Michael S. Brown was born on April 13, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest child of Harvey Brown, a textile salesman, and Evelyn Brown, a housewife. His sister Susan was born three years later. When Brown was 11 years old the family moved to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where Brown attended…

I was born during the second world war in Stuttgart, the capital of Swebia, as the first of two children. My father, Bertold Sakmann, was the director of a theatre, the third son of a physician whose family had lived in southern Germany for several generations. My mother, Annemarie Sakmann, was a physiotherapist and was…

Allvar Gullstrand, eldest son of Dr. Pehr Alfred Gullstrand, Principal Municipal Medical Officer, and his wife Sofia Mathilda née Korsell, was born on June 5, 1862, at Landskrona. He was educated at schools in Landskrona and Jönköping, where he passed his matriculation in 1880; he then went to Uppsala University, which he left in 1885,…

Joseph Erlanger was born on January 5, 1874, at San Francisco, California. He is the son of Herman and Sarah Erlanger. Studying chemistry at the University of California, he received the degree of B.S. of that University and later went to Johns Hopkins University to study medicine, where he obtained his M.D. degree in 1899.…

Joseph L. Goldstein was born on April 18, 1940, in Sumter, South Carolina, the only son of Isadore E. and Fannie Alpert Goldstein. The family owned and operated a clothing store in Kingstree, South Carolina, a town of 5000 people. After his education in the primary and secondary public schools of Kingstree, Goldstein attended Washington…

Herbert Spencer Gasser was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, on July 5, 1888, the son of Herman Gasser end Jane Elisabeth Griswold. After attending the State Normal School he went on to the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated A.B. in 1910 and A.M. in 1911. Here he studied physiology under Dr. , with whom he…

In the fall of 1921 I attended the only course in genetics open to undergraduate students at Cornell University. It was conducted by C. B. Hutchison, then a professor in the Department of Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, who soon left Cornell to become Chancellor of the University of California at Davis, California. Relatively few…

The Making of a Scientist II In 1996, as a Kyoto Prize laureate, I was asked to write an autobiographical sketch of my early upbringing. Through this exercise, shared by all of the laureates, the hope was to uncover potential influences or experiences that may have been key to fostering the creative spirit within us.…

Schack August Steenberg Krogh was born at Grenaa, Jutland, Denmark, on November 15, 1874. He was the son of Viggo Krogh, shipbuilder, and Marie, née Drechmann. Even as a schoolboy August was much interested in the natural sciences and spent a great deal of his time in experimentation. He was greatly stimulated by his teacher…

My twin sister Paola and I were born in Turin on April 22, 1909, the youngest of four children. Our parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a talented painter and an exquisite human being. Our older brother Gino, who died twelve years ago of a heart attack, was…