Nobel Prize

Johannes Stark was born on April 15, 1874 in Schickenhof, Bavaria; his father was a landed proprietor. He was educated at the Gymnasium (grammar school) in Bayreuth and later in Regensburg and proceeded to Munich University in 1894 to read physics, mathematics, chemistry and crystallography. Stark graduated in 1897 on the basis of his doctoral…

Emilio Segrè was born in Tivoli, Rome, on February 1st, 1905*, as the son of Giuseppe Segrè, industrialist, and Amelia Treves. He went to school in Tivoli and Rome, and entered the University of Rome as a student of engineering in 1922. In 1927 he changed over to physics and took his doctor’s degree in…

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was born at Dungarvan, County Waterford on the south coast of Ireland on October 6th, 1903, the son of a Methodist Minister from County Tipperary. The ministry demanded that his father move from place to place every few years, and he attended day schools in Banbridge (County Down) and Cookstown (County…

Owen Chamberlain was born in San Francisco on July 10, 1920. His father was W. Edward Chamberlain, a prominent radiologist with an interest in physics. His mother’s maiden name was Genevieve Lucinda Owen. He obtained his bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College in 1941. He entered graduate school in physics at the University of California, but…

Victor Franz Hess was born on the 24th of June, 1883, in Waldstein Castle, near Peggau in Steiermark, Austria. His father, Vinzens Hess, was a forester in Prince Öttingen-Wallerstein’s service and his mother was Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt. He received his entire education in Graz: Gymnasium (1893-1901), and afterwards Graz University (1901-1905), where he took…

Carl David Anderson, who was born of Swedish parents – his father was Carl David Anderson and his mother Emma Adolfina Ajaxson – in New York City (USA) on 3rd September, 1905, has spent the bulk of his life in the United States. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1927 with a…

Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén was born in Norrköping, Sweden, in 1908. His parents Johannes Alfvén and Anna-Clara Romanus were both practising physicians. Hannes Alfvén studied at Uppsala University from 1926, he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1934, in this same year he was appointed lecturer in physics at Uppsala University. In 1937…

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…

It appears that I was born in hospital in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada on July 15, 1918. My first memories are of a farm near Milk River where I lived with my mother and father and my sister, Alice Evelyn, and a variety of farm and domestic animals. My father, Israel Bertram Brockhouse, had homesteaded with…

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…