John Lewis Hall (known by many as Jan) was born on August 21, 1934 in Denver, Colorado. His father (John Ernest Hall) was trained as an electrical engineer and worked for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on many hydroelectric projects here and overseas. His mother, Rae (Long) Hall was an elementary school teacher and singer.…

I was born December 9, 1917 in a small town in Idaho (Council) where my parents had moved to from California to operate a general store. My father, who had previously been a civil engineer, died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. My mother then moved with me and her mother to Hanford, Calif.…

Albert Abraham Michelson was born in Strelno, Prussia, on December 19, 1852. Two years later his family emigrated to the United States to settle at Virginia City, Nevada, but they eventually moved to San Francisco where Michelson received his early education in public schools, matriculating from the High School in 1869. He was appointed by…

Robert Hofstadter, Professor of Physics at Stanford University, was born in New York, N.Y., of parents Louis Hofstadter and Henrietta Koenigsberg, on February 5, 1915. Hofstadter attended elementary and high schools in New York City, and was graduated in 1935 from the College of the City of New York with the B.S. degree, magna cum…

Clinton Joseph Davisson was born at Bloomington, Illinois, U.S.A., October 22, 1881, son of Joseph Davisson, an artisan, native of Ohio, descendant of early Dutch and French settlers of Virginia, Union veteran of the American Civil War, and Mary Calvert, a school-teacher, native of Pennsylvania, of English and Scotch parentage. He attended the Bloomington public…

I was born on Aug. 7, 1946 in Roanoke, Virginia, a small city near Blacksburg where my father was a young faculty member at the school now called Virginia Tech. For some generations, my family on both sides has been populated with scientists and school teachers. My father, Robert E. Mather, was starting his research…

George Paget Thomson was born in 1892 at Cambridge, the son of the late (then Professor of Physics at Cambridge University), a Nobel Prize winner who, more than anyone else, was responsible for the discovery of the electron, and Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of the late Sir George Paget, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge.…

Lev Davidovic Landau was born in Baku on January 22, 1908, as the son of an engineer and a physician. After graduating from the Physical Department of Leningrad University at the age of 19, he began his scientific career at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. The years 1929 – 1931 he spent abroad, partly as a…

I was born in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 1914. My father was a photographer at the National Bureau of Standards. A self-educated man, he never finished high school, but, in his career at the National Bureau of Standards, he made many useful inventions, and eventually became chief of the Photographic Technology Section. His early…

In Memory of Marc Antonio Giacconi and dedicated to my wife, Mirella, and to our daughters, Anna and Guia. I. Early yearsI was born in Genoa, Italy, on October 6, 1931, but I spent most of my life until 1956 in Milano. I was the only child. My mother, Elsa Canni Giacconi, was a teacher…