Nobel Prize

Walther Bothe was born on January 8, 1891, at Oranienburg, near Berlin. From 1908 until 1912 he studied physics at the University of Berlin, where he was a pupil of , obtaining his doctorate just before the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war. From 1913 until 1930 he worked at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in the same…

Chen Ning Yang was born on September 22, 1922, in Hofei, Anwhei, China, the first of five children of Ke Chuan Yang and Meng Hwa Loh Yang. He is also known as Frank or Franklin. Yang was brought up in the peaceful and academically inclined atmosphere of the campus of Tsinghua University, just outside of…

Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee was born in Shanghai, China, on November 24, 1926, the third of six children of Tsing-Kong Lee and Ming-Chang Chang. He received most of his high school education in Shanghai. During 1943-1944, he attended the National Chekiang University in Kweichow Province. In 1945, he attended the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming,…

Robert Hofstadter, Professor of Physics at Stanford University, was born in New York, N.Y., of parents Louis Hofstadter and Henrietta Koenigsberg, on February 5, 1915. Hofstadter attended elementary and high schools in New York City, and was graduated in 1935 from the College of the City of New York with the B.S. degree, magna cum…

Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer was born in Munich on the 31st of January 1929, the son of Ludwig Mössbauer and his wife Erna, née Ernst. He was educated at the “Oberschule” (non-classical secondary school) in Munich-Pasing and left after matriculating in I948. After working for one year in industrial laboratories, he started reading physics at the…

Alfred Kastler was born in Guebwiller in Alsace on May 3, 1902. He followed his early studies at the school in his native town, and continued at the Oberrealschule of Colmar, which became the Lycee Bartholdi in 1918, when Alsace was returned to France. He entered the École Normale Superieure in 1921, and left in…

Luis W. Alvarez was born in San Francisco, Calif., on June 13, 1911. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Chicago in 1932, a M.Sc. in 1934, and his Ph.D. in 1936. Dr. Alvarez joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, where he is now a professor, as a research fellow in…

Pjotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born in Kronstadt, near Leningrad, on the 9th July 1894, son of Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, military engineer, and Olga Ieronimovna née Stebnitskaia, working in high education and folklore research. Kapitsa began his scientific career in A.F. Ioffe’s section of the Electromechanics Department of the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute, completing his studies in…

Artist: Nils G Stenqvist Calligrapher: Annika Rücker

Artist: Nils G Stenqvist Calligrapher: Annika Rücker