Nobel Prize

I was born in 1944 in Riehen, a village near Basel, and spent almost all of my first twenty-five years with my family in the same house. My grandfather on my father’s side had bought this house in 1918 after moving with his family from Tübingen to Basel to become Professor of German Literature at…

Walter Rudolf Hess was born in Frauenfeld, East Switzerland, on March 17, 1881. His father was a teacher of physics who allowed him, at a very early age, great freedom in dealing with apparatus, and taught him a proper carefulness. He also obtained a self-reliant gift of observation during excursions through forests and meadows, and…

Ulf S. von Euler was born in Stockholm on February 7th, 1905, as the second son of and Astrid Cleve. His father was born in Augsburg, Germany, as the only son of general Rigas von Euler-Chelpin. Hans von Euler-Chelpin received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1929. Ulf’s mother was the daughter of Per Teodor…

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran was born in Paris on June 18, 1845 in the house which was formerly No. 19 rue de l’Est but later became, when this district was rebuilt, an hotel at No. 125, Boulevard St. Michel. Both his father and paternal grandfather were medical men. His father, Dr. Louis Théodore Laveran, was…

(António Caetano de Abreu Freire) Egas Moniz was born in Avanca, Portugal, on November 29, 1874, the son of Fernando de Pina Rezende Abreu and Maria do Rosário de Almeida e Sousa. He received his early education from his uncle Abbé Caetano de Pina Rezende Abreu Sa Freire, before joining the Faculty of Medicine at…

Julius Axelrod was born on May 30th, 1912, in New York City. He obtained his B. Sc. in 1933 at the College of the City of New York, M. A. in 1941 at New York University, and Ph. D. in 1955 from the George Washington University. From 1933 to 1935 he was Laboratory Assistant at…

Edward Calvin Kendall was born on March 8, 1886, at South Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S.A. He was educated at Columbia University, where he obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Science in 1908 and Master of Science, specializing in Chemistry, in 1909. From 1909 until 1910 he was Goldschmidt Fellow of this University, and in 1910 he…

My interest in Biology began when I was a high school student and spent a summer at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. There I first experienced research biology and saw research biologists at work; this experience led me to become a biology major in college. I went on to Swarthmore College where…

Tadeus Reichstein was born on July 20th, 1897, at Wloclawek, Poland. He was the son of Isidor Reichstein and Gastava Brockmann. After passing his early childhood at Kiev, where his father was an engineer, Reichstein was educated, first at a boarding-school at Jena and later, when his family moved to Zurich (where he was naturalized),…

Philip Showalter Hench was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 28, 1896, the son of Jacob Bixler Hench and Clara Showalter. After attending local schools he entered Lafayette College, Easton, Penn., where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1916. He enlisted in the Medical Corps of the United States Army in 1917 but was transferred…