Nobel Prize

I was born on September 3, 1938 in a suburb of Kobe (now Ashiya), Japan, the first son of Kaneki and Suzuko Noyori. Our family moved to Kobe soon afterwards. I grew up with two younger brothers and a sister in a pleasant city blessed by beautiful natural surroundings. Except for a short period at…

My father, Herbert Bennett Fenn, the eldest of three children was born and raised on a farm in northern Delaware which his father operated but did not own. I never saw that farm but I vividly remember my Grandmother’s frequent reference to a single chestnut tree in the front yard, so large and prolific that…

My adult scientific career began with graduate study in chemical physics with Harden McConnell at Stanford. I had the idea of elucidating the mechanism of ion transport across biological membranes by nuclear resonance. I thought ion transport must involve rotation of the transport protein in the membrane. Struggling to prove this wrong idea, it occurred…

I was born at home in rural Kentucky in 1942, in a house that my father, Howard, had built. He did most of the construction himself and built it on land that his father had given him when he married my mother Faye. In some places, my birthplace is listed as Calvert City and in…

I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented fourroom apartment with two additional families and their children. My memories from my childhood are centered on my father’s medical conditions alongside my constant desire to understand the principles of the nature around me. The hard conditions didn’t dampen my…

I was born June 25, 1911 in New York City, the second of three children, to Freed M. and Beatrice Borg Stein. My father was a business man who was greatly interested in communal affairs, particularly those dealing with health, and he retired quite early in life in order to devote his full time to…

Translation from the German text I was born in Solln, near Munich, on 10 November 1918 as the third child of the Professor of Physics at the Technical College of Munich, Dr. Karl T. Fischer (died 1953), and his wife, Valentine, née Danzer (died 1935). After completing four years at elementary school I went on…

I was born the eldest of three sons of Ryokichi Fukui, a foreign trade merchant and factory manager, and Chie Fukui, in Nara, Japan, on October 4, 1918. In my high school years, chemistry was not my favourite subject, but the most decisive occurrence in my educational career came when my father asked the advice…

I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe. On July 18, 1937 I was born to Clara (née Rosen) and Hillel Safran in Zloczow, Poland. This town, typical of the Pale of the Settlement, was part of Austria-Hungary when my parents were born. It was Poland in my time and is…

My birth in July 1928 in Methuen, Massachusetts was followed just eighteen months later by the death of my father, Elias, a successful business man in that community 30 miles north of Boston. My mother, Fatina (née Hasham), changed my name from William to Elias shortly after my father’s passing. I do not remember my…