Gabriel Lippmann was born of French parents at Hollerich, Luxembourg on August 16, 1845. The family moved to Paris and he received his early education at home. In 1858 he entered the Lycée Napoleon and ten years later he was admitted to the École Normale. His school career was not markedly successful, for he concentrated…

John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin, May 23, 1908. He attended the University High School in Madison for several years, and graduated from Madison Central High School in 1923. This was followed by a course in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, where he took extra work in mathematics and physics. After being…

Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn was born on the 3rd of December, 1886, at Örebro in Sweden. His father was Nils Reinhold Georg Siegbahn, a stationmaster of the State Railways, and his mother was Emma Sofia Mathilda Zetterberg. After receiving a high-school education he entered the University of Lund in 1906, where he obtained his doctor’s…

Leon Cooper was born in 1930 in New York where he attended Columbia University (A.B. 1951; A.M. 1953; Ph.D. 1954). He became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (1954-55) after which he was a research associate of Illinois (1955-57) and later an assistant professor at the Ohio State University (1957-58). Professor Cooper joined…

James Franck was born on August 26, 1882, in Hamburg, Germany. After attending the Wilhelm Gymnasium there, he studied mainly chemistry for a year at the University of Heidelberg, and then studied physics at the University of Berlin, where his principal tutors were Emil Warburg and Paul Drude. He received his Ph.D. at Berlin in…

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on 8th August, 1901, at Canton, South Dakota (United States). His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson) Lawrence, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, his father being a Superintendant of Schools. His early education was at Canton High School, then St. Olaf College. In 1919 he went to the…

John Robert Schrieffer was born in Oak Park, Illinois on May 31, 1931, son of John H. Schrieffer and his wife Louis (née Anderson). In 1940, the family moved to Manhasset, New York and in 1947 to Eustis, Florida where they became active in the citrus industry. Following his graduation from Eustis High School in…

Gustav Ludwig Hertz was born in Hamburg on July 22nd, 1887, the son of a lawyer, Dr. Gustav Hertz, and his wife Auguste, née Arning. He attended the Johanneum School in Hamburg before commencing his university education at Göttingen in 1906; he subsequently studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, graduating in 1911. He…

Otto Stern was born in Sorau, Upper Silesia, Germany, on February 17, 1888. In 1892 he moved with his parents to Breslau, where he attended high school. He began to study physical chemistry in 1906, receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of Breslau in 1912. In the same year he joined Einstein at the…

Jean Baptiste Perrin was born in Lille, September 30, 1870, where he was educated at the École Normal Supérieure, becoming an assistant in physics during 1894-1897, when he began his researches on cathode rays and X-rays. He received the degree of “docteur ès sciences” in 1897 for a thesis on cathode and Röntgen rays and…