and the remarkable generation of scientists who came to join my father in his work became for us…

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 9, 1926, the second of three children of Goodman Mottelson and Georgia Mottelson (née Blum). My father held a university degree in engineering. My childhood home was a place where scientific, political and moral issues were freely and vigorously discussed. I attended primary school and high school…

I was born December 9, 1917 in a small town in Idaho (Council) where my parents had moved to from California to operate a general store. My father, who had previously been a civil engineer, died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. My mother then moved with me and her mother to Hanford, Calif.…

I was born in Munich, Germany, in 1933. I spent the first six years of my life comfortably, as an adored child in a closely-knit middle-class family. Even when my family was rounded up for deportation to Poland it didn’t occur to me that anything could happen to us. All I remember is scrambling up…

My grandparents moved to Texas from the South after the U.S. Civil War and settled on small farms in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Both families emphasized education as the way to improve their children’s lives and both my parents managed to graduate from college. After receiving an M.A. in chemistry from Rice University, my father…

I was born August 27, 1915 in Washington, D.C. My mother, daughter of German immigrants, had been a mathematics instructor at the University of Kansas. My father, descended from Scottish refugees and a West Point graduate, was an officer in the Army Ordnance Corps. His frequently changing assignments took us from Washington, DC to Topeka,…

I was born on June 26, 1937 in Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. My parents, Lois Price Richardson and Robert Franklin Richardson, lived in Arlington, VA. My sister and only sibling, Addie Ann Richardson, was born on May 6, 1939, also in Georgetown University Hospital. My earliest memories are of the apartment building in…

Life goes on surprisingly fast. It seems to happen a short time ago that I would attend anniversary celebrations in honour of noted physicists, my teachers who to my mind looked quite old. But at the present time, I myself have recently marked the 70th birthday. My parents, Ivan Karpovich, and Anna Vladimirovna, had been…

I was born on August 25, 1928 in Weimar, Germany. My father was a civil servant working for the city administration of my home town; my mother was a classical German “Hausfrau.” Both came from simple skilled-craftsmen families. Neither had a high-school education, but there was never any doubt that they wanted to have their…