Biographical encyclopedia
Download 17.33 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
|
884 [1474] SCHALLY
EIGEN [1477]
[1474] SCHALLY, Andrew Victor Polish-American biochemist Born: Vilna, Poland (now Vil nius, Lithuanian SSR), Novem ber 30, 1926 Schally’s family fled Poland at the time of the German invasion in 1939, and Schally eventually studied at the University of London, graduating in 1949. He went on to Canada, obtaining his Ph.D. in biochemistry at McGill Uni versity in 1957, in which year he went to the United States, joining Guillemin [1460] at the Baylor College of Medicine and working with him on the task of finding the chemical controls of the pitu itary gland and locating additional pitu itary hormones. In 1962 he moved on to the Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans but continued the work. Success meant a share with Guillemin and Yalow [1446] in the 1977 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1475] O’NEILL, Gerard Kitchen American physicist
ruary 6, 1927 O’Neill graduated from Swarthmore College in 1950 and obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1954. In that year he joined the faculty of Princeton University, where he has remained since. He has worked with particle physics for the most part and has developed storage rings designed to raise two groups of particles to high energies, then smash them into a head-on collision for still higher energies. He is best known, however, for having devised and publicized, in the 1970s, carefully drawn-up plans for the design and establishment of space structures, particularly of space settlements for the housing of tens of thousands of individ uals in an Earth-like environment. [1476] NIRENBERG, Marshall Warren American biochemist Born: New York, New York, April 10, 1927 Nirenberg did his undergraduate work at the University of Florida, graduating in 1948, then went on to the University of Michigan where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1957. After that, he went to the Na tional Institutes of Health. As the 1960s opened, the outstanding problem in biochemistry was that of the genetic code. Crick [1406] and others had worked out the structure of DNA and the broad mechanism of the produc tion of proteins was known, too. Each combination of three nucleotides along the DNA chain corresponded to a partic ular amino acid, which was put into place in a protein chain by means of the work of messenger-RNA, transfer-RNA, and ribosomes, as the research of Hoag- land [1447] had shown. Now the ques tion was: Which DNA triplet corre sponded to which amino acid? Nirenberg broke through in 1961. He made use of a synthetic RNA to serve in the role of messenger-RNA. The syn thetic RNA, formed according to the method of Ochoa [1293], consisted of but a single nucleotide, uridylic acid, so that its structure was . . . UUUUUU . . . The only possible nucleotide triplet in it was UUU and when it formed a protein containing the amino acid, phe nylalanine, only, it was clear the UUU corresponded to phenylalanine and the first item in the “dictionary” was worked out. Others joined the hunt at once and new correlations between triplets and amino acids were worked out. Before the de cade was over the dictionary was com plete. In 1968 Nirenberg shared the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology with Khorana [1448] and Holley [1449] as a result. [1477] EIGEN, Manfred German physicist
1927
Eigen, the son of a musician (and no mean musician himself), studied at the University of Gottingen. He had barely reached eighteen on the last day of 885
[1478] PARKER
WATSON [1480]
World War II, but in its last desperate days, Germany was drafting children and Eigen served briefly with an an tiaircraft gun crew. He then returned to Gottingen where he earned his doctorate in 1951. In 1953 he joined the Max Planck In stitute for Physical Chemistry, where he eventually became director. Like Norrish [1206] and Porter [1443], he studied ultra-short chemical reactions by very briefly disturbing equi libria. Where the former used light flashes impinging on gaseous systems, Eigen used brief changes in temperature, pressure, or electrical fields on liquid systems. In consequence, Eigen shared, with the other two, the 1967 Nobel Prize in chemistry. [1478] PARKER, Eugene Newman American physicist Born: Houghton, Michigan, June 10, 1927 Parker gained his Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology in 1951. He joined the faculty of the University of Utah in 1951 and moved on to the Uni versity of Chicago in 1955. He worked with the movement of high-energy particles in magnetic fields, particularly in the environment of space, and predicted that charged particles would be emitted by the sun in all direc tions, following the lines of force of its magnetic field. This prediction, made in 1959, was verified by the Mariner 2 Venus probe in 1962. The phenomenon, now known as the “solar wind,” ac counts for the manner in which comets’ tails point away from the sun, for the ex istence of charged particles in the mag netic fields of Earth and Jupiter, for cer tain properties of the moon’s surface, and so on. [1479] MAIMAN, Theodore Harold American physicist
July 11, 1927 Maiman, the son of an electrical engi neer, worked his way through college by repairing electrical appliances. He gradu ated from the University of Colorado in 1949, then did graduate work at Stan ford where he earned his Ph.D. in 1955. Working at the Hughes Research Lab oratories in Miami, Florida, he grew in terested in Townes’s [1400] maser. Townes had predicted that the maser principle, which was originally designed for microwave (very short radio waves) emission, could, under proper circum stances, be applied to waves even as short as those of visible light. Maiman set himself the task of accom plishing this, making use of the three- level principle worked out by Bloember- gen [1436], He designed a ruby cylinder with its ends carefully polished’flat and parallel, and covered with silver coatings. Energy was fed into it from a flash lamp and in May 1960 it emitted its first flash of light. The light so emitted was monochro matic (of a single wavelength) and coher ent (all the waves in a single direction). Such coherent light could form a beam that would traverse thousands of miles without spreading so far as to become useless, and it could be concentrated into so small a spot as to deliver energy with a temperature equivalent to or much greater than that of the surface of the sun. This was an example of “light am plification by stimulated emission of radiation”; or, to use its acronym, it was the first “laser.” [1480] WATSON, James Dewey American biochemist
1928
Watson, a child prodigy and radio “quiz kid,” entered the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen and gradu ated in 1947. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1950 at the University of Indiana. He had intended to work in ornithology, but the presence of Muller [1145] at the school turned his attention toward bio chemistry and genetic problems. 8 8 6
[1481] HAWKINS
MÖSSBAUER [1483]
After a year at the University of Co penhagen, allowing him to work on the effects of radiation on viruses, he changed his mind and interests. He went to Cambridge University in 1951 to work on what he considered more funda mental problems. His grant was revoked but he forged ahead anyhow. With Crick [1406] he labored on the structure of DNA, and it was Watson who had the brainstorm of constructing a model with the bases inside and back bone outside, thus making a double helix possible. This fit perfectly with the physi cal data of Wilkins [1413] and the chem ical data of Chargaff [1291]. After his return to the United States, Watson spent two years at the California Insti tute of Technology, then joined the fac ulty of Harvard University in 1955. He shared with Crick and Wilkins the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. In 1968 Watson published a sprightly, informal account of his DNA research entitled The Double Helix. It scored quite a success and made his name more famous with the general public than the research itself and the Nobel Prize had succeeded in doing. In that year, he be came head of the Laboratory of Quanti tative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. [1481] HAWKINS, Gerald Stanley English-American astronomer Born: Norfolk, England, April 20, 1928
Hawkins received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1952. He went to the United States in 1954 and was naturalized in 1964, working both at Harvard and Boston universities in those years.
He is best known for his book Stone henge Decoded, published in 1965, in which he suggested that Stonehenge per formed the function of a prehistoric ob servatory, keeping track of the move ments of the sun and moon, making it possible to sight and predict solstices and lunar eclipses. While Hawkins’ views did not go unchallenged, his work initiated a sharp increase in interest in the astro nomical observations of prehistoric peo ples. [1482] NATHANS, Daniel American microbiologist Born: Wilmington, Delaware, Oc tober 30, 1928 Nathans received his M.D. from Washington University in 1954 and has been on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University since 1962. He, in collabo ration with H. O. Smith [1496], also of Johns Hopkins, studied enzymes that were capable of breaking up the DNA molecule in specific sites. This made it possible to work with known fractions of the nucleic acid that were still large enough to contain genetic information. This work, carried through in 1971, led eventually to recombinant-DNA work in which nucleic acids could be taken apart and put together again in other fashions. As a result, Nathans and Smith shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1483] MOSSBAUER, Rudolf Ludwig (murss'bow-er) German physicist
31, 1929 Mossbauer grew up and was educated in Munich, receiving his degrees at the Institute of Technology, including the Ph.D. in 1958. In the same year, he an nounced what is now known as the Mossbauer effect. Under ordinary conditions, atoms re coil as they emit gamma rays, and the energy of the gamma ray and therefore its wavelength depend in part on the amount of recoil. The amount of recoil of a light object like an atom is large and varies to a considerable degree from atom to atom. Gamma rays are therefore emitted with a considerable spread in en ergy and wavelength. Under particular conditions investi gated by Mossbauer, however, a crystal as a whole may take up the recoil. The recoil of this relatively massive body is 887
[1483] MÖSSBAUER ARBER [1485]
then vanishingly slight and virtually does not affect the energy of the gamma rays, which are consequently emitted with an exceedingly narrow spread of wave lengths. This is the Mossbauer effect. Gamma rays of just the wavelength emitted by the atoms of such a crystal will be strongly absorbed by the atoms of another crystal of the same type. If the wavelength alters even slightly, ab sorption drops considerably. This proved useful almost at once in connection with the theory of general relativity propounded by Einstein [1064] nearly half a century earlier. The predic tions of general relativity had been checked in only three ways (none others being available). There was the advance of Mercury’s perihelion, first studied in detail by Leverrier [564]; there was the bending of light measured by Eddington [1085] at the eclipse of 1919; and there was the red shift of the light of a white dwarf star, as measured by W. S. Adams [1045], All these tests were astronomical in nature and had to be taken as they were found. Now, making use of the sharply defined gamma rays of the Mossbauer effect, it could be possible for the first time to test the theory of general relativ ity in the laboratory under conditions that could be varied to suit the experi menter. According to Einstein’s theory the wavelength of electromagnetic radia tion should increase as a gravitational field was intensified. This should include gamma rays as well as visible light. The gravitational field was intensified (though only slightly) in the basement of a building as compared with the roof, since the basement was closer to the cen ter of the earth, and that is all that is required. If a beam of gamma rays is shot downward from roof to basement, its wavelength increases by a vanishingly small quantity, to be sure, but sufficient to produce a measurable drop in absorp tion by the crystal exposed to them. In 1960 the experiment was performed first in England then in the United States. The loss of absorption indicated a lengthening of wavelength with increase in gravitational intensity just like that predicted by relativity. Einstein’s theory was once more verified and more con vincingly than ever before. In 1961 Mossbauer received the Nobel Prize in physics, sharing it with Hof- stadter [1395]. At the time the prize was awarded, Mossbauer was working at the California Institute of Technology, but in 1964 he returned to Munich to take up a post as professor of physics at the Technische Hochschule. [1484] GIAEVER, Ivar Norwegian-American physicist
1929
Giaever was trained as an electrical engineer in Trondheim and worked as a patent examiner for the Norwegian gov ernment. In 1954 he emigrated to Can ada, took a job with the General Electric Company, was transferred to Schenec tady, New York, and earned his Ph.D. in 1964 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti tute. He became an American citizen in 1963.
He worked on Esaki’s [1464] tunneling effect, introducing a new factor by mak ing use of a superconducting metal as well as a normal one. This led not only to a better understanding of tunneling but to some interesting points about su perconductivity. As a result, Giaever shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics with Esaki and Josephson [1509]. [1485] ARBER, Werner Swiss microbiologist
1929
Arber was educated at the Swiss Fed eral Institute of Technology in Zürich, the University of Geneva, and the Uni versity of Southern California. From 1960 to 1970 he was on the faculty of the University of Geneva and then moved to the University of Basel, where he is professor of microbiology. Arber was interested in the phenome non noted by Luria [1377] to the effect that bacteriophages not only induce mu tations in the bacterial cells they infest 8 8 8
[I48 6 ] EDELMAN
GELL-MANN [1487]
but undergo mutations themselves. Arber collected evidence to show that bacterial cells could defend themselves against bacteriophage onslaughts through the presence of a “restriction enzyme” that restricted the growth of bacteriophages by splitting the DNA of the bac teriophage and thus rendering it largely or entirely inactive. By 1968 Arber had gathered enough information about the restriction en zymes to be able to show that a particu lar enzyme of this sort split only those DNA molecules that contain a certain sequence of nucleotides characteristic of bacteriophages. It was this work, which was extended by Nathans [1482] and Smith [1496], that led on to recom- binant-DNA techniques of men such as Berg [1470]. Arber, Nathans, and Smith shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1486] EDELMAN, Gerald Maurice American biochemist
July 1, 1929 Edelman obtained his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1954 and his Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in 1960. He has been associated with Rockefeller University since. His work has centered upon the elucidation of the chemical structure of antibodies and for this he received a share of the 1972 Nobel Prize for physiology and medi cine.
[1487] GELL-MANN, Murray (gell'- mann)
American physicist Born: New York, New York, September 15, 1929 Gell-Mann, the son of an Austrian im migrant, entered Yale University in 1944 on his fifteenth birthday. After graduat ing in 1948 he went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained his Ph.D. in 1951. He spent some time at the Institute for Advanced Research and then in 1952 went to the University of Chicago, where he worked under Fermi [1243].
In 1955 Gell-Mann joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology and in 1956 (when not yet twenty- seven) was made a full professor. By now he had plunged into the world of subatomic particles, which in the 1950s had become a jungle. After Chad wick [1150] had discovered the neutron and Heisenberg [1245] had placed it in the atomic nucleus, the question arose as to what held protons and neutrons to gether. Yukawa [1323] solved that with his meson theory, but too many mesons were discovered. Powell’s [1274] pi-me son does the job envisioned by Yukawa, but Anderson’s [1292] mu-meson was, and has remained, a mystery. In addi tion, the 1950s saw the discovery of heavier mesons still, the K-mesons, which were about half the mass of a proton. And particles even heavier than the protons were discovered, the various hyperons, in prolific quantities. The K-mesons and the hyperons were created by strong interactions and it was thought that they should break down by strong interactions, too. Instead they broke down by weak interactions. The difference lies in this, that although a weak interaction takes place in a fraction of a billionth of a second, that time is, nevertheless, a billion or more times longer than the time required for a strong interaction. In other words a K- meson may endure a trillionth of a sec ond before breaking down, instead of en during a trillionth of a trillionth of a sec ond. To a nuclear physicist, this seemed strange and so K-mesons and hyperons came to be called “strange particles.” Gell-Mann addressed himself to the problem of determining the reason for the strangeness and in 1953 he (and a Japanese physicist, independently) pub lished his results. He began with the theory of charge in dependence. By this view the proton and neutron differ only in the presence of a positive charge on the former and no charge on the latter. If that was ignored the two particles would be indistin guishable. Other particles could similarly 889
[1487] GELL-MANN COOPER [1489]
be grouped into clusters of two or three, differing among themselves only in the nature of the electrical charge and noth ing more. There were reasons for giving each group a charge center, representing a kind of average charge. For instance, the proton has a charge of +1, and the neutron a charge of 0; their charge cen ter is therefore +Yi. For the K-mesons and the hyperons, the actual charge center is not where ex pected; it is displaced. A quantity equal to twice the displacement was named by Gell-Mann the “strangeness number.” For neutrons, protons, and pi-mesons, the strangeness number is 0. For the var ious strange particles, it is never 0. For some, it is +1, for some —1, and for some —2. This strangeness number is conserved; that is, in any particle interaction, the total strangeness number of the particles before the interaction and the total num ber of those after the interaction were the same. This conservation could be used to explain the unexpected long life of the strange particles. This removed one area of puzzlement, or at least lessened it. Another, in the same area of weak interactions, was re moved, or at least lessened, by the aboli tion of parity conservation by Lee [1473] and Yang [1451], Gell-Mann went on in 1961 to group the many mesons, nucleons, and hy perons (all together named the “had rons”) according to certain fixed rules which he whimsically called the “Eight Fold Way,” with reference to certain Buddhist teachings. Certain particles, of peculiar properties, would be included in such groups and Gell-Mann predicted their existence as once Mendeleev [705] predicted the existence of new elements under similar circumstances. One, in par ticular, Gell-Mann called an “omega minus” particle and this was indeed de tected in 1964. To account for his particle families, Gell-Mann postulates unusual particles carrying fractional electric charges (an unheard-of situation till then). He calls them “quarks” from a phrase in Fin
890
whimsy). Quarks are now considered fundamental particles and, in a number of varieties, are in the forefront of the cutting edge of nuclear physics. [1488] SCHMIDT, Maarten Dutch-American astronomer Born: Groningen, Netherlands, December 28, 1929 Schmidt obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Leiden in 1956, later emi grated to the United States. He es tablished himself at the California Insti tute of Technology and at the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar obser vatories in 1959. In the early 1960s he grew interested in certain radio sources that Sandage [1469] had managed to pinpoint to what looked like individual stars. The spectra of these radio-emitting stars were com pletely strange. Not only Sandage but Greenstein [1345] too tried to make sense of them and failed. Then in 1963 it suddenly occurred to Schmidt that the unfamiliarity of the spectra was the result of an enormous red shift and that the lines were familiar ones that ought to be in the ultraviolet section of the spectrum. This turned out to be correct and the enormous red shift indicated the objects to be very distant, a billion light-years away and more. In that case, they could not be stars but must be objects far more luminous than ordinary galaxies. They were called “quasi-stellar objects”; that is, objects with a star-like appearance; and the phrase was quickly abbreviated to “qua sars.” These very distant, very luminous ob jects pose enormous problems for astron omers since there is no easy way of ac counting for their nature. [1489] COOPER, Leon N. American physicist
February 28, 1930 Cooper obtained his Ph.D. at Colum bia University in 1954, and from 1958 [1490] MILLER
MILLER [1490]
has been on the faculty of Brown Uni versity. He collaborated with Bardeen [1334] and Schrieffer [1495] on the de velopment of the currently accepted theory of superconductivity. Part of that theory involves the action of pairs of electrons, which are termed “Cooper electron pairs” in Cooper’s honor. Coo per shared with the other two the 1972 Nobel Prize for physics. [1490] MILLER, Stanley Lloyd American chemist Born: Oakland, California, March 7, 1930 Miller obtained his Ph.D. at the Uni versity of Chicago in 1954. He worked under Urey [1164], whose attention had turned toward geochemistry, toward the formation of the planets, and toward the deduction of the primordial conditions of the just formed earth. It seemed natural to wonder how life first formed. For nearly a century it had been as sumed that Pasteur [642] had laid to rest forever the bogey of “spontaneous gen eration,” but it had to be remembered that Pasteur had only disproved sponta neous generation under the specialized conditions of his experiment. He kept sterile solutions as long as four years without life developing, but what if he kept it a billion years? And instead of a flask full, what if he had an ocean full of solution? And instead of the air of our atmosphere bathing the solution what if it was the air of a completely different primordial atmosphere? After all, from the mere fact that we are here, we are forced to assume that once upon a time at least one case of spontaneous generation took place (as suming, further, that one eliminates su pernatural creation from consideration). It was Miller’s task to try to duplicate, in a very small way, the conditions of the primordial earth. Urey thought that the primordial atmosphere on earth was something like Jupiter’s today (accord ing to the findings of Wildt [1290]); that is, consisting mainly of hydrogen, with strong admixtures of ammonia and methane. Ammonia would dissolve readily in the primordial ocean and small quantities of methane and ammonia would find their way there, too. The in teraction of water, hydrogen, methane and ammonia to form more complicated compounds would require an input of energy, but that was there in the form of solar ultraviolet at the very least. Later on, the earth would lose the hy drogen it was not massive enough to hold. At a later stage in planetary devel opment, photosynthetic reactions would fill the atmosphere with free oxygen that would form ozone in the upper layers and cut off most of the ultraviolet. At the time that life was first forming, how ever, there would be no free oxygen and plenty of hydrogen and ultraviolet. Miller therefore began with carefully purified and sterilized water and added an “atmosphere” of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. He circulated this through his apparatus past an electric discharge, which represented an energy input that, it was hoped, would mimic the effect of solar ultraviolet. He kept this up for a week then separated the components of his water solution. He found simple or ganic compounds among those compo nents and even a few of the simpler amino acids. This work was carried fur ther by men like Calvin [1361] and Sagan [1504], The moral was obvious. The original ocean and atmosphere could have served as source material for a wide variety of organic molecules. In the absence of life, these molecules would not be consumed and broken down again by ravenous cells but would accumulate into a “soup.” Slowly these compounds would grow more and more complex until a nucleic acid capable of replication, after the fashion described by Crick [1406] and James Dewey Watson [1480], would be developed. This may seem like asking a good deal of chance. But if in one week, and in one small setup, Miller could get amino acids, how much could be done in a billion years? Miller is now a professor of chemistry at the University of California. Download 17.33 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
|