by Frank Fenner and Suzanne Cory Medical research in Australia in the early 20th century Although politically independent since 1901, in the 1920s Australia was still culturally, scientifically and industrially a dependency of the United Kingdom. The total population then was some 7 million and there were three medical schools, in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.…

by Gösta Ekspong The research leading to an understanding of the nature of light and the emission and absorption processes has been of paramount importance. It led from a beginning in 1900 to the development of quantum physics, reaching a high peak in the 1920s and a fruition towards the mid-century years with the completion…

Frederick Grinnell UT Southwestern Medical Center In early 1985, when philanthropist Ralph Rogers spoke with Texas billionaire Ross Perot to ask for a “considerable” amount of money for UT Southwestern Medical School, he anticipated no great difficulty. Rogers, who recently had led the $80 million campaign to modernize Parkland Memorial Hospital, was friends with Perot…

by 1962 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Haphazard growth On a summer day in the late fifties a delegation from the Soviet Union appeared in Cambridge demanding to see the “Institute of Molecular Biology”. When I took them to our shabby prefabricated hut in front of the University Physics Department, called Cavendish Laboratory after its nineteenth…

by Sture Packalén* This article was published on 30 November 2005. Record number of prizes Within a space of ten years at the beginning of the twentieth century, four writers in German were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: (1902), (1908), (1910) and (1912). This is a record that has yet to be surpassed by…

The Max Planck Institute for Medical Research is the direct descendent of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research and member institute of the Max Planck Society. The four departments contribute their unique expertise in complementary areas: the determination of atomic structures (Ilme Schlichting), optical nanoscopy (), design of new reporter molecules (Kai Johnsson) and…

Aspects of the Nobel Prize for Literature by Professor Sture AllénThe Swedish Academy, Sweden This article was published on 23 July 1997. One of the many subjects treated vituperatively by August Strindberg in his “Addresses to the Swedish Nation”, 1910, was the choice in 1901 of the first Nobel Laureate in literature, : “Moreover, the…

by Geir LundestadSecretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, 1990-2014 Introduction This article is intended to serve as a basic survey of the history of the Nobel Peace Prize during its first 100 years. Since all the 107 Laureates selected from 1901 to 2000 are to be mentioned, the emphasis will be on facts and names.…

by Michael W. Doyle Peace and democracy are just two sides of the same coin, it has often been said. In a speech before the British parliament in June of 1982, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that governments founded on a respect for individual liberty exercise “restraint” and “peaceful intentions” in their foreign policy. He then,…

On October 1, 1929, became first of the four KWImF research directors to move into the new laboratory on the banks of the Neckar River. At twenty-eight years of age, he was also by far the youngest. In addition to a growing reputation as an experimentalist in organic chemistry, he brought with him an encyclopedic…