François Mauriac (1885-1970) was born in Bordeaux. His father, a banker, died when he was eighteen months old, leaving his mother with five children, of which he was the youngest. François grew up in a closely sheltered world, first under the protection of his mother, later in a school run by the Marianites. He studied…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the The student of François Mauriac’s works will be struck from the very first by the insistence with which Mauriac devotes himself to describing a precise milieu, a corner of land one can point to on a map of France. The action of his novels nearly always…

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Edward Mills Purcell was born in Taylorville, Illinois, U.S.A., on August 30, 1912. His parents, Edward A. Purcell and Mary Elizabeth Mills, were both natives of Illinois. He was educated in the public schools in Taylorville and in Mattoon, Illinois, and in 1929 entered Purdue University in Indiana. He graduated from Purdue in electrical engineering…

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Felix Bloch was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on October 23, 1905, as the son of Gustav Bloch and Agnes Bloch (née Mayer). From 1912 to 1918 he attended the public primary school and subsequently the “Gymnasium” of the Canton of Zurich, which he left in the fall of 1924 after having passed the “Matura”, i.e.…