Nobel Prize

Polykarp Kusch was born in Blankenburg, Germany, on the 26th January, 1911, the son of a clergyman. He has lived in the United States since 1912 and is a citizen of that country. He received his early education in the midwest of the United States. His original professional goal was in the field of chemistry,…

Lev Davidovic Landau was born in Baku on January 22, 1908, as the son of an engineer and a physician. After graduating from the Physical Department of Leningrad University at the age of 19, he began his scientific career at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. The years 1929 – 1931 he spent abroad, partly as a…

Maria Goeppert Mayer was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, then Germany, the only child of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria, nee Wolff. On her father’s side, she is the seventh straight generation of university professors. In 1910 her father went as Professor of Pediatrics to Göttingen where she spent most…

J. Hans D. Jensen was born in Hamburg on 25th June 1907, the son of a gardener Karl Jensen. From 1926 he studied physics, mathematics, physical chemistry and philosophy at the Universities of Hamburg and Freiburg i. Br. He obtained his Ph.D in 1932 in Hamburg (physics, Dr.rer.nat.). He became scientific assistant at the Institute…

Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov was born on December, 14, 1922 in the small town of Usman near Voronezh, the son of Gennady Fedorovich Basov and Zinaida Andreevna Molchanova. His father was a professor of the Voronezh Forest Institute and devoted his life to investigation of the influence of forest belts on underground waters and on surface…

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov was born on July 11th, 1916, in Australia. After the Great October Revolution he went in 1923 with his parents to the Soviet Union. In 1934 Alexander Prochorov entered the Physics Department of the Leningrad State University. He attended lectures of Prof. V.A. Fock (quantum mechanics, theory of relativity), Prof. S.E. Frish…

Hans Albrecht Bethe was born in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, on July 2 1906. He attended the Gymnasium in Frankfurt from 1915 to 1924. He then studied at the University of Frankfurt for two years, and at Munich for two and one half years, taking his Ph. D. in theoretical physics with Professor Arnold Sommerfeld in July…

Leo Esaki was born in Osaka, Japan in 1925. Esaki completed work for a B.S. in Physics in 1947 and received his Ph.D in 1959, both from the University of Tokyo. Esaki is an IBM Fellow and has been engaged in semiconductor research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York,…

Ivar Giaever was born in Bergen, Norway, April 5, 1929, the second of three children. He grew up in Toten where his father, John A. Giaever, was a pharmacist. He attended elementary school in Toten but received his secondary education in the city of Hamar. Next he worked one year at the Raufoss Munition Factories…

Nevill Francis Mott was born in Leeds, U.K., on September 30th, 1905. His parents, Charles Francis Mott and Lilian Mary (née) Reynolds, met when working under in the Cavendish Laboratory; his great grandfather was Sir John Richardson, the arctic explorer. He was educated at Clifton College, Bristol and St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he studied…