Nobel Prize

Born in 1936, I experienced the Second World War as a child in the city of Gelsenkirchen-Buer. This area was heavily bombed, but fortunately all members of my family survived the war and post-war period. As a child I remember my own intensive interest in biology, birds, other animals and flowers and was determined at…

Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935, in a village hemmed in by the forests of Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan. His family had lived in the village tradition for several hundred years, and no one in the Oe clan had ever left the village in the valley. Even after Japan embarked…

I was born on 10 October 1930 in Menin (Menen in Flemish) in western Flanders, on the border between Belgium and France. My parents were French. To be more precise, they were not only both from the Tours region, but also descended from long-established families in the little village of Beaumont-la-Ronce. I used to spend…

Charles Hard Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on July 28, 1915, the son of Henry Keith Townes, an attorney, and Ellen (Hard) Townes. He attended the Greenville public schools and then Furman University in Greenville, where he completed the requirements for the Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and the Bachelor of Arts…

Prologue: Life in Vienna in the 1930sThere was little in my early life to indicate that an interest in biology would become the passion of my academic career. In fact, there was little to suggest I would have an academic career. Rather, my early life was importantly shaped by my experiences in Vienna and I…

ORIGINSAccording to an article in The Times of Israel (issue of Dec. 9, 2012) by Mark Schulte, Dr. (co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) and I share two attributes with thirty-three other Nobel Laureates. We are Jewish and we were educated in New York City public high schools. This article further highlights…

One of the happiest days of my lifeIt was 2:30 a.m. on October 3, 2011, and I was at home, in my small condominium in San Diego, CA. I was sleepless, having recently returned from a trip to Hong Kong. There I had shared the Shaw Prize in Life Sciences: one of a series of…

I was born in New York City on a cold January night when the water pipes in our apartment froze and burst. Fortunately, my mother was in the hospital rather than at home at the time. My father emigrated from Lithuania to the United States at the age of 12. He received his higher education…

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy was born in Vienna on April 1, 1865. His father, doctor Adolf Zsigmondy, had done a great deal to promote dentistry in Austria, had invented several surgical instruments and devices, and had published several scientific and medical works. He encouraged his four children’s interest in the natural sciences. He died when Zsigmondy…

Good Schools, Books, a Love of Mechanics, and You Must Earn a LivingAbout 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia. As Jews, their families left Russia to escape the poverty and the antisemitism. My parents grew up in poor areas of New York…