The Early Years: Birth to High School I was born in a small suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark, on 16th January 1954. I was the first of three children born to my parents, Hanne and Thorkil Meldal. My mother was from the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and was the daughter of Niels…

I was born January 11th 1968 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I am a chemist and currently one of the directors at the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr. I also serve as professor of organic chemistry at the Universities of Cologne and Hokkaido. I wanted to become a chemist since…

Gerhard Ertl at his interview with Nobelprize.org in Stockholm, 6 December 2007. Interview with the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Gerhard Ertl on 6 December 2007. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org. Gerhard Ertl, welcome to this interview with Nobelprize.org. You are the 2007 Nobel Laureate in chemistry for your contributions to the…

Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, 10 December 1929. From left: Owen Willans Richardson, physics laureate 1928; Louis de Broglie, physics laureate 1929; Arthur Harden and Hans von Euler-Chelpin, chemistry laureates 1929; Sir Frederick Hopkins, medicine laureate 1929 and Thomas Mann, literature laureate 1929.

Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, 10 December 1929. From left: Owen Willans Richardson, physics laureate 1928; Louis de Broglie, physics laureate 1929; Arthur Harden and Hans von Euler-Chelpin, chemistry laureates 1929; Sir Frederick Hopkins, medicine laureate 1929 and Thomas Mann, literature laureate 1929.

From left: Medecine laureate Fritz Lipmann with his wife Elfreda, physics laureate Frits Zernike and chemistry laureate Hermann Staudinger with his wife Magda at the Nobel Banquet, 10 December 1953.

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