1979

Biographical

My parents went from the north of Scotland to South Africa shortly before World War I. My mother had been a teacher and my father was an engineer with the Post Office. I was born in Johannesburg in 1924, the youngest of three children. My family moved around the country quite a lot, as did…

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Award ceremony speech

  Presentation Speech by Professor Torgny Greitz of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Neither of this year’s laureates in physiology or medicine is a medical doctor. Nevertheless, they have achieved a revolution in the field of medicine. It is sometimes said that this new X-ray method…

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Biographical

I was born and brought up near a village in Nottinghamshire and in my childhood enjoyed the freedom of the rather isolated country life. After the first world war, my father had bought a small farm, which became a marvellous playground for his five children. My two brothers and two sisters were all older than…

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Speed read

To artificially create carbon-based compounds relies on outside help to facilitate the many ways in which carbon atoms can join onto each other and other atoms. The tools of the trade are a host of chemicals, or reagents, which take part in reactions that piece together the correct molecules in the correct manner in a…

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Press release

15 October 1979 has decided to award the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly to Professor Herbert C Brown, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA and Professor Georg Wittig, University of Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis. Nobel…

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Biographical

Ttranslation from the German text Born in Berlin in 1897. Doctorate and University Teaching Thesis in Marburg/Lahn from the Faculty of Chemistry. Head of Department at Braunschweig (Technical College) from 1932; Associate Professor at Freiburg/Brsg. from 1937; Professor and Faculty Director at the Institute of Chemistry, Tübingen, from 1944; turned down the same position as…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Professor Bengt Lindberg of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Chemistry is a natural science which is not entirely devoted to the study of natural objects. The art of chemistry also includes the ability on the part of the chemists to prepare or synthesize…

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