Nobel Prize

Louis Néel was born in Lyons on 22 November 1904. In 1931 he married Hélène Hourticq; they have three children, Marie Françoise, Attachée d’Administration at the Conseil d’Etat, Marguerite, married to Guély, Professeur agrégée d’histoire, and Pierre, who is a television producer. Louis Néel studied at the Ecole Normal Supérieure in Paris from 1924-1928, where…

I was born on 1 November, 1950 in Visalia, California, a medium-sized town just south of Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. It was at that time an agricultural community more like the Middle West or West Texas than Hollywood or Beverly Hills. The main highway into town was lined with magnificent walnut orchards and…

I was born on April 6, 1949 in a regional hospital in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Having the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly around my neck, my parents’ fear for the mental health of their first-born son subsided only gradually. My forefathers had been farmers, inn-keepers, blacksmiths, carpenters and shop keepers in the region.…

Nils Gustaf Dalén was born at Stenstorp in Skaraborg, Sweden on November 30, 1869, the son of a farmer. After his preliminary education, he entered a School of Agriculture to study dairy farming but he was later advised by Gustaf de Laval, who recognized his natural gift for mechanics, to seek a technical education. He…

I was born in Camberwell, South London, on the 26th of March, 1938. I am told I only made it into the world on the date in question by seven minutes, thereby exhibiting at this early stage the tendency to procrastination which I fear has characterized much of my subsequent career. Not a great deal…

I tend to partition my life into three compartments: childhood years in a remote village in the province of Henan in central China, schooling years in Hong Kong, and the years since I came to attend college in the United States. The only thread connecting them is the kindness, generosity and friendship from the people…

Percy Williams Bridgman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 21st, 1882. He received his early education in public schools in the nearby city of Newton until 1900 when he entered Harvard University. He graduated A.B. in 1904, A.M. in 1905 and was awarded his Ph.D. (Physics) in 1908 when he joined the Faculty of…

Cecil Frank Powell was born on December 5th, 1903, at Tonbridge, Kent, where his father, Frank Powell, was one of a family of gunsmiths who had long practised the trade in the town. His grandfather, George Bisacre, had established a private school in the nearby town of Southborough and his family ties and influences therefore…

I was born November 28, 1950 in New York City, the son of Alan and Betty Joan Hulse. My parents tell me that I quickly showed an unusual level of curiosity about the world around me as a child, and that this transformed itself into an interest in science at a very early age. For…

I was born on March 29, 1941, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second son of Joseph Hooton Taylor and Sylvia Evans Taylor. When I was seven we moved back to the family farm in Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey, then operated by my paternal grandfather. We were three children, joined later by three more, plus two Evans…