Nobel Prize

Paul Sabatier was born at Carcassonne in Southern France on November 5, 1854. He was educated at the local Lycée and then prepared at Toulouse for the entrance examinations to the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure. He was accepted for both and chose the latter which he entered in 1874; three years later…

John Howard Northrop was born in Yonkers, New York, on July 5th, 1891. He is a direct descendant of Joseph Northrop who settled in New Milford, Connecticut in 1639, of Jonathan Edwards, President of Princeton University, 1758, and of Frederick C. Havemeyer, whose family presented Havemeyer Hall, the Chemical Laboratory, to Columbia University. His father,…

My father Cecil Banks Mullis and mother, formerly Bernice Alberta Barker grew up in rural North Carolina in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My dad’s family had a general store, which I never saw. My grandparents on his side had already died before I started noticing things. My mother’s parents were close to…

Wendell Meredith Stanley was born in Ridgeville, Indiana, on August 16th, 1904. He began his advanced education at Earlham College and graduated Bachelor of Science in 1926 when he entered the University of Illinois, gaining a Master of Science degree in 1927 and a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1929. He continued at Illinois as a…

I was born in 1926 to Lazar and Bella (née Silin) Klug in Zelvas, Lithuania, but remember nothing of the place, because I was brought to South Africa as a child of two and grew up there. My father was trained as a saddler, but in fact as a young man worked in his father’s…

I was born on April 26th, 1932 at 65 St. Heliers Road, South Shore, Blackpool, England in the house of my maternal grandmother, Mary Martha Armstead, having been delivered by the District Nurse, Ms. Parkinson, a lady who I can remember from my infant and juvenile days in her uniform and navy blue raincoat on…

Jaroslav Heyrovsky was born in Prague on 20th December, 1890, the fifth child of Leopold Heyrovsky, Professor of Roman Law at the Czech University of Prague, and his wife Clara, née Hanl. He obtained his early education at secondary school till 1909 when he began his study of chemistry, physics and mathematics at the Czech…

Luis F. Leloir was born in Paris of Argentine parents on September 6, 1906 and has lived in Buenos Aires since he was two years old. He graduated as a Medical Doctor in the University of Buenos Aires in 1932 and started his scientific career at the Institute of Physiology working with Professor Bernardo A.…

William Francis Giauque was born in Niagara Falls, Canada, of U.S. parentage, on May 12, 1895, the first of three children of William Tecumseh Sherman Giauque and Isabella Jane Duncan. He attended public grammar schools principally in Michigan. Following the death of his father, in 1908, the family returned to Niagara Falls, Canada, where he…

Otto Paul Hermann Diels was born in Hamburg, Germany, on January 23, 1876. When he was two years of age the family moved to Berlin, where his father was appointed to a professorship. His early education, from 1882 to 1895, was at the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium, Berlin. In 1895 he went to Berlin University where he…