Chemistry

Biographical

Grandfather Josef, a shoemaker, immigrated to the U.S. from Bohemia in 1913. My other grandparents, also of Czech origin, were first-generation Americans. My father was and is a physician, my mother the homemaker. I was born in Chicago on December 8, 1947. The safe streets and good schools of Iowa City, Iowa provided the backdrop…

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Biographical

Theodore William Richards was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA on January 31, 1868. His father, William T. Richards was a well-known painter of landscapes and seascapes: his mother, Anna, née Matlack, won fame for her poetical works. During his childhood, Richards travelled to England and France and, up to the age of fourteen, he was…

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Nobel Lecture

Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1904 The Rare Gases of the Atmosphere The discoveries which have gained for me the supreme honour of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry appear to me to have been the result of causes only partially within my control; and as it is one of the rules of the Academy, of which…

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Biographical

My father, Herbert Bennett Fenn, the eldest of three children was born and raised on a farm in northern Delaware which his father operated but did not own. I never saw that farm but I vividly remember my Grandmother’s frequent reference to a single chestnut tree in the front yard, so large and prolific that…

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Popular information

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006 This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Roger D. Kornberg for his fundamental studies concerning how the information stored in the genes is copied, and then transferred to those parts of the cells that produce proteins. Kornberg was the first to create an actual picture of this…

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