Nobel Prize

Peter Mitchell was born in Mitcham, in the County of Surrey, England, on September 29, 1920. His parents, Christopher Gibbs Mitchell and Kate Beatrice Dorothy (née) Taplin, were very different from each other temperamentally. His mother was a shy and gentle person of very independent thought and action, with strong artistic perceptiveness. Being a rationalist…

William Ramsay was born in Glasgow on October 2, 1852, the son of William Ramsay, C.E. and Catherine, née Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist, Sir Andrew Ramsay. Until 1870 he studied in his native town, following this with a period in Fittig’s laboratory at Tübingen until 1872. While there his thesis on…

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 on a bitter cold morning (20º F below zero) in Sioux City (Iowa) on January 22, 1936. I was told that when my father went out in the cold that morning to go to the hospital to visit his wife and newborn first son, his car would not start. Despite advice to…

Theodor (The) Svedberg was born at Fleräng, Valbo, in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden on August 30, 1884, as the son of Elias Svedberg, a works manager, and his wife, Augusta, née Alstermark. He attended the Köping School, the Örebro High School and Gothenburg Modern School, where he passed his student examination in December 1903,…

Richard Laurence Millington Synge was born at Liverpool on October 28th, 1914, as the son of Laurence Millington Synge, of Liverpool Stock Exchange, and Katharine Charlotte Swan. In 1928 he went to Winchester College, where he studied mainly classics until 1931, thereafter natural science. In 1933 he entered Trinity College, University of Cambridge and studied…

Hermann Staudinger was born in Worms on the 23rd of March 1881. His father was Dr. Franz Staudinger. Staudinger was educated in Worms, matriculated in 1899, and continued his studies first at the University of Halle, later at Darmstadt and Munich. He graduated at Halle in 1903 and qualified for inauguration as academic lecturer under…

George de Hevesy was born in Budapest on August 1st, 1885, the son of Louis de Hevesy, Court Counsellor and Eugénie, née Baroness Schosberger. After matriculating at the Gymnasium of the Piarist Order in 1903 he studied at Budapest University and Berlin Technical University and he gained his doctor’s degree at the University of Freiburg…

Manfred Eigen was born in Bochum on 9 May 1927, the son of the chamber musician Ernst Eigen and his wife Hedwig, née Feld. He received his schooling at the Bochum humanistic Gymnasium. In the autumn of 1945 he commenced the physics and chemistry course at the Georg-August University in Göttingen and obtained his doctorate…

Arthur Harden was born in Manchester, England, on October 12, 1865; his father was Albert Tyas Harden and his mother Eliza Macalister. He was educated at a private school in Victoria Park (1873-1877) and at Tettenhall College, Staffordshire (1877-1881). He entered The Owens College in the University of Manchester in 1882, studying under Sir H.E.…