The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife Jennie Jerome, was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a brief but eventful career in the army, he became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. He held many high posts in Liberal and Conservative governments…

George Porter was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire on the 6th December 1920. He married Stella Jean Brooke on the 25th August 1949 and they have two sons, John and Andrew. His first education was at local primary and grammar schools and in 1938 he went, as Ackroyd Scholar, to Leeds University. His…

A central figure in the “green revolution”, Norman Ernest Borlaug (born March 25, 1914) was born on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, to Henry and Clara Borlaug. For the past twenty-seven years he has collaborated with Mexican scientists on problems of wheat improvement; for the last ten or so of those years he has also…

Jules Bordet was born in Soignies, Belgium, on June 13, 1870. He was educated in Brussels where he graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1892. In 1894 he went to Paris to work at the Pasteur Institute until 1901 when he returned to Belgium to found the Pasteur Institute, Brussels. He has been Director of…

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya (Africa) in 1940. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964). She subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966).…

Richard Kuhn was born in Vienna on December 3, 1900. His father, Richard Clemens Kuhn, was an engineer and “Hofrat”; his mother, Angelika Rodler, was a teacher in elementary schools. He was educated at the “Gymnasium” (grammar school). He studied chemistry at Vienna University and later at Munich under . He obtained his degree (D.Ph.)…

Hans Spemann was born on June 27, 1869, at Stuttgart. He was the eldest son of the publisher, Wilhelm Spemann. From 1878 until 1888 he went to the Eberhard-Ludwig School at Stuttgart and when he left school in 1888 he spent a year in his father’s publishing business. From 1889-1890 he did his military service…

My father, Alfred Gilman, could play almost any musical instrument and frequently did so at neighborhood parties; his father owned a music store in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My mother, Mabel Schmidt Gilman, was an excellent pianist and gave lessons; her father was a professional trombonist, also in Bridgeport. Despite this heritage, my musical career ended after…

I was born on 7 September 1917 at Sydney in Australia. My father was English-born and a graduate of Oxford; my mother, born Hilda Eipper, was descended from a German minister of religion who settled in New South Wales in 1832. I was the second of four children. Part of my childhood was spent in…

Max Delbrück was born on September 4th, 1906, in Berlin, Germany, the youngest of seven children. His father, Hans Delbrück, Professor of History at the University of Berlin, was for many years editor and political columnist of the Preussische Jahrbücher. His mother was a granddaughter of the chemist, Justus von Liebig. Max Delbrück grew up…