Nobel Prize

Life goes on surprisingly fast. It seems to happen a short time ago that I would attend anniversary celebrations in honour of noted physicists, my teachers who to my mind looked quite old. But at the present time, I myself have recently marked the 70th birthday. My parents, Ivan Karpovich, and Anna Vladimirovna, had been…

I was born on August 25, 1928 in Weimar, Germany. My father was a civil servant working for the city administration of my home town; my mother was a classical German “Hausfrau.” Both came from simple skilled-craftsmen families. Neither had a high-school education, but there was never any doubt that they wanted to have their…

The Nobel Committee has asked me to discuss my life story, so I guess I should begin at the beginning. I was born in 1923 in Great Bend, Kansas, which got its name because the town was built at the spot where the Arkansas River bends in the middle of the state. I grew up…

Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a Professor of Applied Physics and had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence, while his grandfather, Antoine César, had been a Fellow of the Royal Society…

Pierre Curie was born in Paris, where his father was a general medical practitioner, on May 15, 1859. He received his early education at home before entering the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. He gained his Licenciateship in Physics in 1878 and continued as a demonstrator in the physics laboratory until 1882 when he…

Albert Abraham Michelson was born in Strelno, Prussia, on December 19, 1852. Two years later his family emigrated to the United States to settle at Virginia City, Nevada, but they eventually moved to San Francisco where Michelson received his early education in public schools, matriculating from the High School in 1869. He was appointed by…

Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in the County Wexford, Ireland. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. Even as a boy he took a keen interest in…

Karl Ferdinand Braun was born on June 6, 1850 at Fulda, where he was educated at the local “Gymnasium” (grammar school). He studied at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin and graduated in 1872 with a paper on the oscillations of elastic strings. He worked as assistant to Professor Quincke at Würzburg University and in…

Johannes Diderik van der Waals was born on November 23, 1837 in Leyden, The Netherlands, the son of Jacobus van der Waals and Elisabeth van den Burg. After having finished elementary education at his birthplace he became a schoolteacher. Although he had no knowledge of classical languages, and thus was not allowed to take academic…

Max Laue was born on October 9, 1879 at Pfaffendorf, near Koblenz. He was the son of Julius von Laue, an official in the German military administration, who was raised to hereditary nobility in 1913 and who was often sent to various towns, so that von Laue spent his youth in Brandenburg, Altona, Posen, Berlin…