Nobel Prize

Lars Onsager was born in Oslo, Norway, November 27, 1903 to parents Erling Onsager, Barrister of the Supreme Court of Norway, and Ingrid, née Kirkeby. In 1933 he married Margarethe Arledter, daughter of a well-known pioneer in the art of paper making, in Cologne, Germany. They have sons Erling Frederick, Hans Tanberg, and Christian Carl,…

I was born in Taunton, Massachusetts on June 1, 1917, but I actually grew up in nearby New Bedford. My family background was heavily slanted toward business and seafaring matters. I can’t think of any relatives that ever went into science. My family gave me the best in education. To my father, business was the…

I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented fourroom apartment with two additional families and their children. My memories from my childhood are centered on my father’s medical conditions alongside my constant desire to understand the principles of the nature around me. The hard conditions didn’t dampen my…

Sir Alexander Robertus Todd was born in Glasgow on October 2, 1907, the elder son of Alexander Todd, a business man of that city, and his wife Jean Lowrie. He was educated at Allan Glen’s School and Glasgow University, where he took his B.Sc. degree in 1928 and, after a short initial research training with…

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…

I was born on September 3, 1938 in a suburb of Kobe (now Ashiya), Japan, the first son of Kaneki and Suzuko Noyori. Our family moved to Kobe soon afterwards. I grew up with two younger brothers and a sister in a pleasant city blessed by beautiful natural surroundings. Except for a short period at…

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…

Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius was born August 10, 1902, in Stockholm. After the early loss of his father, the family moved to Gothenburg where he went to school, and after graduation at the local “Realgymnasium” in 1921, he studied at the University of Uppsala, specializing in chemistry. He became research assistant in ‘s laboratory in…

Gerhard Herzberg was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 25 December, 1904. He was married in 1929 to Luise Herzberg neé Oettinger and has two children. He was widowed in 1971. Herzberg received his early training in Hamburg and subsequently studied physics at the Darmstadt Institute of Technology where in 1928 he obtained his Dr.Ing. degree…

Melvin Calvin was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, April 8, 1911, of Russian emigrant parents. He received the B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1931 at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology, and the Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1935. He spent the academic years 1935-1937 at the University of…