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[1433] BONDI BLOEMBERGEN [1436]
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[1433] BONDI
BLOEMBERGEN [1436] to reach it by land since Amundsen and Scott. In 1960 Hillary began a search for the “abominable snowman,” a manlike creature reputed to haunt the Himalayan heights. He failed to find one. [1433] BONDI, Sir Hermann Austrian-British mathematician Born: Vienna, November 1, 1919 Bondi left Austria after the Nazi occu pation made life intolerable and went to Great Britain, where he remained there after, obtaining his master’s degree from Cambridge University in 1944. He is best known for his work on the steady-state (“continuous creation”) theory of the universe in conjunction with Hoyle [1398] and Gold [1437], though he has also done important work on general relativity. He was knighted in 1973. [1434] COWAN, Clyde Lorrain American physicist Born: Detroit, Michigan, Decem ber 6, 1919 Cowan obtained his Ph.D. at Washing ton University in 1949, after having served as a captain in the air force dur ing World War II. In 1948 he joined the faculty of Catholic University in Wash ington, D.C. He is best known for his collaboration with Reines [1423] in the detection of the neutrino in 1956. [1435] LIPSCOMB, William Nunn, Jr. American chemist
9, 1919
Lipscomb attended the University of Kentucky, graduating in 1941, then went on to California Institute of Technology, where, working under Pauling [1236] he obtained his Ph.D. in 1946. That year he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, going on to Harvard Univer sity in 1959. He was particularly interested in boranes, the compounds of boron and hydrogen, which Stock [1043] had intro duced to chemical thinking a half cen tury before. Lipscomb made use of the X-ray diffraction techniques that Pauling had used, as well as Pauling’s theory of resonance, and tackled the complex cage like structures of the boranes. The difficulty lay in the fact that there were two few electrons to allow the conven tional theories of electron-bonding to work. Lipscomb, however, showed that two electrons, ordinarily thought of as binding two atoms together, could bind three atoms under appropriate conditions. This not only explained the borane struc ture but served to indicate the possibility of a whole class of new compounds. For this work, Lipscomb was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for chemistry. [1436] BLOEMBERGEN, Nicolaas (bloom'ber-gen) Dutch-American physicist Born: Dordrecht, Netherlands, March 11, 1920 Bloembergen was educated at the Uni versity of Utrecht, attaining his master’s degree in 1943. Those were hard times and in that year the occupying Nazis shut down the Dutch universities. It was not till after the war that he could con tinue and he got his Ph.D. in 1948. By then, he had already done some studying at Harvard University and in 1952 he undertook permanent residency in the United States, qualifying for citi zenship in 1958. He has been on the Harvard faculty since 1951. Bloembergen grew interested in the maser developed by Townes [1400]. The first masers discharged their stored en ergy in a quick emission and then there was a pause while sufficient energy was stored for a second one. Discharge was intermittent. Bloembergen, in 1956, de signed a maser in which energy was on three levels rather than two, so that one of the upper levels could be storing while another was emitting. In this way, he de signed the first continuous maser.
[1437] GOLD
GOLD [1437] [1437] GOLD, Thomas Austrian-British-American astron omer
Born: Vienna, Austria, May 22, 1920
Gold was one of those who fled from Hitler-dominated Central Europe while there was yet time. As in so many other cases, this was a loss for the Germans and a gain for the West. Gold settled in England for two decades, attending Cambridge University, from which he graduated in 1942 and where he ob tained his master’s degree in 1945. In 1956 he went to the United States and after a year at Harvard University ac cepted a professorial position at Cornell University. Gold’s chief fame is in cosmology, that branch of astronomy that deals with the overall structure of the universe. Thanks to the work of Hubble [1136], man’s vision had expanded beyond the Milky Way into a vast space of countless galaxies. Some of these were bound to gether (at least temporarily) in clusters, but in the large view the galaxies and galactic clusters were moving away from each other, the relative velocity of one galaxy with reference to another being proportional to the distance between them. This was the “expanding universe” for which justification could be found in the equations of Einstein’s [1064] gen eral theory of relativity. In order to interpret the structure of the universe, astronomers make use of what is called the cosmological principle, which says in effect that in the very large view the universe is homogeneous; viewed from any point, the vista of the galaxies would be just as it seems viewed from our special point on earth. (If this principle is not accepted, then everything we see might be interpreted as a purely local condition, and we could draw no conclusions about the universe as a whole. There would, in short, be no cosmology.) It seemed to a few astronomers includ ing, notably, Gold, that the cosmological principle ought to hold in time as well as in space; not only ought the universe to seem the same from any point in space, but also at any time in the past or fu ture. But the concept of the expanding universe seemed to preclude that, since in the past, the galaxies would have had to be closer together and in the future will have to be farther apart. In 1948 Gold and others suggested that as the galaxies separated, new mat ter slowly formed in the vast reaches of space between them. By the time the dis tance between two neighboring galaxies had doubled, enough matter had formed between them to make up a new galaxy, so that the density with which galaxies filled space remained unchanged. Fur thermore, this did not increase the total number of galaxies, for the farther a gal axy receded from a given reference point (say, ourselves), the faster it moved, until it reached the speed of light and we could no longer see it. It had, effectively, moved out of our universe. In this way, old galaxies moved out of the universe and new galaxies were born, but the overall picture did not change with time. This “steady state” universe implies continuous creation, for matter (presum ably in the form of hydrogen atoms) must be created continuously out of nothing to make it work. The rate at which this takes place is far too small to detect, for in order to form new galaxies at a rate just sufficient to make up for the recession of the old ones, it has been calculated that not more than five hun dred atoms of hydrogen need be formed in every cubic kilometer of space per year. At this rate the total quantity of matter formed in the volume occupied by the planet earth during its entire five- billion-year period of existence would amount to not more than a seventh of an ounce.
The continuous creation theory has been publicized most ardently by Hoyle [1398] and has been opposed most in transigently by Gamow [1278], who sup ports the big bang theory of Lamaitre [1174] and pictures a universe of galaxies steadily moving apart under the impact of the initial explosion, like an expanding wisp of gas, and nothing more.
The continuous creation theory implies a violation of the laws of thermo- 872
[1437] GOLD
CHAMBERLAIN [1439]
dynamics, for matter (and therefore en ergy) is created out of nothing, while the overall entropy of the universe does not increase, as a century of physicists since Clausius [633] have maintained, but re mains constant. However, the laws of thermodynamics are not deduced from first principles but are merely abstrac tions from human experience and human experience is confined to a small section of the universe indeed. The laws of ther modynamics might well, therefore, not apply to the universe as a whole. There are ways of testing these com peting cosmological theories. In con tinuous creation there are old galaxies and young galaxies with, perhaps, different properties, while in the big bang, all galaxies are of the same age. In continuous creation the universe expands at a constant rate—unchanging with the passage of time. Therefore the velocity of galactic recession increases smoothly with distance, and even the most distant galaxies would behave as expected from the studies of nearby galaxies. In the big bang theory, the expansion of the uni verse is fading off with time as the im petus of that first explosion diminishes. This means that the galaxies close to us are receding as one might expect, but as one considers galaxies farther and far ther away, one is staring at light that originated longer and longer ago in the past, when the universe was expanding more rapidly than it is today. Therefore, distant galaxies would seem to be reced ing more rapidly than one would expect from studies of nearby galaxies. The more distant the galaxy the greater the discrepancy. Such distinctions are so fine that, based on those alone, there might be no clear-cut distinction one way or the other. However, the discovery of quasars through the work of Schmidt [1488], and the microwave background by Penzias [1501] and Wilson [1506], have all but wiped out the possibility that the uni verse can be “steady state.” Even the no tion of perpetual expansion embodied in the steady-state universe is called into question by the possibility that the neu trino has mass, as Reines [1423] has suggested. On a less cosmic note, however, Gold has scored a distinct victory. When Hewish [1463] discovered pulsars, it was Gold who in the early 1970s suggested they were neutron stars and pointed out that in that case their rate of pulsation should be slowing at a slow but measur able rate. Measurements proved Gold to be precisely right in this, and the neu tron-star interpretation of pulsars was accepted. [1438] JACOB, François (zhah-kohbO French biologist Born: Nancy, Meurthe-et- Moselle, June 17, 1920 Jacob’s education was interrupted by World War II, during which he served with the Free French forces from 1940 to 1945. He was badly wounded, has a 90 percent disability pension, and was decorated with the Croix de Guerre. After the war he resumed his medical studies and got his M.D. at the Univer sity of Paris in 1947 and an Sc.D. in 1954. In 1950 he joined the Pasteur In stitute where he was associated with Lwoff [1253] and Monod [1347], and for work done on regulatory gene action, shared with them the 1965 Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology. Jacob and Monod proposed the exis tence of the “messenger-RNA” that served to carry the DNA blueprint from the nucleus to Palade’s [1380] ribosomes, which were the cytoplasmic site of pro tein .formation. [1439] CHAMBERLAIN, Owen American physicist
July 10, 1920 Chamberlain, the son of a radiologist, attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1941 and worked on the atom bomb project from 1942 to 1946. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1949, working under Fermi [1243], then joined the faculty of the University of California, becoming professor of phys ics in 1958. 873
[1440] FRANKLIN
BENACERRAF [1442]
There he collaborated with Segre [1287] in the detection of the antiproton. For this he shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics with Segre. [1440] FRANKLIN, Rosalind Elsie English physical chemist Born: London, July 25, 1920 Died: London, April 16, 1958 Franklin, born of a banking family, graduated from Cambridge University in 1941, and then worked with Norrish [1206] on chromatographic techniques. Between 1947 and 1950 she worked at a laboratory in Paris where she learned X-ray diffraction techniques, and in 1951 she began to work on DNA under Wilkins [1413], She made careful X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA under different conditions of humidity and saw that they were consistent with a helical form of the molecule. What’s more, she recog nized that the phosphate groups must be on the outside of the helix. Nevertheless, her native caution caused her to progress slowly and she remained doubtful DNA would actually take up a helical form under all condi tions, assuming that a helix was a special case under special conditions. However, when Watson [1480] saw her X-ray diffraction photographs, through the help of Wilkins and ap parently without the consent of Franklin, he and Crick [1406] saw in them all the confirmation they needed for their own double-helix structure of the DNA mole cule. Franklin went on to work with to bacco mosaic virus and to show the manner in which the nucleic acid mole cule existed inside a helical array of repeated protein units on the outside. She died early of cancer, four years before Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded a Nobel Prize. Her own contri bution to the double-helix structure of nucleic acids has been consistently un derestimated and some blame it on the anti-woman prejudices of the English scientific establishment. [1441] MITCHELL, Peter Dennis English chemist Born: Mitcham, Surrey, Septem ber 29, 1920 Mitchell obtained his Ph.D. at Cam bridge University in 1950. His profes sional labors have involved themselves with a careful study of the mi tochondrion, which is the energy handling organelle of the cell. It contains a number of enzymes that pass hydrogen ions from one compound to another, with the energy developed serving to convert adenosine diphosphate into aden osine triphosphate. Mitchell showed the manner in which the enzymes involved were fixed to the membrane of the mi tochondrion in such a way that they acted as an efficient bucket brigade for hydrogen ions. For his work, he received the 1978 Nobel Prize for chemistry. [1442] BENACERRAF, Baruj (ben-uh- ceriaf) Venezuelan-American geneticist Born: Caracas, Venezuela, Octo ber 29, 1920 Benacerraf went to the United States in 1939 and was naturalized in 1943. He received his M.D. from the Medical Col lege of Virginia in 1945. In 1956 he joined the faculty at the Medical School of New York University and worked with Edelman [1486] on the structure of antibodies. Benacerraf felt that it was important to obtain purer antibodies and he tried to obtain these by subjecting experimental animals to synthetic antigens. The ani mal would then produce an antibody to that antigen alone. In doing this, Bena cerraf discovered that the response of the animal varied with its genetic strain, and located genes that controlled those responses. This proved valuable in the study of autoimmune diseases, that is, those in which an organism (including human beings) produces antibodies that attack the body’s own tissue, a kind of suicide attempt at the molecular level. For his work, Benacerraf received a 874
[1443] PORTER
YALOW [1446]
share of the 1980 Nobel Prize for physi ology and medicine. [1443] PORTER, George English chemist Born: Stainforth, Yorkshire, De cember 6, 1920 Porter studied at the University of Leeds, then served as a naval radar officer during World War II. He went on to Cambridge after the war, where he earned his Ph.D. At Cambridge, during the early 1950s, Porter was a faculty member of the de partment of physical chemistry, which was headed by Norrish [1206], Together they worked on ultra-fast chemical reac tions, which earned the two, together with Eigen [1477], shares in the 1967 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 1955 Porter took a position with the University of Sheffield and in 1964 with the Royal Institution in London. [1444] SAKHAROV, Andrey Dmitriye- vich
Soviet physicist Born: Moscow, May 21, 1921 Sakharov, the son of a physicist, him self entered the field, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1947. He worked on the hydrogen bomb, fulfilling the role in the Soviet Union that Teller [1332] had in the United States. Sakharov then went on, however, to take up the role of Oppenheimer [1280] and began to fear the consequences of nuclear weaponry. He opposed atmo spheric testing of nuclear bombs and in 1968 spoke out forcefully in favor of nu clear arms reduction. In other ways he showed himself at odds with Communist orthodoxy and began to favor greater tolerance of political dissent. He himself became the Soviet Union’s most forceful and fearless dissenter since he was rela tively immune because of his great ser vices to the nation and because of his fame abroad. He was awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize for peace, which displeased Soviet hard liners as much as Pauling’s [1236] award of that prize a dozen years before had displeased American hard-liners. The So viet Union went further, however, and taking a leaf out of Hitler’s book, re fused to allow Sakharov permission to go to Oslo to accept the prize. Since then he has been harassed in other ways and has been isolated and placed under a kind of house imprisonment in a provincial city. [1445] WILKINSON, Sir Geoffrey English chemist Born: England, July 14, 1921 Wilkinson received his Ph.D. at the University of London, and was teaching at Harvard University in 1951 when he grew interested in ferrocene. Working in dependently of E. O. Fischer [1429] he showed that ferrocene was a “sandwich compound’’ with an iron atom between two parallel carbon rings. For this he shared with Fischer the 1973 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 1955 Wilkinson returned to the University of London and assumed a faculty position there. He was knighted in 1976. [1446] YALOW, Rosalyn Sussman American biophysicist
1921
Yalow graduated from Hunter Col lege, New York City, in 1941 and re ceived her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1945. The next year she re ceived a professorial appointment at Hunter and in 1950 initiated a long-term association with the Veterans Adminis tration Hospital in the Bronx. Yalow, with her colleague Solomon Berson (who died in 1972), worked out the technique of “radioimmunoassay,” which can locate antibodies and other bi ologically active substances that are pres ent in the body in quantities so minute that they are detectable in no other way. This is done by making use of a sub 8 7 5
[1447] HOAG LAND KHORANA [1448]
stance that would combine with the bio logically active material in question, where the substance contains a radioac tive item. An excessively minute amount of combination takes place but the radio active atom can nevertheless be detected and the extent of combination thus de termined. This greatly increased the deli cacy with which numerous significant tests can be conducted for purposes of medical diagnosis and in the course of medical treatment. For her work, Yalow shared in the 1977 Nobel Prize for phys iology and medicine. [1447] HOAGLAND, Mahlon Bush American biochemist Born: Boston, Massachusetts, Oc tober 5, 1921 Hoagland obtained his medical degree at Harvard University Medical School in 1948 and is now in the department of bacteriology in that school. Hoagland is one of many who, in the late 1950s, studied how nucleic acids bring about the formation of protein molecules. Since the DNA of the chromosomes always remains in the nucleus and pro teins are formed in the cytoplasm, there must be an intermediary, and the logical candidate is another variety of nucleic acid, ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is found in both nucleus and cytoplasm. RNA was found to make up Palade’s [1380] ribosomes, on which the protein molecule is constructed. The DNA molecules of the chromo somes carry the genetic code in the par ticular pattern of nitrogenous bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thy mine, usually referred to by the abbrevi ations A, G, C, and T) that make up the molecule. Each triple combination or triplet, such as AGC, or GGT, repre sents, it is thought, a specific amino acid. This code is transferred to an RNA mol ecule (messenger-RNA), as suggested by Jacob [1438] and Monod [1347], which travels into the cytoplasm and joins a ribosome. Hoagland was able to locate a variety of small RNA molecules (transfer- RNA) in the cytoplasmic fluid, each of which had the ability to combine with one specific amino acid and no other. Each molecule of transfer-RNA had as part of its structure a characteristic trip let that joined to a complementary triplet on the messenger-RNA after the fashion first suggested by Crick [1406] and James Dewey Watson [1480], Since each transfer-RNA clicked into a specific place with a specific amino acid attached, a protein molecule was built up, amino acid by amino acid, according to the design that originally existed in the DNA molecules of the chromosome. In this fashion the chromosomes of a particular cell produce a particular bat tery of enzymes (all protein molecules, of course) that guide the chemistry of that cell and, in the long run, produce all the physical characteristics studied by geneticists. The actual identification of a particular triplet with a particular amino acid (the heart of the problem of the ge netic code) was accomplished by 1961 through the work of Nirenberg [1476]. [1448] KHORANA, Har Gobind Indian-American chemist
1922
Khorana’s education was an exercise in globe-trotting. He obtained his bache lor’s degree (1943) and his master’s (1945) at the University of Punjab in India, then went to England for his doc torate, which he gained in 1948 at the University of Liverpool. For postdoc toral work he went to Switzerland, then taught in British Columbia, Canada, and finally joined the faculty of the Univer sity of Wisconsin in 1960. He is now a naturalized American citizen. Khorana had worked early in his ca reer with Todd [1331] and later became interested in the matter of the genetic code. Nirenberg [1476] had made the first dent in that and Khorana went on from there, introducing new techniques of comparing DNA of known structure with the RNA it would produce and showing that the separate nucleotide trip lets, which were the “letters” of the code, did not overlap. 8 7 6
[1449] HOLLEY
BARNARD [1452]
Independently of each other, he and Nirenberg worked out almost the entire genetic code and the two shared, along with Holley [1449], the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology. [1449] HOLLEY, Robert William American chemist
28, 1922 Holley graduated from the University of Illinois in 1942 and went on to obtain his doctorate at Cornell University in 1947. During World War II he worked at Cornell Medical School on the project that involved the synthesis of penicillin. In 1948 he took a post with the New York State Agricultural Experiment Sta tion at Geneva, and by 1964 was a pro fessor of biochemistry at Cornell. Interested in the mechanism of the formation of proteins by nucleic acids, he set about trying to work out the struc ture of naturally occurring nucleic acids by methods similar to those of Sanger [1426] on proteins. The smallest of the natural nucleic acid molecules were the various transfer-RNA units. By 1962 he had produced highly purified prepara tions of three varieties of these and in March 1965 he had worked out the complete structure of one of them. From this he shared with Nirenberg [1476] and Khorana [1448] the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine and physiol ogy.
[1450] BOHR, Aage Niels Danish physicist Born: Copenhagen, Denmark, June 19, 1922 Bohr is the son of Niels Bohr [1101]. He worked with his father on the atomic bomb project during World War II and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Copenhagen. He gained a professorial position there in 1956 and on his father’s death in 1962 took over the directorship of the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, a position he held till 1970. In 1951 he and his associate, Mottel- son [1471], worked out the mathematical details of nuclear structure in accordance with a theory of Rainwater [1420] by which the atomic nucleus was not neces sarily spherical. The possibility of an asymmetric nucleus, depending on the motions of the protons and neutrons within it, allowed a better understanding of such matters as controlled nuclear fu sion and gained Bohr, Mottelson, and Rainwater equal shares in the 1975 Nobel Prize for physics. [1451] YANG, Chen Ning Chinese-American physicist Born: Hofei, China, September 22, 1922 In 1929 Yang’s family (his father was a mathematician) moved to Peiping, but in later years had to move again to stay out of the way of the Japanese invaders. Like Lee [1473], Yang studied at the National Southwest Associated Univer sity. He obtained his master’s degree in 1944 and in 1945 went to the United States on a scholarship. He was anxious to study under Fermi [1243] and went to Columbia University for the purpose. Finding that Fermi had moved on to the University of Chicago, Yang did so also and obtained his Ph.D. there, under Fermi, in 1948. Yang then went to the Institute of Advanced Studies and, unlike Lee, remained there, becoming a professor in 1955. He, with Lee, dis proved the necessary existence of parity conservation and shared with him the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics. In 1965, Yang became professor of physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. [1452] BARNARD, Christiaan Neeth- ling
South African surgeon Born: Beaufort, Cape Province, November 8, 1922 Barnard obtained his medical degree at the University of Capetown in 1946. His climb to world prominence came very suddenly on December 3, 1967, 8 7 7
[1453] B asov GAJDUSEK [1456]
when he performed the first successful heart transplant in history. It proved also the most enduring, for his patient lived on for a year and a half, much longer than any of the other heart recipients who benefited by repetitions of the oper ation all over the world, once Barnard had shown the way. Despite the flash of popularity that heart transplants underwent, they, like Moniz’ [1032] prefrontal lobotomy, faded away as the benefits seemed dubious and the ethical problems enormous. It seems rather likely that the future lies with artificial hearts rather than with trans planted ones. [1453] BASOV, Nikolai Gennadievich Soviet physicist Born: Leningrad, December 14, 1922
Basov graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute in 1950 and in 1956 obtained his doctorate. He works at the Lebedev Institute, where he has been deputy director since 1958. He and Prokhorov [1409], for their work on the theoretical basis of the maser, shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for physics with Townes [1400]. [1454] FITCH, Val Logsden American physicist
March 10, 1923 Fitch planned a chemical career at first, but while in the army during World War II he was sent to Los Alamos to work on the nuclear bomb project, and that focused his interest on physics. After the war he went to McGill Univer sity, graduating in 1948, and then took his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1954. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in that year and became a professor of physics in 1960. He collaborated with Cronin [1497] in the study of the decay of neutral K- mesons that demonstrated the violation of CP symmetry and, as a result, he and Cronin shared the 1980 Nobel Prize for physics. [1455] FRANKLIN, Kenneth Linn American astronomer
March 25, 1923 Franklin obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California in Berkeley in 1953. He has been with the Hayden Planetarium in New York since 1956. He is best known for his discovery, in early 1955, that the planet Jupiter is a radio wave source. Since then Jupiter probes have indeed shown that surround ing Jupiter is an immense magnetic field and that from it and from Jupiter’s tur bulent atmosphere radio-wave radiation can and does originate. [1456] GAJDUSEK, Daniel Carleton American physician Bom: Yonkers, New York, Sep tember 9, 1923 Gajdusek’s parents were Hungarian immigrants. He graduated from the Uni versity of Rochester summa cum laude in 1943 and earned his M.D. from Har vard University in 1946. After postdoc torate work at California Institute of Technology, he became a globe-trotter, spending time in Teheran, Iran, and in Australia. In Australia, in 1955, he learned of a tribe in New Guinea that suffered from a usually fatal disease called kuru that seemed peculiar to them. Upon investi gation, he decided it might be an infec tious neurological disease that tribesmen caught because there was a ritualistic eating of human brains as part of the fu neral rites for those who died. One puzzling fact was that the infec tion did not show up, sometimes, for years. Gajdusek implanted filtered brain material from kuru victims into healthy chimpanzees and found that symptoms did not appear for months. The conclu sion was finally reached that kuru was caused by a slow-acting virus, and simi 8 7 8
[1457] PONNAMPERUMA GUTLLEMIN [1460]
lar viruses may be responsible for other diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. In short, a new classification of infectious disease was uncovered and for his work Gajdusek re ceived a share in the 1976 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1457] PONNAMPERUMA, Cyril (pon- am-per-u'ma) Sri Lankese-American biochemist Born: Galle, Sri Lanka, October 16, 1923 Educated first in India, then in En gland, Ponnamperuma went to the United States in 1959 and finally earned his Ph.D. at the University of California in 1962. He became an American citizen in 1966. He is one of the most ardent investi gators into the mechanisms of the pri mordial origin of life after the fashion of S. L. Miller [1490], He has concentrated on producing compounds related to the nucleic acids, and has shown that nu cleotides and dinucleotides can be formed by random processes alone. He has also demonstrated the formation of ATP, a related compound essential to the han dling of energy within the cell. Once ATP is formed through the ultimate agency of solar energy, it could be used as the immediate source of energy by the developing living molecules. [1458] ANDERSON, Philip Warren American physicist
cember 13, 1923 Anderson received his Ph.D. at Har vard University in 1949, after having Van Vleck [1219] as one of his teachers. As a visiting professor in Cambridge University, he worked with Mott [1294] on the properties of semiconductors. He also worked on superconductivity, ex tending the theories of Bardeen [1334] to include the effects introduced by the presence of impurities in superconduct ing materials. For his work, he shared the 1977 Nobel Prize for physics with Van Vleck and Mott. [1459] DYSON, Freeman John English-American physicist
cember 15, 1923 Dyson graduated from Cambridge University in 1945, went to the United States in 1951, and became an Ameri can citizen in 1957. He taught first at Cornell University and then in 1953 moved on to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. He did important work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics but he is best known for his imaginative specula tions on the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations. He points out, for instance, that an advanced civilization might build absorbing structures in a globular sphere about a star to catch all its radiation, making use of it and then discarding it as degraded heat into interstellar space. For that reason, an ordinary star that dimmed in the visible light range and be came an infrared star in a very brief pe riod on the astronomic scale would surely indicate the presence of an ad vanced civilization in its planetary sys tem.
[1460] GUILLEMIN, Roger (geel-manO French-American physiologist Born: Dijon, France, January 11, 1924
Guillemin obtained his M.D. at Lyon in 1949 and his Ph.D. in physiology at Montreal in 1953. In that year he went to the United States to initiate a long connection with Baylor College of Med icine in Houston, Texas, and he became an American citizen in 1963. Guillemin, with his co-worker Schally [1474], worked on the problem of whether the pituitary gland, which gov erns the activity of many other glands, is itself controlled by substances produced by the hypothalamus, a section of the brain.
When Schally left Baylor in 1962, 879
[1461] CORMACK
HEWISH [1463]
both kept on working on the problem, and in 1968 and 1969 they succeeded and isolated the pituitary-affecting sub stance. It turned out to be a fairly simple molecule present in excessively small quantities in the body itself. It can be used in the treatment of pituitary disor ders.
As a result, Guillemin and Schally shared the 1977 Nobel Prize for physiol ogy and medicine with Yalow [1446], [1461] CORMACK, Allan MacLeod South African-American physicist
Africa, February 23, 1924 Cormack intended to be an astrono mer at first and obtained his master’s de gree at the University of Capetown in 1945 with that end in view. He went to Cambridge University for two more years of study and then returned to Capetown, where he found himself in volved with medical physics. There he was struck by the inade quacy of ordinary X-ray pictures of an essentially globular object such as the skull. A two-dimension photograph is obtained with no three-dimensional reso lution. For that a number of different photographs from different angles must be taken and even then the results are meager. He devised a “computerized axial to mography (CAT) scanner” in which short pulses of radiation are sent out as the emitter rotates about the patient’s head (or other part of the body). These are received by electronic detectors, rather than photographic plates, which also rotate. The results are analyzed by computer to give a three-dimensional picture of the object being studied. The CAT scanner has greatly increased the accuracy of diagnosis of disorders of the brain and other organs since it was intro duced in 1973, its only disadvantage being the great expense of producing and using the instrument. The instrument was designed and worked out after Cormack had gone to the United States in 1956 (where he eventually joined the physics faculty at Tufts University in Massachusetts, and where he became an American citizen in 1966).
For his work on the CAT scanner, Cormack received a share of the 1979 Nobel Prize for physiology and medi cine.
[1462] HEEZEN, Bruce Charles American oceanographer and ge ologist
1924
Died: near Reykjanes, Iceland, June 21, 1977 Having graduated from the State Uni versity of Iowa in 1948, Heezen went on to Columbia University where he earned his Ph.D. in 1957. He led the more-or- less glamorous life of an oceanographer, sailing across the oceans of the world in an attempt to learn more about them and about the land that lies beneath them. In collaboration with Ewing [1303], he produced a picture of a rugged sea-floor as mountainous as the dry land, or more so. He discovered the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a gigantic mountain chain that girdles the world, underlying the various oceans. The best-known portion is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which curves down the length of the Atlantic. [1463] HEWISH, Antony English astronomer Born: Fowey, Cornwall, May 11, 1924
Hewish was educated at Cambridge University and after World War II re turned there to work with Ryle [1428], In 1967 Hewish made use of 2,048 separate radio-receiving devices spread out over an area of 18,000 square me ters, which were designed to catch rapid changes in radio-emission intensities on the part of stellar radio sources. In July 1967 observations began and within a month a young graduate stu dent, Jocelyn Bell, noted bursts of radio wave radiation from a place midway be 880
[1464] ESAKI
LEDERBERG [1466]
tween the stars Vega and Altair—bursts at much smaller intervals and much more regular than had been expected. Hewish investigated matters, reported the details in February 1968, and called it a “pulsating star,” or “pulsar” for short. He had checked other observa tions carried through earlier and had by then located three other pulsars. Soon they were being discovered by the dozens. Gold [1437] suggested they were rap idly rotating neutron stars not more than 8 kilometers across or so, but as massive as the sun, and that, if so, the rotation should be slowing and the pulses coming at lengthening intervals at a predicted rate. Observations showed Gold to be correct. For the discovery, Hewish shared with Ryle the 1974 Nobel Prize for physics. [1464] ESAKI, Leo Japanese physicist
Esaki, an architect’s son, attended the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1947. It had been his hope to do research in nuclear physics, but Japan at the time was just rising out of the devastation it had brought upon itself in World War II, and it lacked the necessary particle ac celerators that, beginning with the work of Lawrence [1241], had become essen tial to the field. By default, Esaki entered the field of solid-state physics which had suddenly sprung to new life, thanks to the work of Shockley [1348]. Working with tiny crys tal rectifiers (semiconductor diodes) he found that there were occasions when the resistance decreased with current in tensity, instead of increasing as was ex pected. This was caused by a “tunnel effect,” an ability on the part of electrons to penetrate barriers that were perhaps a hundred atoms thick. The barrier-cross ing electrons can be put to use for switching purposes and Esaki tunnel diodes were ultra-small and ultra-fast. This discovery, made in 1957, was ad vanced by Esaki in his Ph.D. thesis, a degree he earned at Tokyo University in 1959. In that year, Esaki went to the United States and took a position with International Business Machines. For his discovery, he received a share of the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics. [1465] NE’EMAN, Yuval Israeli physicist Born: Tel-Aviv, May 14, 1925 Ne’eman graduated from the Israel In stitute of Technology in 1945 and there after was caught up in the postwar Jew ish rebellion against British forces in Pal estine. He eventually rose to the rank of colonel in the Israeli army. After Israel won its independence, Ne’eman eventually found time to com plete his education. He went on to study in France and finally to earn a Ph.D. at the University of London in 1962 (he was at that time serving as military atta ché to the Israeli Embassy in that city). It was in 1961, while still in London, that, almost simultaneously with Gell Mann [1487] (and independently), he worked out a method of grouping baryons in such a way as to show that they fell, quite logically, into families. Since 1963 Ne’eman has been head of the physics department at Tel-Aviv Uni versity. [1466] LEDERBERG, Joshua American geneticist
May 23, 1925 Lederberg graduated from Columbia College in 1944 and went on to do post graduate work at Yale University during Tatum’s [1346] three years on the fac ulty there. Lederberg obtained his Ph.D. in 1947. He, with Tatum, showed that different strains of bacteria could be crossed in such a way as to make the genetic mate rial intermingle. In short, bacteria were capable of sexual reproduction. This greatly expanded the type of genetic work that could be performed with bac teria and earned for Lederberg a share 881
[1467] BLUMBERG
BERG [1470]
of the 1958 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. In 1952 Lederberg showed that bac teriophage virus particles could transfer genetic material from bacterium to bac terium. This phenomenon he named transduction. He taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1947 to 1954, then accepted a post as professor of genetics at Stanford University. [1467] BLUMBERG, Baruch Samuel American physician Born: New York, New York, July 28, 1925 Blumberg received his M.D. from Co lumbia University in 1951, then went on to obtain a Ph.D. at Oxford University in 1957. Later he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He has spent time working in various far-flung portions of the world and grew interested in the manner in which certain disorders seemed to be confined more or less to certain ethnic groups. Studying these special disorders, he discovered a protein in the blood of Australian Ab origines that resembled one found in those suffering from hepatitis. He recog nized the protein as part of a virus that caused hepatitis infection. He developed a method for detecting the protein and this gave biochemists a way of checking blood being used for transfusion and cutting down the incidence of hepatitis infection caused by the procedure. For this discovery, Blumberg shared with Gajdusek [1456] the 1976 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1468] SALAM, Abdus Pakistani-British physicist Bom: Jhang Maghiana, Pakistan (then part of India), January 29, 1926 Salam was educated at the Govern ment College, Lahore, Pakistan, then went to England where he obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1952. Independently of Glashow [1500] and Weinberg [1502], he worked on the theory of weak interactions and on the possibility of producing a mathematical treatment that would describe both them and the electromagnetic interac tions. As a result, Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics with Glashow and Weinberg. [1469] SANDAGE, Allan Rex American astronomer Born: Iowa City, Iowa, June 18, 1926
Sandage graduated from the Univer sity of Illinois in 1948 and obtained his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Tech nology in 1953. He became a member of Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar ob servatories in 1952. His astrophysical re searches have taken him into the far reaches of space and time. Thus, his investigations of the spectral characteristics of certain globular clus ters have led him to maintain that they, and therefore the universe generally, must be no less than 25 billion years old. His studies of very distant objects have caused him to speculate that the universe does not merely expand, but expands and contracts over and over again with a period of perhaps 80 billion years. Perhaps his most dramatic discovery came in 1963 in connection with galaxy M-82, which was a suspicious object be cause it was a strong radio source. San dage photographed it through the 200-inch telescope, using a special filter that would let through light associated with hot hydrogen. The photograph showed the galaxy to be undergoing an enormous explosion in its core. Jets of hydrogen up to a thou sand light-years long were streaming out ward in all directions and, apparently, the explosion would have had to be con tinuing for 1.5 million years. This was a dramatic demonstration in favor of the theoretical work of Ambartzumian [1338].
[1470] BERG, Paul American biochemist Born: New York, New York, June 30, 1926 882
[1471] MOTTELSON GLASER [1472]
Berg obtained his Ph.D. from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1952. After two years of postdoctorate work in Copenha gen, he joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis in 1955 and in 1959 moved on to Stanford University. Berg studied methods for cutting the nucleic acid molecules of genes in specific places according to the tech niques of Nathans [1482] and Smith [1496] and then of recombining them in different fashion. This initiated the tech nique of recombinant DNA (DNA standing for “deoxyribonucleic acid”). It meant that new genes and, therefore, new viruses, or new bacteria would be formed in place of the old—new organ isms with new properties. It meant that microorganisms might be devised that would synthesize compounds of use to man—such as insulin—or with proper ties that would be useful—such as being able to live on oil waste, or to concen trate certain minerals from the sea. It also meant the possibility that mi croorganisms with new pathogenic abili ties might be formed and that animals or humans would be struck with deadly dis ease which they had no natural immuni ties to. Berg and others in the field suggested in 1975 that research in re combinant DNA be carefully regulated. Since then, however, the dangers have been found to be exaggerated and some relaxation of controls has taken place. For his work, Berg won half the 1980 Nobel Prize for chemistry, the other half being shared by Sanger [1426] and Gil bert [1498]. [1471] MOTTELSON, Ben Roy American-Danish physicist Born: Chicago, Illinois, July 9, 1926
Mottelson obtained his Ph.D. at Har vard University and obtained a fellow ship to the Bohr Institute. There he met Aage Bohr [1450] and a strong profes sional relationship was built up. Mottel son eventually became a Danish citizen and worked with Bohr on the shape of the atomic nucleus, for which he and Bohr, along with Rainwater [1420], re ceived shares of the 1975 Nobel Prize for physics. [1472] GLASER, Donald Arthur American physicist
ber 21, 1926 Glaser graduated from the Case Insti tute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland in 1946 and went on to the California Insti tute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1949. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in that year, and moved on to the University of Cali fornia in 1959. While at the University of Michigan, Glaser turned his attention to the Wilson [979] cloud chamber. Though useful to nuclear physicists, it did have its flaws, despite the improvements introduced by a generation and a half of physicists. It contained a gas and this is a rarefied form of matter so that any particle pass ing through it could only form a rela tively small number of ions. For that reason, rare or short-lived nuclear events could be missed. It occurred to Glaser that the situation ought to be reversed. Instead of allowing supercooled vapor to condense about ions, forming drops of liquid in an ocean of gas, as was true in the cloud chamber, one ought to allow superheated liquid to boil about ions, forming drops of gas in an ocean of liquid. (The story goes that he had this revelation while watching bubbles form in a glass of beer.) In 1952 Glaser constructed his first “bubble chamber,” only a few inches in diameter. He used ether as his liquid, but greater efficiency came with lower temperatures and soon he switched to liquid hydrogen. Within a decade, huge bubble chambers, six feet in diameter and containing 150 gallons of liquid hy drogen, were in operation. Bubble chambers have indeed proved to be far more sensitive than cloud chambers. They are particularly useful for the high-energy particles which, striking more targets per unit distance in 883
[1473] LEE
LEE [1473]
liquid than in gas, are more quickly slowed, and form shorter and more highly curved paths that can be studied in their entirety. In 1960 Glaser was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for this invention and promptly announced that he was shifting his focus of interest from nuclear physics to molecular biol ogy. [1473] LEE, Tsung-Dao Chinese-American physicist Born: Shanghai, China, Novem ber 24, 1926 Lee studied at the National Southwest Associated University in K’un-ming, China, and in 1946, before receiving his degree, was taken to the United States by a teacher. The University of Chicago would permit an undergraduate to work toward a Ph.D. and no other university would. Lee therefore attended the Uni versity of Chicago and, working under Teller [1332], obtained his Ph.D. in 1950. While at the University, he met his countryman Yang [1451], whom he had known briefly in K’un-ming. Lee went on to work at the University of Califor nia. He and Yang met again at the Insti tute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1951; and though Lee went on to Columbia University in 1953, they maintained contact and held weekly meetings. Together they studied the strange case of the K-mesons (discovered in the early 1950s and included among the “strange particles” with which Gell-Mann [1487] worked), which seemed to break down in two different ways. The difference was such that it was thought two different K- mesons were involved, and yet, except for the breakdown, the K-mesons seemed identical. It had been thought, ever since Wigner [1260] worked out the mathematics for it in 1927, that something called conser vation of parity existed. This was equiv alent to saying that the universe made no distinction between right and left. If you stepped into a looking-glass house in which left and right were interchanged, the laws of nature would remain un changed. You would have no way of de tecting which was reality and which was looking glass. The double breakdown of the K- meson involved this. It was as though one K-meson broke down in a real way, the other in a looking-glass way. If it was the same particle breaking down ei ther way then the conservation of parity did not hold and nature would be able to distinguish right from left. It finally occurred to Lee and Yang that perhaps there was only one K- meson and perhaps the conservation of parity really didn’t hold. If there was a difference between left and right and na ture could tell reality from looking glass, then it would be possible to explain the double breakdown. At least perhaps it was so for the special “weak interac tions” in which strange particles and neutrinos were involved. Lee and Yang reached this conclusion in 1956 and within months a friend of theirs (also of Chinese birth) who was an experimental physicist—Lee and Yang were theoreticians—designed and carried through an experiment which showed that, indeed, parity was not con served in weak interactions. This broke like a bomb on the world of nuclear physics and men like Pauli [1228], who in his time had proposed, with equal daring, the neutrino, now found it difficult to accept the new devel opment. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter was quickly and amply confirmed and Lee and Yang shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics. They were the first scientists of Chinese birth to win a Nobel Prize. The breakdown of parity conservation has made possible new and better views of the neutrino, for instance. These were advanced by Lee and Yang and also, in dependently, by Landau [1333], In 1960 Lee returned to the Institute for Advanced Studies. In 1963 Lee moved back to Columbia to assume the first Enrico Fermi profes sorship in physics there.
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