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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I was born on 5 November 1948 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, just across the river from the town of Kingston, where my parents lived with my one and a half year old sister, Maxine. My parents had come to this small Pennsylvania town from places and backgrounds that were far apart and yet quite similar. My…