I was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 28, 1930, the second of two children of Selig and Lillian Friedman, nee Warsaw, who were immigrants from Russia. My father came to the United States in 1913 and later served in the U.S. Army Artillery Corps in World War I. After the war he was employed…

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on 8th August, 1902, at Bristol, England, his father being Swiss and his mother English. He was educated at the Merchant Venturer’s Secondary School, Bristol, then went on to Bristol University. Here, he studied electrical engineering, obtaining the B.Sc. (Engineering) degree in 1921. He then studied mathematics for two…

Philipp von Lenard was born at Pozsony (Pressburg) in Austria-Hungary on June 7, 1862. His family had originally come from the Tyrol. He studied physics successively at Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Heidelberg under Bunsen, Helmholtz, Königsberger and Quincke and in 1886 took his Ph.D. at Heidelberg. From 1892 he worked as a Privatdozent and assistant…

James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20th October, 1891, the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. He attended Manchester High School prior to entering Manchester University in 1908; he graduated from the Honours School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under in the Physical Laboratory in…

Joseph John Thomson was born in Cheetham Hill, a suburb of Manchester on December 18, 1856. He enrolled at Owens College, Manchester, in 1870, and in 1876 entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar. He became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1880, when he was Second Wrangler and Second Smith’s Prizeman, and he…

Felix Bloch was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on October 23, 1905, as the son of Gustav Bloch and Agnes Bloch (née Mayer). From 1912 to 1918 he attended the public primary school and subsequently the “Gymnasium” of the Canton of Zurich, which he left in the fall of 1924 after having passed the “Matura”, i.e.…

Edward Mills Purcell was born in Taylorville, Illinois, U.S.A., on August 30, 1912. His parents, Edward A. Purcell and Mary Elizabeth Mills, were both natives of Illinois. He was educated in the public schools in Taylorville and in Mattoon, Illinois, and in 1929 entered Purdue University in Indiana. He graduated from Purdue in electrical engineering…

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…

I was born in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 1941, the eldest of four sons. My father, Bertram Meyer, born in Philadelphia, son of immigrant Jewish parents from Czechoslovakia-Hungary, had attended the University of Pennsylvania as an English major. From 1941 a staff member of U.S. Sen. James E. Murray of Montana, he helped after…

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…