Nobel Prize

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was born on the 14th of February, 1869, in the parish of Glencorse, near Edinburgh. His father, John Wilson, was a farmer, and his ancestors had been farmers in the South of Scotland for generations. His mother was Annie Clerk Harper. At the age of four he lost his father, and…

Erwin Schrödinger was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, the only child of Rudolf Schrödinger, who was married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. Erwin’s father came from a Bavarian family which generations before had settled in Vienna. He was a highly gifted man…

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on 8th August, 1902, at Bristol, England, his father being Swiss and his mother English. He was educated at the Merchant Venturer’s Secondary School, Bristol, then went on to Bristol University. Here, he studied electrical engineering, obtaining the B.Sc. (Engineering) degree in 1921. He then studied mathematics for two…

James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20th October, 1891, the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. He attended Manchester High School prior to entering Manchester University in 1908; he graduated from the Honours School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under in the Physical Laboratory in…

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on 8th August, 1901, at Canton, South Dakota (United States). His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson) Lawrence, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, his father being a Superintendant of Schools. His early education was at Canton High School, then St. Olaf College. In 1919 he went to the…

Otto Stern was born in Sorau, Upper Silesia, Germany, on February 17, 1888. In 1892 he moved with his parents to Breslau, where he attended high school. He began to study physical chemistry in 1906, receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of Breslau in 1912. In the same year he joined Einstein at the…

Wolfgang Pauli was born on April 25th, 1900 in Vienna. He received his early education in Vienna before studying at the University of Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld. He obtained his doctor’s degree in 1921 and spent a year at the University of Göttingen as assistant to and a further year with at Copenhagen. The years…

Felix Bloch was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on October 23, 1905, as the son of Gustav Bloch and Agnes Bloch (née Mayer). From 1912 to 1918 he attended the public primary school and subsequently the “Gymnasium” of the Canton of Zurich, which he left in the fall of 1924 after having passed the “Matura”, i.e.…

Edward Mills Purcell was born in Taylorville, Illinois, U.S.A., on August 30, 1912. His parents, Edward A. Purcell and Mary Elizabeth Mills, were both natives of Illinois. He was educated in the public schools in Taylorville and in Mattoon, Illinois, and in 1929 entered Purdue University in Indiana. He graduated from Purdue in electrical engineering…

Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov was born in Voronezh Region on July 28, 1904. His parents, Aleksei and Mariya Cerenkov, were peasants. He graduated from the Physico-Mathematical Faculty of Voronezh State University in 1928, and in 1930 he took a post as senior scientific officer in the P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics in the U.S.S.R. Academy of…