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[1421] SCHWINGER REINES [1423]
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[1421] SCHWINGER REINES
bia and, on returning to Copenhagen, he and Mottelson [1471] worked out the theory in more detail and presented ex perimental detail that confirmed it. As a result Rainwater, Bohr, and Mottelson shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for physics. [1421] SCHWINGER, Julian Seymour American physicist
February 12, 1918 Schwinger was a child prodigy who burned his way through grade school and entered the College of the City of New York at the age of fourteen. He later transferred to Columbia University and graduated in 1936, going on to his Ph.D. in 1939. He then worked under Oppenheimer [1280] at the University of California. He joined the faculty of Harvard in 1945 and by 1947 was a full professor, one of the very few to achieve such a status at that university while still in his twenties. Schwinger’s theoretical work led to the formulation of quantum electrodynamics and, as a result, he shared with Feynman [1424] and Tomonaga [1300], who had done similar work independently, in the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics. [1422] KORNBERG, Arthur American biochemist Born: Brooklyn, New York, March 3, 1918 Komberg attended the College of the City of New York on a scholarship and graduated in 1937. He then studied med icine at the University of Rochester on another scholarship and obtained his medical degree in 1941, after which he served in the Coast Guard for a while. He has been associated with a number of universities and is now the head of the biochemistry department at Stanford University. In 1956 he formed synthetic molecules of DNA by the action of an enzyme upon a mixture of nucleotides, each of which carried three phosphate groups. For this he shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology with Ochoa [1293].
[1423] REEVES, Frederick American physicist Born: Paterson, New Jersey, March 16, 1918 Reines obtained his Ph.D. at New York University in 1944. He worked at Los Alamos till 1959, then moved on to Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) and in 1966 went on to the University of Cali fornia. His great interest was in the neutrino, that tiny, elusive particle first postu lated by Pauli [1228] as necessary to straighten out the arithmetic of nuclear reactions. Only by including a particle of certain properties could various conser vation laws be upheld. The trouble was that those particular properties made it react with ordinary particles so incredi bly rarely that it was easy to decide it would never be detected. Reines, in the early 1950s, chased after it nevertheless, in collaboration with Cowan [1434]. He made use of a nuclear reactor as a particularly rich source of neutrinos. Just because a neu trino almost never reacted with ordinary particles, didn’t mean quite never. Reines set up a detection system that would concentrate on one particular re action a neutrino might bring about and that would detect the gamma rays pro duced at just the right energies and time intervals and none other. In this way, neutrinos were finally de tected in 1956, a quarter century after they had been postulated. Since then, Reines has been setting up large vats of perchloroethylene deep un derground (where neutrinos can easily penetrate, but few other particles can) in order to pick up neutrinos emitted by the sun. Some have been detected but, at best, only about a third as many as were expected. Careful examination of the experi 8 6 6
[ 1 4 2 4 ] FEYNMAN
MATTHIAS [ 1 4 2 5 ] mental procedure seemed to show that there was really a “mystery of the miss ing neutrinos” and astronomers were perturbed. Plans for improved detectors were advanced. In the late 1970s Reines tackled the matter from a new direction. There were three dilferent kinds of neutrinos known: the electron-neutrino, the muon-neutrino, and the tauon-neutrino. There was no way known to distinguish them by definable differences in properties. There had been suggestions that the neutrinos might not be zero-rest-mass particles as had been supposed almost from the first. If each had a tiny but different mass, that would represent the missing distinc tion between them. It meant they would oscillate from one form to another so that the electron-neutrinos from the sun would be fewer than expected because some would be converted to muon-neu trinos and tauon-neutrinos en route. In addition, so many neutrinos exist that even with minute individual rest-masses they would make up more than 99 per cent of the universe and would supply the necessary mass to make sure the uni verse would someday cease its expansion and contract again. In 1980 Reines announced experi ments that indicated the neutrino had mass. Soviet work meanwhile suggested the mass was Yio.ooo that of an electron, which was enough. Further investigation is, of course, required. [1424] FEYNMAN, Richard Philips American physicist Born: New York, New York, May 11, 1918 Feynman graduated from Massa chusetts Institute of Technology in 1939 and earned his doctorate at Princeton University in 1942. Like all physicists of his generation he was involved in nuclear bomb research during World War II and was present at the explosion of the first bomb at Alamogordo. He joined the fac ulty of Cornell University in 1945 and went on to California Institute of Tech nology in 1950. In 1948 Feynman developed “quan tum electrodynamics,” in which the be havior of electrons was worked out mathematically with far greater precision than was the case previously. Schwinger [1421] and Tomonaga [1300] did similar work independently and all three shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics. Feynman is renowned for his excel lence as a lecturer and for his ability to handle the bongo drums at parties. [1425] MATTHIAS, Bern Teo German-American physicist Born: Frankfurt-am-Main, Ger many, June 8, 1918 Died: La Jolla, California, Octo ber 27, 1980 Matthias moved from Germany to Switzerland when Hitler gained control of Germany and in 1943 obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, studying under Pauli [1228], In 1947 he went to the United States and was naturalized in 1951. He was associated with Bell La boratories and the University of Califor nia after 1961. Matthias was chiefly interested in su perconductivity and is supposed to have established the superconductive proper ties of more elements and compounds than anyone in the world since the dis covery of the phenomenon by Kamer- lingh Onnes [843]. One of the most important aspects of his research was that of finding some thing that would be superconductive at as high a temperature as possible, so that liquid helium would not be required for the property. If superconductivity at temperatures about 20°K were found, then it could be maintained by the much cheaper and easier-to-handle liquid hy drogen. As the total number of super conductive materials rose from 30 to more than 1,000 (chiefly through Matthias’ work) increasingly higher tem peratures were achieved. In 1954 Mat thias discovered a superconducting alloy in which three atoms of niobium were joined to one of tin, and which remained 867 [1426] SANGER
SANGER [1426] super-conductive up to a temperature of 18.3°K. He died of a heart attack at sixty-two. Had he lived out a normal lifetime he might well (in the opinion of many) have obtained a Nobel Prize. [1426] SANGER, Frederick English biochemist
shire, August 13, 1918 Sanger, the son of a physician, gradu ated from Cambridge University in 1939 and earned his Ph.D. there in 1943. He worked thereafter in the laboratory that was soon to be graced by such additional biochemical giants as Crick [1406], James Dewey Watson [1480], Kendrew [1415], and Perutz [1389], Sanger’s interest lay in the determi nation of the exact structure of the amino acid chain of protein molecules. Martin [1350] and Synge [1394] had just introduced paper chromatography, which made it possible to tell how many of each amino acid were in the molecule of a particular protein. The next step was to tell the exact position of each amino acid in the molecular chain. In order to do this, Sanger began to break down molecules only part way, leaving small chains of amino acids in tact. In 1945 he discovered a compound called 2, 4-dinitrofluorobenzene (com monly called Sanger’s reagent) which would attach itself to one end of a chain of amino acids but not the other. By at taching his reagent to one of the small chains he produced, and then breaking that chain down all the way to amino acids, Sanger could tell which amino acid had been at the vulnerable end by separating them by paper chroma tography and noting which amino acid had the reagent attached to it. Sanger began work on the important molecule of insulin, which had been iso lated a quarter century earlier by Ban ting [1152] and Best [1218]. It is made up of some fifty amino acids, distributed among two interconnected chains. Slowly he identified the short amino acid chains he obtained from it, working out the order of the amino acids in the short chains by means of his reagent and by other methods. Then he deduced the longer chains could give rise to just those short chains he had discovered and no others. Little by little he built up the structure of longer and longer chains until by 1953, after eight years of hard work, the exact order of the amino acids in the whole in sulin molecule had been worked out. It was a stunning achievement. With Sanger’s work as a guide, other chemists have worked out the exact structure of other and still more compli cated compounds, as, for example, Li’s [1382] group, which worked out the structure of the pituitary hormone, ACTH. Du Vigneaud [1239] determined the structure of the comparatively simple amino acid chains of oxytocin and va sopressin and was even able to synthesize them thereafter. It was quite clear that Sanger had scored a breakthrough in protein chemis try that was to lead to still greater tri umphs and he was awarded the 1958 Noble Prize in chemistry. And, indeed, by 1964 chemists had succeeded in synthesizing the entire insulin molecule. Sanger’s work only located the amino acids in a chain that could be drawn, ab stractly, as a straight line. Building on his work, Kendrew and Perutz went even further, in 1960, locating the actual posi tion of each amino acid in the three dimensional structure of an intact mole cule of proteins like myoglobin and he moglobin. Sanger then turned to the sequence determination of nucleotides in nucleic acids, a macromolecule even more im portant and complex than the protein molecule. By 1977 he and his colleagues had worked out the entire sequence of the DNA molecule in a small virus, which contained 5,375 nucleotide pairs sufficient to code the production of nine different proteins. For this he received a share of the 1980 Nobel Prize for chemistry, which makes him one of the rare double laureates, along with Bardeen [1334] and Pauling [1236], 8 6 8
[1427] BARTON
VAN DE HULST [1430] [1427] BARTON, Sir Derek Harold Richard English chemist Born: Gravesend, Kent, Septem ber 8, 1918 Barton obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the Imperial College, Lon don, in 1942, and joined the faculty of the institution in 1945. While a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1949, he began to work on the relationship of the three-dimensional structure of or ganic compounds in relation to their chemical properties. The preparation of models of steroids, terpenes, and other complex molecules of biochemical significance showed distinct shapes that could vary considerably with minor changes in orientation of particular atoms. This placed an entirely new light on many aspects of organic chemistry and won for Barton a share of the 1969 Nobel Prize for chemistry. He was knighted in 1972. [1428] RYLE, Sir Martin English astronomer
1918
Ryle, the son of a physician, worked on radar during World War II. After the war, he received a fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where he worked on radio astronomy. Under his leadership the Cambridge radio astronomy group compiled cata logues of radio sources, the latest being the Third Cambridge Catalogue. It has proved essential to the discovery of the quasars, so that the first ones discovered were given names that began with “3C” for the Third Cambridge. Ryle became professor of radio astron omy in 1959, was knighted in 1966, and was appointed astronomer royal in 1972. He devised ingenious systems for in creasing the sharpness with which radio telescopes could “see” radio sources. The most important of these was called “ap erture synthesis.” He used two radio tele scopes and changed the distance between them. The variation in the signals they received could then be analyzed by com puters to give the sharpness one would expect of a single radio telescope as wide as the maximum distance between the two actual telescopes. In this way, and in other ways, Ryle could achieve a resolu tion of radio sources equal to the best that could be done with light sources by optical telescopes. Instruments like this made it possible for Hewish [1463] to discover pulsars. As a result, Ryle and Hewish shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for physics. [1429] FISCHER, Ernst Otto German chemist Born: Miichen-Solln, November 10, 1918 Fischer, the son of a physics professor and born the day before the armistice that ended World War I, found his own education delayed by World War II. It was not till 1952 that he obtained his Ph.D. at the Technische Hochschule of Munich. After 1957 he served there as a full professor. In 1951, he began work on a newly isolated substance, ferrocene, which was of unknown structure. He showed that it consisted of two five-membered carbon rings in parallel, with an iron atom in between, with bonding between itself and all ten carbon atoms to some extent. This was a completely new type of metal-organic compound, and in 1973 Fischer shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry with Wilkinson [1445], who had made the same discovery indepen dently. [1430] VAN DE HULST, Hendrik Christoffell Dutch astronomer Born: Utrecht, November 19, 1918
Van de Hulst’s chance came during the sad years of World War II when the German occupation of the Netherlands forced most Dutchmen into the shadows 869 [1431] ECKERT
HILLARY [1432] and made ordinary scientific research impossible. With the instruments of as tronomy not at hand, Van de Hulst’s young and restless mind turned to pen and paper. He considered the behavior of cold hy drogen atoms and worked out the man ner in which the magnetic fields as sociated with the proton and the electron in the hydrogen atom were oriented to each other. They could line up in the same direction or in opposite directions. Every once in a while, the atom could flip from one configuration to another and in so doing it would emit a radio wave 21 centimeters in length. Any single hydrogen atom ought to do so only once in 11 million years or so, on the average, but there were so many such atoms in space that a continuing drizzle of 21-centimeter radiation should result. After the war was over, radio astrono mers sought for such radiation and, by 1951, F. Bloch [1296] and Purcell [1378] had detected it. The use of such radiation has made it possible to map the spiral arms of the galaxy with detail that would be impossible from a consid eration of the stars alone. [1431] ECKERT, John Presper, Jr. American engineer
April 9, 1919 Eckert attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1941 to 1946. There he met Mauchly [1328] and with him designed the pioneer electronic com puters, ENIAC in 1946 and UNIVAC in 1951. These quickly became obsolete but they ushered in a change that is likely to alter the world beyond recognition more quickly than any previous technological change has done. [1432] HILLARY, Sir Edmund Percival New Zealand explorer Bom: Auckland, New Zealand, July 20, 1919 Hillary was a beekeeper in his younger days, and during World War II he served in the South Pacific with the New Zea land Air Force. He began mountain climbing as a hobby. To any mountain climber, the goal of goals is Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth, and Hillary’s eyes eventually fixed upon it. Almost every spot on the earth’s sur face had been reached by mid-twentieth century, including the North Pole by Peary [866] and the South Pole by Amundsen [1008] and Scott [971] nearly half a century before. Yet there re mained localized spots untrodden by man—the depths of jungles, deserts, and ice sheets, and most spectacularly the peaks of the highest mountains. Six ver tical miles was far harder to manage by foot in the 1950s than thousands of hori zontal miles. Hillary took part in the great prepara tions for an attempt to climb Mount Everest in the early 1950s, and it was this expedition, meticulously arranged, that finally succeeded where others had failed. On May 29, 1953, Hillary and a native guide finally made it and stood on the highest bit of land anywhere on the face of the globe. For this feat he was knighted later in the year. Although there remain mountains that still have not been scaled, the conquest of Everest makes it certain that the rest require only time and the necessary effort. In 1960, when Piccard’s [1092] bathy scaphe penetrated the deepest known abyss of the ocean, there remained no extreme on earth’s surface that had not felt the presence of man. Outer space it self was the new frontier and soon Ga garin [1502] was to make man’s presence felt there, too. During the course of the International Geophysical Year (1957-58), Hillary contributed another feat, almost as dra matic. The exploration of Antarctica was a prime target of the IGY, and Hillary was one of the leaders of the expedition that for the first time in history crossed by land the entire Antarctic continent from sea to sea. Hillary reached the South Pole on January 4, 1958, the first 8 7 0
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