Jerome Isaac FriedmanAmerican physicist (1930–)While there I did a number of experiments studying elastic and inelastic electrondeuteron scattering. In an experiment to measure a weighted sum-rule for inelastic electron deuteron scattering which was related to the n-p interaction I had to confront the problem of making radiative corrections to inelastic spectra, and I developed a technique which proved to be valuable in my later work. Henry Kendall independently developed a similar technique and later we combined efforts to develop a radiative corrections program for our deep inelastic scattering work at SLAC. It was in Hofstadter's group that I began my long collaboration with Henry Kendall who was also a member of the group. During this period I became acquainted with Richard Taylor, who was just finishing his thesis in another group, and with other future collaborators in the deep inelastic program at SLAC, Dave Coward and Hobey DeStacbler. One of the highlights of this period was attending the wonderfully informal and informative high energy physics seminars in the home of W.K.H. Panofsky, who was Director of the Laboratory.In 1960, I was hired as a faculty member in the Physics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When I arrived I joined David Ritson's research group. A short time later he accepted a position at Stanford University and I inherited a small group. With these resources I soon began working on collaborative effort to measure muon pair production at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator (CEA) in order to test the validity of Quantum Electro-Dynamics. Henry Kendall joined my group in 1961 and we have been collaborators at MIT since that time. The last measurement we did at the CEA was a measurement of the deuteron form factor at the highest momentum transfers that could be reached at that accelerator to get some limits on the size of relativistic effects and meson currents.In 1963, Henry Kendall and I started a collaboration with W.K.H. Panofsky, Richard Taylor and other physicists from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the California Institute of Technology to develop electron scattering facilities for a physics program at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 20 GeV electron linac that was being constructed under the leadership of Panofsky. This required that we both travel between MIT and SLAC on a regular basis. The MIT Physics Department gave us special support by reducing our teaching responsibilities. We soon set up a small MIT group at SLAC and for extended periods of time one of us was always there. We had a rare opportunity. We were part of a group of physicists who were provided a new accelerator, given the support to design and construct optimal experimental facilities, and had the opportunity to participate in the exploration of a new energy range with electrons. From 1967 to about 1975 the MIT and SLAC groups carried out a series of measurements of inelastic electron scattering from the proton and neutron which provided the first direct evidence of the quark sub-structure of the nucleon. It was a very exciting time for all of us. This program is described in detail in the adjoining Physics Nobel Lectures.As the program at SLAC was nearing completion we joined a collaborative effort at Fermilab involving a number of institutions to build a beam line and a single-arm spectrometer in the Meson Laboratory. During the latter half of the 1970's this collaboration carried out a series of experiments to investigate elastic scattering, Feynman scaling and production mechanisms in inclusive hadron scattering. When this work was completed, our group joined

another collaboration to build a large neutrino detector at Fermilab. The objective of this program was to study the weak neutral currents in measurements of inclusive neutrino and anti-neutrino nucleon scattering, which were done in the first half of the 1980's. These investigations confirmed the predictions of the Standard Model.In 1980, Director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT and then served as Head of the Physics Department from 1983 to 1988. During the time I was in these administrative positions I managed to maintain a foothold in research, which greatly eased my transition back to full-time teaching and research in 1988. While it was a very interesting period in my life, I was happy to get back to more direct contact with students in the classroom and in my research projects. Currently, our MIT group is participating in the construction of a large detector to study electron-positron annihilations at the Stanford Linear Collider and has also been engaged in design work for a detector for the Superconducting Super Collider, which is now under construction.Over the years I have served on a number of program and scientific policy advisory committees at various accelerators. I also was a member of the Board of the University Research Association for six years, serving as Vice President for three years. I am currently a member of the High Energy Advisory Panel for the Department of Energy and also Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory.Experimental high energy physics research is a group effort. I have been very fortunate to have had outstanding students and colleagues who have made invaluable contributions to the research with which I have been associated. I thank them not only for their contributions, but also for their friendship.

Chicago-born Friedman was educated at the university in his native city and gained his PhD there in 1956. After spending three years in California at Stanford, Friedman moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, and was later appointed to a chair of physics in 1967.

Working with his MIT colleague Henry Kendall (1926––sp;–sp;) and with Richard Taylor (1929––sp;–sp;) from Stanford, Friedman began to study the internal structure of the proton. They worked with the 3-kilometer linear accelerator recently opened at Stanford (SLAC). Electrons were accelerated to an energy of 20,000 million electronvolts and directed against a target of liquid hydrogen. In a manner reminiscent of the 1911 experiments of Ernest Rutherford, they analyzed the angles and energies of the electrons and protons of the hydrogen nuclei as they scattered after collision. Similar experiments had been performed by Robert Hofstadter in the 1950s and he had found protons not to be mere points, but fuzzy blobs spread out over an area of about 10–15 meter. In 1967, however, higher energies were available to Friedman and his colleagues, which led them to hope that they might see into the proton with a little more precision.

In cases of elastic scattering, where beam and target particles retain their identity, the deflections were minor and occurred as expected. When, however, the scattering was inelastic and the protons were struck with sufficient energy to produce new particles, such as pions, the electrons were deflected through much wider angles than expected.

These latter scattering results proved difficult to explain. A possible answer was proposed by Richard Feynmann in 1968 on a visit to SLAC. Protons, he suggested, could be composed of a number of pointlike particles, which he called “partons.” From such charged points, electrons could be scattered through large angles. Further, it followed from the angular distribution of the scattered electrons that the partons must have a spin of one half.

As these were the properties calculated for the hypothetical quarks proposed by Murray Gell-Mann, the SLAC experiment was soon taken to be the first experimental evidence for the existence of quarks. It was for this work that Friedman shared the 1990 Nobel Prize for physics with his collaborators Kendall

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jerome-isaac-friedman#ixzz1bcTKgvTR

Masatoshi KoshibaBorn: 19 September 1926, Toyohashi, JapanAffiliation at the time of the award: University of Tokyo, Tokyo, JapanPrize motivation: "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos"Field: Neutrino astrophysicsCurriculum VitaeName: KOSHIBA, Masatoshi.Date/Place of Birth: September 19, 1926/Toyohashi city, Aichi Pref.,

Japan.Nationality: Japanese.Marital status: Married to Kyoko KATO on October 5, 1959, in

Tokyo.Permanent address: 4-11-7 Shimoigusa, Suginami, Tokyo 167-0022

Japan.Tel/Fax: 81-3-3396-6868,e-mail: mkoshiba@icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

EducationMar. 1951: Graduated from University of Tokyo, physics

major.Apr. '51 to Mar. '53: Graduate School, University of Tokyo.Sep. '53 to Jun. '55: Graduate School, University of Rochester,

Rochester, N.Y.Received Ph.D in physics: Thesis on Ultra-High- Energy Phenomena in Cosmic Rays.

Academic appointmentsJul. '55 to Feb. '58: Research Associate, Department of Physics,

University of Chicago.Mar. '58 to Oct. '63: Associate Professor, Institute of Nuclear Study,

University of Tokyo.Nov. '59 to Aug. '62: on leave from the above, Senior Research Associate

with the honorary rank of Associate Professor and the Acting Director, Laboratory of High Energy Physics and Cosmic Radiation, Department of Physics, University of Chicago.

Nov. '63 to Feb. '70: Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo.

Mar. '70 to Mar. '87: Professor in the same institution as above.June. '74 to Mar. '76; Director, Laboratory of High

Energy Physics.Apr. '76 to Mar. '84; Director Laboratory for International Collaboration on Elementary Particle Physics.Apr. '84 to Mar. '87; Director, International Center for Elementary Particle Physics.

Apr. '87 to Aug. '87: Visiting Professor at DESY and University of Hamburg.

Aug. '87 to Mar. '97: Professor, Tokai University.Sep. '87 to Aug. '88; Guest Professor, CERN, Sep. '89 to Dec. '89; Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Chicago. Feb. '90; Regent Lecturer, University of California, Riverside, Jan. to Mar. '94; Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar, California Institute of Technology. Apr. '95 to Mar. '97; Director, Washington Liaison Office, Japan Society for Promotion of Science. Sep. '96 to Mar. '97; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, George Washington University.

Jul. '98 to Aug. '99: Alexander von Humboldt Preisträger staying at DESY in Hamburg, Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik in Heidelberg, and Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik in Garching.

Present Councilor, International Center for Elementary particle Physics, The University of Tokyo.

Important publications

"Observation of a Neutrino Burst from the Supernova SN1987a" Phys. Rev. Lett., 58 (1987) 1490."Results from One Thousand Days of Real Time, Directional Solar Neutrino Data; Kamiokande-II Collaboration", Phys. Rev. Lett., 65 (1990) 1297.

Honors and PrizesAug. '85: Das Grosse Verdienstskreuz from the President of Federal

Republic of Germany.Dec. '87: The Nishina Prize from the Nishina Foundation.Jan. '88: The ASAHI Prize from the ASAHI Press.Nov. '88: The Order of Culture by the Japanese Government.Jun. '89: The Academy Award from the Academy of Japan.Jun. '89: The Bruno Rossi Award from the American Physical

Society.

Aug. '96: The Special Prize from the European Physical Society.Mar. '97: The Alexander von Humboldt Prize from the Humboldt

Foundation.Jun. '97: The Fujiwara Prize from the Fujiwara Science Foundation.Nov. '97: The Order of Cultural Merit conferred by The Emperor of

Japan in person.Jan. '99: The second ASAHI Prize from the ASAHI Press.Jan. '99: The Diploma di Perfezionamento honoris causa in Fisica

from The Scuola Normale Superiole, Pisa, Italy.Jul. '99: Doktor der Naturwissenschaften ehrenhalber from Hamburg

University.May '00: Rochester's Distinguished Scholar Award from the

University of Rochester.May '00: The Wolf Prize from The State President of Israel.Jun. '00: Citation by the Town of Kamioka.Aug. '00: Citation by the Governor of Gifu Prefecture.Apr. '02: Panofsky Prize from American Physical Society.Dec. '02: Nobel Prize in Physics.Dec. '02: Member, The Japan Academy.From Les Prix Nobel.

Sidney Richard Coleman (7 March 1937 – 18 November 2007) was an American theoretical physicist who studied under Murray Gell-Mann.Contents

* 1 Life and work * 2 Contributions to physics * 3 References * 4 External links

Life and work

Sidney Coleman grew up on the Far North Side of Chicago. In 1957, he received his undergraduate degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He received his PhD from Caltech in 1962, and moved to Harvard University that year, where he spent his entire career, meeting his wife Diana there in the late 1970s. They were married in 1982.

"He was a giant in a peculiar sense, because he's not known to the general populace," Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow told the Boston Globe. "He's not a Stephen Hawking; he has virtually no visibility outside. But within the community of theoretical physicists, he's kind of a major god. He is the physicist's physicist."[1]

In 1966, Antonino Zichichi recruited Coleman as a lecturer at the then-new summer school at International School for Subnuclear Physics in Erice, Sicily. A legendary figure at the school throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Coleman was awarded the title "Best Lecturer" on the occasion of the school's fifteenth anniversary (1979). His explanation of spontaneous symmetry breaking in terms of a little man living inside a ferromagnet has often been cited by later popularizers.[2][3] The classic particle physics text Aspects of Symmetry (1985) is a collection of Coleman's lectures at Erice. A quote from his introduction to the book is worth sharing here:[4]

I first came to Erice in 1966, to lecture at the fourth of the annual schools on subnuclear physics organized by Nino Zichichi. I was charmed by the beauty of Erice, fascinated by the thick layers of Sicilian culture and history, and terrified by the iron rule with which Nino kept the students and faculty in line. In a word, I was won over, and I returned to Erice every year or two thereafter, to talk of what was past, or passing,

or to come, at least insofar as it touched on subnuclear theory…These lectures span fourteen years, from 1966 to 1979. This was a great time to be a high-energy theorist, the period of the famous triumph of quantum field theory. And what a triumph it was, in the old sense of the word: a glorious victory parade, full of wonderful things brought back from far places to make the spectator gasp with awe and laugh with joy. I hope some of that awe and joy has been captured here.

His lectures at Harvard were also legendary. Students in one quantum field theory course created Tshirts bearing his image and a collection of his more noted quotations, among them: "Not only God knows, I know, and by the end of the semester, you will know."

In 1989, Coleman was awarded the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing from the National Academy of Sciences. That award praised his "lucid, insightful, and influential reviews on partially conserved currents, gauge theories, instantons, and magnetic monopoles--subjects fundamental to theoretical physics."[5] In 2005, Harvard University's physics department held the "SidneyFest", a conference on quantum field theory and quantum chromodynamics, organized in his honor.

Aside from his academic work, Coleman was a prominent science fiction enthusiast. He was one of the founders of Advent: Publishers[6] and occasionally reviewed genre books for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.[7]Contributions to physics

Some of his best known works are

* Coleman–Mandula theorem[8] * Tadpoles * Coleman theorem[9] * Equivalence of the Thirring model and the quantum Sine-Gordon equation[10] * Semiclassical analysis of the fate of a false vacuum * Coleman-Weinberg potential * Q-balls in the thin-wall limit * Lectures at Erice, some of which are preserved in his book Aspects of Symmetry[4] (review and teaching)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/sidney-coleman#ixzz1bcUsJ4jg

Chilingarov Arthur N.( Hydrometeorology, polar explorer, Vice-Chairman of the State Duma, Russia, former chairman of United Industrial Party)

Comments for Chilingarov Arthur N.Born September 25, 1939 in g. Leningrad, Armenian.Worked fitters Baltic Shipyard.In 1963 he graduated from the faculty of the Leningrad Arctic Engineering Marine Institute of. Admiral C. O. Makarov specialty "oceanographer". Ph.D. in Geography.In 1957 - 58 - fitter Baltic Shipbuilding Plant. S. Ordzhonikidze.. In 1963 - 65 - Engineer oceanographer Tiksi Observatory of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.. From 1965 to 1969 - first secretary Bulonsk district committee.. In 1969-1974 - head of research drifting stations in the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic stations, was the chief scientific research station Bellingshausen in the Antarctic.. In 1974 - 79 - Head Amderninskogo management Hydrometeorological State Committee for Hydrometeorology of the USSR (Arkhangelsk region).. In 1979 - 92 he worked in the State Committee of the USSR (later Russia) on Hydrometeorology, 1986 - Deputy Chairman of the State Committee.. In 1985 led an expedition to rescue the crew of the icebreaker "Somov.. In 1987 he was the head of the expedition on a nuclear icebreaker Sibir.. In 1988 led an expedition to Antarctica in the inspection of foreign scientific stations.. Since the autumn of 1991 to 1993 - Advisor to the President of the Supreme Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov on ecology, Arctic and Antarctic.. Since December 1991 - Co-Rossiyskogo fund international humanitarian assistance and cooperation.. In December 1993, was elected to the State Duma of the first convocation.. 10 June 1994 was elected Vice-Chairman of the State Duma.. January 28, 1995, was elected co-chair of the association "Regions of Russia".. In May 1995, Russia participated in the creation of United Industrial Party (Roppen), was elected one of three vice-chairmen of the party.. 17 December 1995 was elected deputy of RF State Duma of the second convocation.. January 1997 - Chairman of the joint government-parliamentary commission on military reform.. In July 1997, was elected chairman Roppen.

. Since December 31, 1997 - Member of the Board of Directors Sovkomflot.. 19 December 1999 was elected to the State Duma of the third convocation. January 26, 2000, was elected deputy chairman of the State Duma.. In connection with the election of Vice-Chairman of the State Duma in March 2000 left the presidency Roppen.. President of Russia Association of polar (1991).. Corresponding Member of the Russia Academy of Natural Sciences.. Member of the British Royal Geographical Society.. He has state awards.. Playing football

(http://persona.rin.ru/eng/view/f/0/10275/chilingarov-arthur-n)

.

Paul Ching-Wu ChuAmerican physicist (1941–)Chu was born in Hunan, China, but his parents were members of the Nationalist Party and the family fled to Taiwan in 1949 for political reasons. After graduating in physics from Chengkung University, Chu moved to America in 1963 and gained his PhD in 1968 from the University of California, San Diego. After spending some time working for the company AT & T, Chu entered academic life, first at Cleveland State University, and since 1979 as professor of physics at the University of Houston.

Much of Chu's work has been in the field of superconductivity. A major breakthrough had been achieved in 1986 when Alex Muller had discovered some materials that become superconductive below the relatively high critical temperature of 35 K (–238°C). This temperature was still too low to be economic. The vital temperature was 77.4 K (–195.8°C) – the temperature below which nitrogen becomes liquid. The aim was to find materials that could be cooled to a superconducting state using relatively cheap liquid nitrogen, rather than the extremely expensive liquid helium (b.p. –268.9°C). Chu was determined that his Houston laboratory would be the first to find a superconductor with a critical temperature above 77.4 K.

The superconductor found by Muller was a ceramic material composed of barium, lanthanum, and copper oxide (Ba–La–CuO). Chu began by reproducing Muller's work. He next developed new methods of synthesis for this type of compound and began first to vary the ratio of elements in the compound. Initial results obtained by reducing the amount of copper were encouraging, but could not be repeated. However, at high pressures of 10,000 atmospheres it was possible to increase the critical temperature to about 40 K. Changing the proportions of the elements could raise the temperature to 52.5 K, but this was still at high pressures.

The original Muller compound contained three metals in the ratio 2:1:4. Many researchers concentrated on substituting other metals in the same ratio. Copper seemed to play a special bonding role and was judged by Chu to be indispensable. Chu decided to replace the lanthanum with other related lanthanoid elements. One he chose to work with was yttrium (Y). Finally, in January 1987, just a year after Muller's breakthrough, Chu found that the critical temperature of Y1.2Ba0.8CuO4 was 93 K and that the effect was stable and permanent.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/paul-ching-wu-

chu#ixzz1bchFFdGS

Leo Esaki He was born in Osaka, Japan in 1925. Esaki completed work for a B.S. in Physics in 1947 and received his Ph.D in 1959, both from the University of Tokyo. Esaki is an IBM Fellow and has been engaged in semiconductor research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, since 1960. Prior to joining IBM, he worked at the Sony Corp. where his research on heavily-doped Ge and Si resulted in the discovery of the Esaki tunnel diode; this device constitutes the first quantum electron device. Since 1969, Esaki has, with his colleagues, pioneered "designed semiconductor quantum structures" such as man-made superlattices, exploring a new quantum regime in the frontier of semiconductor physics.

The Nobel Prize in Physics (1973) was awarded in recognition of his pioneering work on electron tunneling in solids. Other awards include the Nishina Memorial Award (1959), the Asahi Press Award (1960), the Toyo Rayon Foundation Award for the Promotion of Science and Technology (1960), the Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Prize from IRE (1961), the Stuart Ballantine Medal from the Franklin Institute (1961), the Japan Academy Award (1965), the Order of Culture from the Japanese Government (1974), the American Physical Society 1985 International Prize for New Materials for his pioneering work in artificial semiconductor superlattices, the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1991 for contributions to and leadership in tunneling, semiconductor superlattices, and quantum wells. Dr. Esaki holds honorary degrees from Doshisha School, Japan, the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, the University of Montpellier, France, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan and the University of Athens, Greece. Dr. Esaki is a Director of IBM-Japan, Ltd., on the Governing Board of the IBM-Tokyo Research Laboratory, a Director of the Yamada Science Foundation and the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. He serves on numerous international scientific advisory boards and committees, and is an Adjunct Professor of Waseda University, Japan. Currently he is a Guest Editorial writer for the Yomiuri Press. Dr. Esaki was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 1974, a member of the Japan Academy on November 12, 1975, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering (USA) on April 1, 1977, a member of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft on March 17, 1989, and a foreign member of the American Philosophical Society in April of 1991.

William N. LipscombBorn: 9 December 1919, Cleveland, OH, USADied: 14 April 2011, Cambridge, MA, USAAffiliation at the time of the award: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USAPrize motivation: "for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding"Field: Theoretical chemistry, chemical structureAutobiographyAlthough born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, on December 9, 1919, I moved to Kentucky in 1920, and lived in Lexington through my university years. After my bachelors degree at the University of Kentucky, I entered graduate school at the California Institute of Technology in 1941, at first in physics. Under the influence of Linus Pauling, I returned to chemistry in early 1942. From then until the end of 1945 I was involved in research and development related to the war. After completion of the Ph.D., I joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1946, and moved to Harvard University in 1959. Harvard's recognitions include the Abbott and James Lawrence Professorship in 1971, and the George Ledlie Prize in 1971.

The early research in borane chemistry is best summarized in my book "Boron Hydrides" (W.A. Benjamin, Inc., 1963), although most of this and late work is in several scientific journals. Since about 1960, my research interests have also been concerned with the relationship between three-dimensional structures of enzymes and how they catalyze reactions or how they are regulated by allosteric transformations.

Besides memberships in various scientific societies, I have received the Bausch and Lomb honorary science award in 1937; and, from the American Chemical Society, the Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry, and the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry. Local sections of this Society have given the Harrison Howe Award and Remsen Award. The University of Kentucky presented to me the Sullivan Medallion in 1941, the Distinguished Alumni Centennial Award in 1965, and an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1963. A Doctor Honoris Causa was awarded by the University of Munich in 1976. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters.

My other activities include tennis and classical chamber music as a performing clarinetist.

 William Lipscomb died on April 14, 2011. From Les Prix Nobel

Jan Szyszko

(born April 19, 1944 in Stara Miłosna, a part of Warsaw) is a Polish politician. He was elected to Sejm on September 25, 2005 getting 7042 votes in the 20th Warsaw district, candidating from Prawo i Sprawiedliwość list.

Maw Kuen Wu

Director, Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica 128 Academia Road, Section 2, NankangTaipei, Taiwan ROC Tel:+886 2 2789-6750;Fax:+886 2 2788-9827 WebSite: http://www.phys.sinica.edu.tw E-mail: mkwu@phys.sinica.edu.twEducation 1981, Ph. D., Physics, University of Houston, USA1975, M.S., 1973, B.S.,Physics, Tamkang University, Taiwan Physics, Tamkang University, TaiwanExperience 1982-1984: 1982-1986: 1987-1988: 1988-1994: 1990-1994: 1992-1995: 1994 - : Professor, National Tsing Hua University 1995-1998: Chairman, Research and Development Council, National Tsing Hua University 2000-2002: Vice-Chairman, National Science CouncilResearch Scientist in Physics, University of Houston Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Alabama in Huntsville Professor of Physics, University of Alabama in Huntsville Professor of Applied Physics, Columbia University Visiting Chair Professor, National Tsing Hua University Director, Materials Science Center, National Tsing Hua University2002 - : Director, Institute of Physics, Academia SinicaHonor 1988: U.S.A. National Academy of Science Comstock Prize 1988: NASA Special Awards 1988: University of Alabama Research Award 1988: USA Chinese Association of Engineering Annual Award 1989: Tamkang Golden Eagle Award 1994: Bernd T. Matthias Prize 1994: Fellow, Chinese Physical Society 1995: Y. T. Lee Outstanding Scientist Award 1998: Academician, Academia Sinica 1998: Member, Asia-Pacific Academy of Material, NSTP for Nanoscience andNanotechnology

Herbert A. HauptmanBorn: 14 February 1917, New York, NY, USAAffiliation at the time of the award: The Medical Foundation of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USAPrize motivation: "for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures"Field: Physical chemistry, structural chemistryAutobiographyI was born in New York City on February 14, 1917, the oldest child of Israel Hauptman and Leah Rosenfeld. I have two brothers, Manuel and Robert.

I married Edith Citrynell on November 10, 1940. We have two daughters, Barbara (1947) and Carol (1950).

My interest in most areas of science and mathematics began at an early age, as soon as I had learned to read, and continues to this day. I obtained the B.S. degree in mathematics from the City College of New York (1937) and the M.A. degree in mathematics from Columbia University (1939).

After the war I made the decision to obtain an advanced degree and pursue a career in basic scientific research. In furtherance of these goals I commenced a collaboration with Jerome Karle at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (1947) and at the same time enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland. The collaboration with Dr. Karle proved to be fruitful because his background in physical chemistry and mine in mathematics complemented each other nicely. Not only did this combination enable us to tackle head-on the phase problem of X-ray crystallography, but this work suggested also the topic of my doctoral dissertation, "An N-Dimensional Euclidean Algorithm". By 1954 I had received my Ph.D. degree and Dr. Karle and I had laid the foundations of the direct methods in X-ray crystallography. Our 1953 monograph, "Solution of the Phase Problem I. The Centrosymmetric Crystal", contains the main ideas, the most important of which was the introduction of probabilistic methods, in particular the joint probability distributions of several structure factors, as the essential tool for phase determination. In this monograph we introduced also the concepts of the structure invariants and seminvariants, special linear combinations of the phases, and used them to devise recipes for origin specification in all the centrosymmetric space groups. The extension to the non-centrosymmetric space groups was made some years later. The notion of the structure invariants and seminvariants proved to be of particular importance

because they also serve to link the observed diffraction intensities with the needed phases of the structure factors.

In 1970 I joined the crystallographic group of the Medical Foundation of Buffalo* of which I was Research Director in 1972, replacing Dr. Dorita Norton. My work on the phase problem continues to this day. During the early years of this period I formulated the neighborhood principle and extension concept, the latter independently proposed by Giacovazzo under the term "representation theory". These ideas laid the groundwork for the probabilistic theories of the higher order structure invariants and seminvariants which were further developed during the late seventies by myself and others. During the eighties I initiated work on the problem of combining the traditional techniques of direct methods with isomorphous replacement and anomalous dispersion in the attempt to facilitate the solution of macromolecular crystal structures. This work continues to the present time. More recently I have formulated the phase problem of X-ray crystallography as a minimal principle in the attempt to strengthen the existing direct methods techniques. Together with colleagues Charles Weeks, George DeTitta and others, we have made the initial applications with encouraging results.*now Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute, Inc.From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1985, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1986 This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.Honors1. Belden Prize (Gold Medal), Mathematics, 1935.2. RESA Award in Pure Science, 1959.3. Co-recipient (with Jerome Karle) of the 1984 PattersonAward. Presented at the American Crystallography Association in Lexington, Kentucky, on May 21, 1984.4. Co-recipient (with Jerome Karle) of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1985.5. Honorary degree, Doctor of Science, University of Maryland, 1985.6. Citizen of the Year Award, Buffalo Evening News, April 1986.7. Inducted into Nobel Hall of Science, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois, April 1986.8. Recipient of the Norton Medal, SUNY, May 1986.

9. Schoellkopf Award, American Chemical Society, May 1986.10. Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, CCNY, May 1986.11. Gold Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement, Salute to Excellence Weekend, Washington, D.C., June 1986.12. Townsend Harris Medal for 1986, City College of New York, October 1986.13. Recipient of Medal from Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 1986.14. Recipient of the National Library of Medicine Medal, November 1986.15. Western New York Man of the Year Award, Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, 1986.16. Honorary Member Phi Beta Kappa, May 1987.17. Induction as a Fellow of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences.18. 1987 Honoree, Western New Yorker of the Year, January 1987.19. Recipient of the Cooke Award, State Univ. of New York at Buffalo, October 1987.20. Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1988.21. Honorary Doctorate in Chemistry, Univ. of Parma, Italy 1989.22. Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, D'Youville College, Buffalo, NY (1989).23. Elected Member of Townsend Harris Hall of Fame (1989).24. Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, Honoris Causa, Bar-Ilan Univ., Israel (1990).25. Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, Honoris Causa, Columbia University, New York, NY, (1990).26. Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics, University of New South Wales, Australia, January 1991.From Nobel Lectures,

David H. HubelBorn: 27 February 1926, Windsor, ON, CanadaAffiliation at the time of the award: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USAPrize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system"AutobiographyI was born in 1926 in Windsor, Ontario. Three of my grandparents were also born in Canada: the fourth, my paternal grandfather, emigrated as a child to the U.S.A. from the Bavarian town of Nördlingen. He became a pharmacist and achieved some prosperity by inventing the first process for the mass producing of gelatin capsules. My parents were born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. My father, a chemical engineer, took a job across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, became tired of commuting from Detroit, and finally moved to Canada. When I was born I acquired U.S. citizenship through my parents and Canadian citizenship by birth. (When it comes to prizes I don't know whether each country gets half credit or both get full credit.) In 1929 my father moved to Montreal, where I grew up. From age six to eighteen I went to Strathcona Academy in Outremont, and owe much to the excellent teachers there, especially to Julia Bradshaw, a dedicated, vivacious history teacher with a memorable Irish temper, who awakened me to the possibility of learning how to write readable English. I owe much of my interest in science to my father, whom I plagued with endless questions. To my mother goes much of the credit for encouraging me to work for whatever objectives I set for myself. As a boy my main hobbies were chemistry (my friends, who consider me utterly ignorant of that subject, will be richly amused) and electronics. I soon tired of the electronics because nothing I built ever worked. But with chemistry I discovered potassium chlorate and sugar mixture and set off a small cannon that rocked Outremont, and I released a hydrogen balloon that flew all the way to Sherbrooke. At McGill College I did honors mathematics and physics, partly to find out why nothing worked in electronics, but mainly because it was more fun to do problems than to learn facts. I still much prefer to do science than to read about it. I graduated in 1947 and, almost on the toss of a coin, despite never having taken a course in biology (even in high school, where it was considered a subject only for those who could not do Latin or mathematics) I applied to Medical School at McGill. Rather to my horror I was accepted. At first I found it very difficult, given my total ignorance of biology and the need to memorize every muscular insertion in the body. I spent summers at the Montreal Neurological Institute doing electronics (I now had the theoretical basis but still no talent with a soldering iron) and there I became fascinated by the nervous system -

small wonder considering that this was the period of culmination of the work of Penfield and Jasper. To my surprise I also found I enjoyed clinical medicine: it took three years of hospital training after graduation, (a year of internship and two of residency in neurology) before that interest finally wore off. The years of hospital training were interrupted by a year of clinical neurophysiology under Herbert Jasper, who was unequalled for his breadth and clarity of thinking in brain science. On setting foot into the United States in 1954 for a Neurology year at Johns Hopkins I was promptly drafted by the army as a doctor, but was lucky enough to be assigned to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Neuropsychiatry Division, and there, at the age of 29, I finally began to do research. One then had little of the feeling of frenetic competition that is found in graduate students today; it was possible to take more long-shots without becoming panic stricken if things didn't work out brilliantly in the first few months. We were not free from financial worries, as graduate students in biology by and large are now; until I entered the army my income was close to zero, and I owe a huge debt to my wife Ruth for supporting us through those lean and exploited years of residency and fellowship training.

Scientifically, I could hardly have chosen a better place than Walter Reed. In the neuropsychiatry division David Rioch had assembled a broad and lively group of young neuroscientists, notably M.G.F. Fuortes and Robert Galambos in neurophysiology, Walle Nauta in neuroanatomy, Joseph Brady and Murray Sidman in experimental psychology and John Mason in chemistry. As in Montreal, the focus was on the entire nervous system, not on a subdivision of biological subject matter based on methods. I worked under the supervision of Fuortes. We began by collaborating for six months on a spinal cord project, and it was then that I had my only apprenticeship in experimental neurophysiology. Fuortes had a genuine feel for biology that was rare among neurophysiologists in those days. I also learned and benefited much from a most able and helpful research assistant, Calvin Henson. My main project while at Walter Reed was a comparison of the spontaneous firing of single cortical cells in sleeping and waking cats. I began by recording from the visual cortex: it seemed most sensible to look at a primary sensory area, and the visual was easiest, there being less muscle betweeen that part of the brain and the outside world. It was first necessary to devise a method for recording from freely moving cats and to develop a tungsten microelectrode tough enough to penetrate the dura. That took over a year, but in the end it was exciting to be able to record from a single cell in the cortex of a cat that was looking around and purring.

In 1958 I moved to the Wilmer Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital, to the laboratory of Stephen Kuffler, and there I began collaboration with Torsten Wiesel. A year later Kuffler's entire laboratory (nine families) moved to Harvard Medical School in Boston, at first as part of the Department of Pharmacology under Otto Krayer, who was largely responsible for bringing Kuffler to Harvard. Five years later, in a move unprecedented for Harvard, we became the new Department of Neurobiology. My daily contacts with Stephen Kuffler (until his death a year ago) and with Edwin Furshpan, Edward Kravitz, David Potter and Simon LeVay have been both fun and enriching. During the past twenty two years, besides working with Torsten, I have collaborated briefly with Ursula Dräger, Helga Ginzler, and Ann Graybiel. At present I am working with Margaret Livingstone.

Since the age of five I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on music, for many years the piano, then recorders, and now the flute. I do woodworking and photography, own a small telescope for astronomy, and I ski and play tennis and squash. I enjoy learning languages, and have spent untold hours looking up words in French, Japanese and German dictionaries. In the laboratory I enjoy almost everything, including machining, photography, computers, surgery - even neurophysiology.

This is perhaps a suitable place to express my deep gratitude to the Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health, to the U.S. Air Force, the Klingenstein Foundation, and to the Rowland Foundation for their generous support of our research. Also the Faculty of Harvard University deserves my thanks for tolerating such a truculent colleague. From Les Prix Nobel.

Robert HuberBorn: 20 February 1937, Munich, GermanyAffiliation at the time of the award: Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, Martinsried, Federal Republic of GermanyPrize motivation: "for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre"Field: Biochemistry, structural chemistryAutobiographyI was born February 20, 1937 in München as the first child of Sebastian and Helene Huber. My father was cashier at a bank and my mother kept the house and brought up the children, me and my younger sister, a difficult task during the war, a continuous struggle for some milk and bread and search for air-raid shelters. There was no Grammar school in 1945 and 1946 and I entered the Humanistische Karls-Gymnasium in München 1947 with intense teaching of Latin and Greek, some natural science and a few optional monthly hours of chemistry. I learned easily and had time to follow my inclination for sports (light athletics and skiing) and chemistry, which I taught myself by reading all textbooks I could get.

I left the Gymnasium with the Abitur in 1956 and began to study chemistry at the Technische Hochschule (later Technische Universität) in München, where I also made the Diploma in Chemistry in 1960. A stipend of the Bayerisches Ministerium für Erziehung und Kultur and later of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes helped to relieve financial problems of my family and allowed me to study without delay. The most impressive teachers I remember were W. Hieber and the logical flow and impressive diction of his lectures in inorganic chemistry; E.O. Fischer, the young star in metalloorganic chemistry; F. Weygand and his deep knowledge of organic chemistry; and G. Joos and G. Scheibe, the physicist and physicochemist, respectively. I joined the crystallographer W. Hoppe's laboratory for my diploma work on crystallographic studies of the insect metamorphosis hormone ecdysone. Part of these studies were made in Karlson's laboratory at the Physiologisch-Chemisches Institut der Universität München, where I found by a simple crystallograpic experiment the molecular weight and probable steroid nature of ecdysone which Hoppe and I later elucidated in atomic detail after my thesis work which was on the crystal structure of a diazo compound (1963). This discovery convinced me of the power of crystallography and led me to continue in this field.

After a number of structure determinations of organic compounds and methodical development of Patterson search techniques I began in 1967,

with Hoppe's and Braunitzer's support, crystallographic work on the insect protein erythrocruorin (with Formanek). The elucidation of this structure and its resemblance to the mammalian globins as determined by Perutz and Kendrew in their classical studies suggested for the first time a universal globin fold. In 1971 the University of Basel offered me a chair of structural biology at the Biozentrum and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft the position of a director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, which I accepted. I remained associated with the Technische Universität München, where I became Professor in 1976.

In 1970, I had begun work on the basic pancreatic trypsin inhibitor which has later become the model compound for the development of protein NMR, molecular dynamics, and experimental folding studies in other laboratories. Work in the field of proteolytic enzymes and their natural inhibitors has been continued and extended to many different inhibitor classes, proteases, their proenzymes, and complexes between them (with Bode, Bartels, Chen, Fehlhammer, Deisenhofer, Loebermann, Kukla, Papamokos, Ruhlmann, Steigemann, Toknoka, Wang, Walter, Weber, Wei) including recently inhibitors of cysteine proteases (with Musil, Bode, Engh) and other hydrolytic enzymes like a-amylase (whith Pflugrath, Wiegand) and creatine hydrolase (with Hoeffken). The potential of these systems for drug and protein design has spurred our interest until today.

Early in the seventies I initiated work on immunoglobulins and their fragments, which culminated in the elucidation of several fragments, an intact antibody and its Fc fragment, the first glycoprotein to be analysed in atomic detail (with Colman, Deisenhofer, Epp, Marquart, Matsushima). Work was extended to proteins interacting with immunoglobulins and to complement proteins (with Paques, Jones, Deisenhofer). We also studied a variety of enzymes leading to the elucidation of the structure and the chemical nature of the selenium moiety in glutathione peroxidase (with Ladenstein, Epp). We determined the structures of citrate synthase in different states of ligation (with Remington, Wiegand) and recently of a very large multienzyme complex, heavy riboflavin synthase (with Ladenstein).

Early in the 1 980s we began with studies of proteins involved in excitation energy and electron transfer, light-harvesting proteins (with Schirmer, Bode), later bilin-binding protein, the reaction centre (with Deisenhofer, Epp, Miki in collaboration with Michel) and ascorbate oxidase (with Messerschmidt, Ladenstein) which are described in my lecture.

Most of these structural studies were collaborative undertakings with other laboratories, many of them from foreign countries.

We had discovered that some of the proteins analysed showed large-scale flexibility which was functionally significant. The trypsinogen system was investigated (with Bode) in great detail by low temperature crystallography, gamma-ray spectroscopy, chemical modification, and molecular dynamics calculations. However, it required some years before the scientific community in general accepted that flexibility and disorder are very relevant molecular properties also in other systems.

The development of methods of protein crystallography has been in the focus of my laboratory's work from the beginning and led to the development of refinement in protein crystallography (with Steigemann, Deisenhofer, Remington), to the development of Patterson search methods (with Bartels and Fehlhammer), to methods and suites of computer programmes for intensity data evaluation and absorption correction (FILME, with Bartels, Bennett, Schwager), for protein crystallographic computing (PROTEIN, with Steigemann), for computer graphics and electron density interpretation and refinement (FRODO, Jones), and for area detector data collection (MADNES, Pflugrath, Messerschmidt). These methods and programmes are in use in many laboratories in the world today.

I married Christa Essig in 1960. We have four children. The eldest daughter (1961) and the two sons (1963, 1966) have been or are studying economics. The youngest daughter (1976) shows some interest in biology, a last hope.From Les Prix Nobel.

Bengt I. SamuelssonBorn: 21 May 1934, Halmstad, SwedenAffiliation at the time of the award: Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, SwedenPrize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related biologically active substances"AutobiographyI was born in Halmstad, Sweden, on May 21, 1934 to Anders and Kristina Samuelsson. After attending public schools I studied medicine at the University of Lund where I met my wife Karin (Bergstein). We have one son (Bo) and two daughters (Elisabet and Astrid).

After a few years in Lund I moved to Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in order to do graduate work in biochemistry in parallel with medical studies. In 1960 I finished my dissertation and became docent in medical chemistry. A year later I also obtained my MD degree from Karolinska Institutet. After a year as research fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., I returned to Karolinska Institutet. In 1967 I was appointed professor of medical chemistry at the Royal Veterinary College in Stockholm, and after a few years I moved back to Karolinska Institutet to become professor and chairman of the department of physiological chemistry. Concurrently with my research positions I have also held administrative posts. I was dean of the medical faculty from 1978 to 1983, and is presently rector of Karolinska Institutet.

My research interests were originally in cholesterol metabolism with emphasis on reaction mechanisms. After the structural work on prostaglandins with Sune Bergström in 1959-1962 I have mainly been interested in transformation products of arachidonic acid. This has led to the discovery of endoperoxides, thromboxanes and the leukotrienes, and my group has mainly been involved in studying the chemistry, biochemistry and biology of these compounds and their role in biological control system. The research has implications in several clinical areas, particularly in thrombosis, inflammation and allergy.AppointmentsAssistant professor of medical chemistry, Karolinska Institutet 1961-1966Research fellow, Department of Chemistry, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., 1961-1962Professor of medical chemistry, Royal Veterinary College, Stockholm, Sweden, 1967-1972Professor of medical and physiological chemistry, Karolinska Institutet,

Stockholm, Sweden, 1973-Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, 1973-Visiting professor in chemistry, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., spring term 1976Dean of the Medical Faculty, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, July 1, 1978 - June 30, 1983Rector of Karolinska Institutet, July 1, 1983 - Jun 30, 1995Memberships, Awards and HonorsSwedish Medical Association's Jubilee Award, Stockholm, Sweden (1968)Anders Jahres Award, Oslo University, Oslo, Norway (1970)Louisa Gross Horwitz Award, Columbia University, New York, U.S.A. (1975)Honorary Member American Society of Biological Chemists (1976)Intrascience Medalist, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A. (1976)Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, New York, U.S.A. (1977)Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. (1978)Ciba Geigy Drew Award in Biomedical Research, Madison, New Jersey, U.S A. (1980)Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1981)Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in Basic Medical Research, Brandeis University, Boston, Mass., U.S.A. (1981)Swedish Medical Association's Jubilee Award, Stockholm, Sweden (1981)The Gairdner Foundation Award, Toronto, Canada (1981)Heinrich Wieland Prize, Munich, West Germany (1981)The Bror Holmberg Medal of the Swedish Chemical Society (1982)Honorary Member Association of American Physicians (1982)Member of the Mediterranean Academy, Catania, Italy (1982)Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982)American Chemical Society Division of Medical Chemistry Award (1982)Waterford Bio-Medical Science Award, La Jolla, California, U.S.A. (1982)

International Association of Allergology & Clinical Immunology Award, London, Great Britian (1982)Honorary Member, Swedish Medical Association, Stockholm, Sweden (1982)Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, University of Illinois, U.S.A. (1983)From Les Prix Nobel.

Sun Honglie 孙鸿烈Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Expert on Soil Geography and Land ResourcesBirthplace: Henan Province, PuyangBiographySun Honglie, male, Han nationality, is a native of Puyang, Henan Province. He graduated from Beijing Agricultural University in 1954 and was a postgraduate student at the Shenyang Forest Soil Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1960. Sun is an expert on soil geography and land resources.

Sun's academic career has focused on the surveying and research of agricultural natural resources and regional comprehensive development. From the 1970s to the 1990s, he directed the comprehensive scientific investigation of Qinghai-Tibet platean by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His academic contributions include stressing that natural resources should be comprehensively studied as part of an integrated system.

He served as a researcher for the Geographical Science and Resources Institute within the Chinese Academy of Sciences; he later became the deputy head of the academy. Sun has also been the vice-chairman of the International Science Associated Society.

In 1991, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ada E. YonathBorn: 22 June 1939, Jerusalem, IsraelAffiliation at the time of the award: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, IsraelPrize motivation: "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"Field: Biochemistry, structural chemistryPhoto: U. MontanAutobiographyI was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented fourroom apartment with two additional families and their children. My memories from my childhood are centered on my father's medical conditions alongside my constant desire to understand the principles of the nature around me. The hard conditions didn't dampen my enormous curiosity. Already at five, I was actively investigating the world. In one of my experiments I tried to measure the height of our tiny balcony using the furniture from inside the apartment. I put a table on another table, and then a chair and a stool on top, but did not reach the ceiling. Hence, I climbed up on my construct, fell down to the back yard on the ground floor and broke my arm ... Incidentally, the results of this experiment are still unknown, since the current tenants in the apartment have remodeled the ceiling. My parents were raised in religious families, being educated mainly in Judaism (my father) and women household skills (my mother). All of the schools in my immediate neighborhood were based on the same principles as those of my parents. However, despite the poverty of my parents and the lack of formal education, they went out of their way so that I could obtain a proper education in a very prestigious secular grammar school, called "Beit Hakerem".My father was frequently hospitalized and operated on, and when I was 11 years old he died. My mother barely coped, and I started to help her at that age. I had all types of jobs, cleaning, babysitting and providing private tuition to younger children. But both of us could not earn enough to support our little family, and consequently a year later my mother decided to move to another city, Tel Aviv, in order to be closer to her sisters. There I completed my high school education, and my mother, despite her tough life, supported my desire to keep on learning.Indeed, after I spent my compulsory army service in the "top secret office" of the Medical Forces, where I was fortunate to be exposed to clinical and medical issues, I enrolled to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There I completed my undergraduate and M.Sc. studies in chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics. My doctoral work was carried out at the Weizmann Institute. I tried to reveal the high resolution

structure of collagen. I continued to work on fibrous proteins (muscle) in my first postdoctoral year at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study the structure of a globur protein staphylococcus nuclease. After completing my postdoctoral research, at the end of 1970, I returned to the Weizmann Institute. There, I initiated and established the first biological crystallography laboratory in Israel, which for almost a decade was the only laboratory for such studies.At the end of the 1970s, I was a young researcher at the Weizmann Institute with an ambitious plan to shed light on one of the major outstanding questions concerning living cells: the process of protein biosynthesis. For this aim I wanted to determine the three-dimensional structure of the ribosome – the cells' factory for translating the instructions written in the genetic code into proteins – and thus reveal the mechanics guiding the process. This was the beginning of a long quest that took over two decades, in which I was met with reactions of disbelief and even ridicule in the international scientific community. I can compare this journey to climbing Mt. Everest only to discover that a higher Everest stood in front of us.I began these studies in collaboration with Prof. H.G. Wittmann of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, who supported these studies academically and financially. In parallel I maintained my laboratory at the Weizmann Institute, initially with a very modest budget and a grant given by the USA National Institute of Health (NIH). Over the years, a center for macromolecular assemblies was established by Mrs. Helen Kimmel at the Weizmann Institute, and consequently I came to lead a large team of researchers from all corners of the globe. Though my research began as an attempt to understand one of the fundamental components of life, it has led to a detailed understanding of the actions of some of the most widely prescribed antibiotics. My findings may not only aid in the development of more efficient antibacterial drugs, but could give scientists new weapons in the fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria – a problem that has been called one of the most pressing medical challenges of the 21st century.Because the ribosome is so central to life, scientists around the world had been trying for many years to figure out how it works, but without an understanding of its spatial structure there was little hope of forming a comprehensive picture. To reveal the three-dimensional structure at the molecular level, crystals are required, but when dealing with ribosomes, there are added challenges. The ribosome is a complex of proteins and RNA chains; its structure is extraordinarily intricate; it is unusually flexible, unstable and lacks internal symmetry, all making crystallization an extremely formidable task.

At the start of the 1980s, working at both the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, we created the first ribosome micro crystals. The procedure, which I developed especially for this aim, included a method for the preparation of the crystallizable ribosome that had been developed at the Weizmann Institute by Prof. Ada Zamir, Ruth Miskin and David Ellison. My inspiration came from an article on hibernating bears that pack their ribosomes in an orderly way in their cells just before hibernation, and these stay intact and potentially functional for months. Assuming that this is a natural strategy to maintain ribosomal activity for long time, I searched for ribosomes from organisms that live under harsh conditions, first of semi thermophiles, given by Dr. V. Erdmann and later I developed a unique experimental system based on ribosomes taken from the hardy bacteria living the extreme environments of the Dead Sea, thermal springs and atomic piles. In this way we managed to produce the initial micro crystals of ribosome in a fairly short time. However, even after obtaining preliminary diffraction indications, when I described my plans to determine the ribosome structure many distinguished scientists responded with sarcasm and disbelief. Consequently I became the World's dreamer, the village fool, the so-called scientist, and the person driven by fantasies.In the mid-1980s we visualized a tunnel spanning the large ribosomal subunit and assumed, based on previous biochemical works (Malkin & Rich, 1967, Blobel & Sabatini, 1970) that this is the path through which the nascent protein progresses as it is being formed – until it emerges out of the ribosome. In the course of my research, I developed a number of new techniques that are today widely used in structural biology labs around the world. One of these is cryo-bio-crystallography, which involves exposing the crystal to extremely low temperatures, –185°C, to minimize the crystalline structure's disintegration under the X-ray bombardment. The day we conducted this experiment was special and unique. One of the rare "Eureka!" events. In retrospect, it was second only to the great pleasure I had when seeing our first high resolution structure a dozen years later. In fact the "Eureka type" of an experiment was not common, although we frequently had a great pleasure of overcoming complicated challenges.In the mid-1990s, once we proved the feasibility of ribosome crystallography, several groups from leading universities or research institutions initiated parallel efforts. As they could repeat our procedures, I was no more alone in this field. At the end of the 1990s, we as well as those who used our experimental systems succeeded in breaking the resolution barrier, thanks to improvements in the crystals, in the facilities for detecting the X-ray diffraction and in ways to determine the diffraction phases. The first electron density map of the ribosome's small

subunit was a real breakthrough, and for me, a tremendous excitement. Then, in 2000 and 2001, we published the first complete three-dimensional structures of both subunits of the bacterial ribosome.These discoveries are clearly a high point in 20 years of research, but my quest to understand the ribosome is still far from complete. Armed with new insight into ribosomal structure, I can afford moving on to revealing what else these structures can tell us about the ribosome actions, and how antibiotic drugs block those actions in bacterial ribosomes. Because ribosomes are so essential to life, many antibiotic drugs work by targeting their actions. The advances we made in our long quest to solve the structure and function of the ribosome may also pave the way toward improving existing antibiotic drugs or designing novel ones. We therefore crystallized bacterial ribosomes that can serve as pathogen models, complexed with each of over two dozens antibiotic compound. We found that the drugs bind in specific "pockets" in the structure, located at or close to functional centers, thus can block them and prevent the ribosomes from manufacturing proteins. Since these findings were published in Nature, in 2001, we have revealed the means of action of almost all of the antibiotics that target the ribosome, and our research in this area is ongoing.For all scientists, the true scientific discovery is the top. In my case I can recall saying things like: 'why work on ribosomes, they are dead ... we know all what can be known about them', or: 'this is a dead end road', or: 'you will be dead before you get there'. Indeed, to my satisfaction, these predictions were proven wrong, the ribosomes are alive and kicking (so am I) and their high resolution structures stimulated many advanced studies.And in the future? We plan on looking to the distant past. Ribosomes are found in every living being – from yeast and bacteria to mammals – and the structures of their active sites have been extraordinarily well-preserved throughout evolution. We have identified a region within the contemporary ribosome that seems to be the vestige of the primordial apparatus for producing peptide bonds and essentially giving rise to life. How did these first ribosomes come into being? How did they begin to produce proteins? How did they evolve into the sophisticated protein factories we see today in living cells? We plan on answering these and related questions in our future work.Awarding the Nobel Prize exposed the ribosome to the public. It stimulated true scientific interest and turned on the imagination of many youngsters. As I have curly hair, there is a new saying in Israel: "Curly hair means a head full of ribosomes". Furthermore, our studies added to the buzz around the lovely North Pole Bears, which inspired my own research and are now endangered by the changing climate.

These studies could not be performed without the help and/or active participation of many individuals. Thanks are due to the Weizmann Institute, particularly its presidents Michael Sela and Haim Harari, for keeping up with me for over two decades and for allowing me to work; to the Max Planck Society, especially the late Prof H.G. Wittmann for co-initiating this project, for producing the ribosome and their crystals and for financing my dream; to Ms. Helen Kimmel for establishing and maintaining the Kimmelman Center, thus paving the road for us from the early stages of our studies; to my colleagues in Hamburg (e.g. Frank Schluenzen, Heike Bartels, Joerg Harms and Ante Tocilj) and in Israel (especially Anat Bashan, Ilana Agmon, Tamar Awerbach, Ziva Berkovitch-Yellin, Raz Zarivach and Shulamit Weinstein), as well as my collaborators in Berlin (especially Francois Franceschi) for their devotion and enthusiasm in good and bad periods.Above all, to my family who supported me with no questions or complaints despite my frequent disappearances and although at times my mind was not solely with them. These include my parents, who were brought up far away from science, especially my mother, who experienced enormous difficulties in raising and educating me after my dad's death when I was still a child; my young sister Nurit, and my daughter Hagith, who had to tolerated me in my presence as well as in my absence; and to my granddaughter Noa, who at the age of five invited me to her kindergarten to talk about the ribosome!From Les Prix Nobel.

Gerardus 't HooftBorn: 5 July 1946, Den Helder, the NetherlandsAffiliation at the time of the award: Utrecht University, Utrecht, the NetherlandsPrize motivation: "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics"Field: Particle physicsAutobiography"A man who knows everything". This, reportedly, was my reply to a school teacher asking me what I'd like to become when I grow up. I was eight years old, or thereabouts, and what I wanted to say was "professor", but, still not knowing everything, I had forgotten that word. And what I really meant was "scientist", someone who unravels the secrets of the fundamental Laws of Nature.This perhaps was not such a strange wish. Science, after all, was in my family. Just about at that time, 1953, my grand-uncle, Frits Zernike had earned his Nobel Prize for work that had led him to the invention of the phase contrast microscope. He had worked out the theory and singlehandedly constructed his microscope, with which he had stunned biologists by showing them moving images of a living cell. My grandmother, Zernike's sister, used to tell us anecdotes about her brother when they were young. One day, for instance, he had purchased a telescope at a local market. That night, the police came at their door to warn her parents that there were "zinc thieves on their roof"; it was Frits however, trying out his new telescope and studying the heavens. She herself had married her professor, a well known zoologist, Pieter Nicolaas van Kampen at the University of Leyden. I never knew him, he passed away, after a long illness, when my mother was eighteen years old.My uncle, Nicolaas Godfried van Kampen was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the State University of Utrecht. My mother did not opt for a scientific career. "It never came up", she now says, adding that actually math and science were not particularly difficult for her at school, but being a girl, you wouldn't admit that you actually liked such subjects. She went to art school but later achieved a degree in French, and now she teaches that language in a private class.Was it the environment or was it in my genes to choose to become a physicist? My grandmother adored scientists and by that she may have further determined my choice, but I think that my mind was made up long before I could talk. A picture was taken of me, at the age of two, studying a wheel. I do not remember the event, of course, but I do remember being fascinated by wheels when other kids were just running around, playing. My very earliest recollections are about being obsessed with phenomena I observed. I watched the ants crawling in the sand, and wondered what life

would be like if you were an ant. You would be able to go into the tiniest spaces between the pebbles, and those would be as big as houses for you. But, I realized, an ant's life must be totally different from ours. Still being a toddler I saw one day how the wheels of two children's bikes, which were upside down, touched each other. If you turn one wheel, the other one would start rotating as well. You can make one wheel turn by rotating the other. The principle of transmission. How fascinating Nature is. I was well over two years old before I started to speak. Was it because there were so much more interesting things I wanted to understand than to communicate with people? I was also late in reading and writing. This, I remember, was because I thought reading meant being able to decipher my mother's handwriting.Though born in Den Helder, I spent my childhood in The Hague, with my parents, my older sister who had changed her official name Elise into Ita as soon as she could talk, and my younger sister Agnes. My father had obtained a degree at Delft in naval engineering. He made his career at the dockyards of the big ocean cruisers of the Holland-America Line. He used to talk of the giants "Maasdam" and "Rijndam" as his ships. Then for a long time he worked at an oil company until he had enough of that. Like his father, he loved ships and all high-tech industry having to do with the sea. Noticing my interest in natural phenomena, he thought that it would be easy to get me interested in engineering as well. He bought me books about ships and car engines, which I never touched. "Those things have already been invented by someone else", I objected. "I want to investigate Nature and discover new things."When I was eight, my family moved for a ten month's period to London, England, where for the first time I was forced to master a foreign language, English. Too late, my parents discovered that sending their children to a private school would have required registration three years or more ahead. We went to a public school. School uniforms were not required, but there were strict regulations on clothing. One cold day I entered the school in long trousers. I was allowed in because I was a foreigner, and they always were very kind to me, but shorts, reaching until the knee, were the norm for the school. In summer time, during the week-ends, we would make long trips in the beautiful country-side. It seemed that all rain in England fell during the week-ends. I saw my first mountains, that is, hills taller than 100 meters, which hardly exist in the Netherlands. I was thrilled to notice that the tree trunks grow along the lines of gravity and ignore the direction of the slope. I also noticed some fundamental differences in English and Dutch architecture, so that, if you show me some houses, old or new, I can immediately tell the Dutch and English ones apart.My father made more money than usual, and this afforded him to buy me

some expensive boxes of Meccano. It was one of the great things he did for me. However, I had to make a deal with my father. Alternatingly, I would construct a model described in the book, and then construct something out of my own imagination. He thought the models in the book were more instructive, but I preferred my own imagination. The most fantastic things I constructed were robots, that I could persuade to pick up something, although infinite diligence was needed for that.After primary school I went to the Dalton Lyceum, also in The Hague. It is a school system where students are given extra hours for studying homework material in the presence of teachers, and it worked well for me. After one year the choice was to be made between a non-classical and a classical continuation, the classical one including ancient Greek and Latin, which would take one year more, and it would be more demanding. My uncle said the choice would be immaterial. "You don't need Latin and Greek for physics", he said, "but it doesn't do any harm either." I chose to take the challenge. Why? I think I couldn't stand the idea that some kids would learn things I didn't know. I never regretted the choice.My father bought me a book about radios, and that did interest me. "You know, Gerard", a schoolmate had once said to me, "nobody in the world understands how a radio works". This I found difficult to believe. "Look at all those things inside", I said, "the guy who designed that must have had some idea." But if there were any not understood secrets, I was going to find out about them, that I promised myself. The radio in the book had lamps in it, diodes, triodes, pentodes. Later I learned that transistors work the same way, and you could buy sets with complete instructions how to assemble a radio. I would never build a radio before I understood why it had to be assembled precisely this way. Why, for instance, would the designer always suppress the amplification power of a transistor by back coupling? I tried to make an amplifier with fewer transistors and no suppression. Can you make a radio with just one transistor for both the high frequency and the low frequency signal? I learned the answers to all these questions.Of the modern languages, English, French and German, besides Dutch, were obligatory. I had difficulties with the logic of linguistic arguments and besides, the texts we had to translate were such that even in my own language I could hardly understand what they were about. But I managed, and now I am happy that I can communicate with the inhabitants of a major fraction of Europe.So much easier were math (of which there was surprisingly much: algebra, analysis, trigonometry, stereometry), physics and chemistry. My physics teacher was a friendly, middle aged man with a small beard and a soft voice. He taught physics using a book that he and another teacher at our school had written, and which was being used throughout the country.

It was sound and pedagogical, but not always equally accurate. Where fluids were discussed, it explained that the cross section of an airplane wing has "a droplet form" because "droplets take a shape of least resistance". Elsewhere, the rainbow is derived, and there droplets were spherical.Being pedagogical was high on my teacher's priority list. But he also inspired us and made us think. "If there were any real geniuses in this class", he would say, "then they could have argued as follows, ... ". But then, he assured us, there were of course no real geniuses in this class. Then, there was an interesting page in his book about photons. "A light bulb emits about 109 Photons per second," it said. The argument was simple. "A single photon has a wave packet of about 10-9 seconds long. If there were much more than 109 photons, then for each photon vibrating in this way, you could find another photon vibrating in the opposite direction. You'd have destructive interference, and so there would not be any light." I had long arguments with him about this. Finally, with the help of my uncle, we could sort things out. This page does not appear in the later editions of the book.Biology was taught by an elderly lady, too kind for this world. She would never give anyone failing marks, unless someone really asked for it, but high marks were also rare. My marks quickly dropped when the lessons became boring, such as the discussion of symmetry patterns in flowers (I thought the symmetry was never perfect anyway), or incomprehensible, when the human body was discussed (some parts were hardly mentioned, except outside hours among the pupils, and there were things that no-one could explain to me, and I didn't dare to ask).Then, one of the teacher consultation days, my father noticed that none of the parents wished to talk to our biology teacher, since she never made anyone fail. He stepped towards her and said: "Did you know Professor P.N. van Kampen?" Of course she did, surely she did, she had attended all his lectures. He was such a scholar, he was so bright! Is Gerard really his grandson? If only had she known! The next day she started with zoology. I was given special attention. Van Kampen's grandson! My grades skyrocketed. She gave me the assignment to write a thesis. I chose to write about bacteria. Our local library had nothing about bacteria. One pre-war book was there, written in German in Gothic letters. I still don't know how I managed to produce a thesis using that. But it did not matter. My grade for it was superb.I had the good fortune of having an enthusiastic art teacher. I suspect it was only because of my good geometric insight that I could make quite realistic drawings. But my mother spotted the weak points in my art. If you want to draw a human face or body, you have to know exactly how the bones and the muscles go, she said, otherwise you do it all wrong, and

it doesn't look good. I was too shy to make a careful study of human bodies, and so I specialized in animals and landscapes. This will never make me a very good artist, I decided.When I was ten I encountered my first piano. We were on a vacation in the hills in the south-east of Belgium. It was continuously raining during the entire two weeks. The cottage we had rented had an old piano in it. There were a few books with some songs in them. My father explained how the notes relate to the keys on the instrument. "The rest you can figure out by counting". Both my parents had suffered from compulsory piano lessons when they were young, and had intended not to subject any of their children to such a torment. But now that I wanted them, I could get my piano lessons. I had a private teacher. She was tough. She herself had had lessons from the wellknown Dutch pianist Cor de Groot, and she wanted me to reach similar heights. I had to practice scales. It amazed her that the first time I tried to play a scale simultaneously with left and right hand, I nevertheless had the right idea to switch fingers left and right at different moments. "Most people first do this wrong", she said. She taught me Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Mendelssohn and many others. Much of it was too difficult for me, but I still play many of the pieces, and piano has become part of my life.At age 16, the opportunity was offered to participate at the Dutch National Math Olympiad. It was the second time the olympiad was held. I passed easily the first round; only by being nervous I had misread the first exercise, which had been done correctly by most other participants. But I had done well with the others, and so I went with some 100 schoolkids to Utrecht for the next round. It was a tough one, and I had missed several questions. On hindsight, the questions had been very good ones, and I had only missed them because of lack of rigorous mathematical training. Today, math questions are phrased in such awkward ways, supersaturated with pedagogical nonsense, that I'd probably have missed them all.Anyway, it came as a surprise when during a school break my younger sister came rushing towards me. "We searched for you everywhere," she said, "you're among the first ten!" The exact order was still kept secret. We came to Utrecht to learn that I had obtained the second prize. It consisted of two volumes of a book by Georg Pólya, "Mathematik und Plausibles Schliessen", and I devoured them. This was math of a kind that I liked very much. They must have seen by the way I had answered the questions that this was math to my liking. It contained, among other things, Euler's theorems for polygons in three-dimensional space, and this knowledge would turn out to be quite handy later in my career. I could have been number one in this Olympiad, if I hadn't flunked the first exercise in the first round, but then, probably, the others too had made avoidable mistakes.

The final examinations at high school, 1964, were tough. My only real problem was the languages, but what about biology? The high grades given by my teacher were ridiculous. Biology would be examined orally, and this time there would be a biology university professor who would independently judge the answers. When I entered the room, the first thing my teacher said to the university professor was: "Now this is Professor van Kampen's grandson! " His face brightened, 'Really?", he said, he had followed all of Van Kampen's lectures. Such a brilliant zoologist. And here is his grandson. He must be very bright. They asked something about some obscure sponge. I vaguely remembered the text in the book, and tried to reproduce it. "Yes, yes!", they cried, "and sometimes it is said that…" and then came the real text, which I had practically forgotten. They gave me a 10 out of 10. I gladly dedicate this result to the memory of my grandfather.I passed the examination and went to the State University of Utrecht. Leyden was closer to The Hague, but my uncle was teaching at Utrecht, and his lectures I desired to follow. My father insisted that I become a member of the most elite student organization, the Utrecht Studenten Corps. Freshmen were shaven bold. This was actually one of the lesser humiliating things they did; the elderly students had developed a special skill at humiliating their freshmen. Some of the new students had already been in military service; for them, it was all only too familiar, and they had no problem. But I was easy to crack, and they could ridicule my lack of interest in anything but science. "So you wrote a thesis about bacteria? What kinds of bacteria are there?" It was an elderly medicine student who asked the question. When I mentioned the spirochetes, he asked: "and which disease is caused by them?" I knew what he wanted to hear. "Syphilis", I said. His opinion was that I should go into medicine, not physics.But now I was near the Theoretical Physics Institute. I had rented a room just around the corner. Theoretical Physics occupied three adjacent houses opposite to a canal. One of the houses was owned by a lady who had introduced herself as a countess. There was some dispute as to whether she really was one. In summertime, when you opened the windows, chicken would hop in from the garden, and walk over the desks. Staff members would have coffee, lunch and discussions in a cellar. Through a narrow window you saw the legs of the pedestrians passing by. In earlier days the cellar had probably been in use by prostitutes. Of course, I was only a first year student, and I was not supposed to come in here. But more often than not, my uncle invited me in, and I adored the discussions, and the laughter.The student organization forced me to spend time also on other things besides physics, which was exactly why my father had wanted me to

become a member. I was coxswain in their celebrated Rowing Club, Triton, where I was appreciated because I could keep their boats coasting in straight lines. There was a student science discussion club, "Christiaan Huygens" where I have many fond memories, and together with some other students I organized a national congress for science students. But it was also at the student clubs where I learned to hate interminable meetings and pointless discussions. Especially the student revolts of the 60's I found silly and I kept at the greatest possible distance.I wanted to go into what I saw as the heart of physics, the elementary particles. Unfortunately, my uncle had developed a dislike of the subject. People in that field are very aggressive, he warned. He had also investigated elementary particles, deriving what the mathematical consequences are of the fact that no information can go faster than light. You find equations, he explained, called dispersion relations, but they don't tell you everything about the particles. He had written a few articles, meticulously deriving these consequences. "And what happened? Others wrote dozens of papers, full of unwarranted assumptions, sloppy arguments and incredible results. But there were so many of those papers, that only they got all the citations. " He thought that statistical physics was more to his liking.There was a newly appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics who did specialize in subatomic particles, Martinus Veltman, or Tini, as he was normally called. When time came that I had to write an undergraduate thesis, somewhere in 1968, he was the person to advise me and judge me for it. Veltman naturally thought that those high grades of mine were just because of my family background, and if I were any good, he would first need some convincing. This never even bothered me, all I wanted was learn about elementary particles, and if he didn't think much of me, so be it. First things first, he said. Here is a paper by C.N. Yang and R.L. Mills. This stuff you must know.Now this was a brilliant paper. It was beautiful, elegant and unique. But it was also considered to be useless. "It describes particles which do not exist in Nature", Veltman explained, "but in some modified form, they might". What modified form? To a fellow student, Veltman gave the assignment to study spontaneous symmetry breaking. There was a lot of confusion concerning the so-called Goldstone theorem. Jeffrey Goldstone had derived that spontaneous symmetry breaking implies the existence of massless particles. Spontaneous symmetry breaking could not be the resolution of the Yang-Mills problem because such massless particles do not exist. Later, this would be recognized as just one more example of too much adoration for abstract mathematical theorems; people did not bother to read the small-print, where Goldstone clearly said when his theorem does not apply. I am glad I ignored the problem; I did not understand why

people thought there were massless particles if I could not see any in the equations.My assignment was to study the so-called Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly. This was a subject in which Veltman was involved. He had a formal theorem saying that neutral pions cannot decay into photons. But when you actually calculate the decay, you find that it should occur. And the experimental data agree with that: neutral pions decay predominantly into photons. Something is wrong with the formal theorem. It was based upon flawed mathematics. The flaw was something highly interesting, and it would continue to play an interesting role later in particle physics. There were related problems with the eta particle. It decays into three pions while it shouldn't. The resolution to this problem was still entirely unknown.They say that organizing a student congress causes one year delay in your studies. But I had never stopped thinking about physics, and I could begin my PhD studies in 1969. In Holland, the PhD is a very serious matter. I remembered my physics teacher being so proud of his thesis. My history teacher obtained his PhD late in his life, and he too had been telling us all about his defense of his lifetime work. Veltman was to be my advisor. He gave me the choice between various topics, but none could catch my imagination more than the subject he himself was working on: the renormalization of Yang-Mills fields. He explained to me that vector fields must be playing an elementary role in the weak interactions, but also in the strong interactions there were vector fields. All these fields were associated to spinning particles with mass. The mass was where the problem started. "These mass terms in the equations look quite innocent", he explained, "but in the end they impede all my attempts to obtain a finite, meaningful theory."But he knew something else. He had studied the experimental data concerning the weak interactions. There, he had found very strong indications that the weak interactions have something to do with the theory of Yang and Mills. "But the matter becomes so complicated that you cannot do it by hand anymore", he said, and he had started designing a computer program to handle the complicated algebraic expressions. Computers were still in their infancy those days. Today's simplest hand-held calculators contain more electronic switches and are much faster than the bulky constructions that were called computers then. The monsters had to be fed with paper cards in which you had to punch your programs. His effort was an heroic one.What I began thinking about was my own version of the Goldstone theorem, but I could not read those pompous mathematical theories. What I reconstructed in my own way was something that actually did exist already: it is now known as the Higgs mechanism, but important elements

of it had also been derived by François Englert and Robert Brout. Unfortunately, these ideas were not along Veltman's line of thought. He wanted to derive everything just by looking at the experimental data, and by performing field transformations for which he could use his computer program. In his opinion, I clearly lacked insight in experimental subjects. Something had to be done about that. We sent my application to various summer schools in theoretical physics. My first choice was a school at Les-Houches, a ski resort high in the French Alps, near Chamonix. Famous French physicists would be teaching there. Presumably because my application was late, I was not admitted.The next choice was Cargèse, and here I was admitted. Near this small town on the French island Corsica, right at the sea, the French physicist Maurice Lévy had established an Advanced Science Institute, ten years earlier. The story goes that Lévy had looked up in the atlas which French town has the maximal amount of sunshine during summer, and then he found this location. Now, Lévy had developed a model for the strongly interacting particles together with Murray Gell-Mann. Formally, the model could be renormalized, but in practice there were numerous problems, and they were going to be discussed. It was summer 1970. Lecturers were, besides Lévy and many others: the Korean Benjamin W. Lee, the German of Polish descent Kurt Symanzik, and many Frenchmen such as Jean-Loup Gervais.The Gell-Mann-Lévy model is a model with spontaneous symmetry breaking. The pions are here interpreted as Goldstone particles. These lecturers were talking about renormalization in the presence of spontaneous symmetry breaking, and they were telling us that the mass terms that are generated (the mass of the proton) cause no problems whatsoever. As far as I remember, I only asked one question, both to Benjamin Lee and to Kurt Symanzik: "why can we not do the same for Yang-Mills theories?". They both gave the same answer: "if you are a student of Veltman's, ask him, we are no experts on Yang-Mills."A general picture of how to deal with massive vector particles was forming in my mind, but I could not understand the negative attitude of all the experts towards such theories. Later, I would find out that they all had different reasons for rejecting such approaches: some people thought that there would be Goldstone bosons with physically unacceptable properties. Some thought that introducing fundamental scalar particles would not serve any fundamental physical principle such as local gauge invariance. To many people, a renormalization programme would seem to be so complicated that mathematical clashes would be unavoidable. Finally, there was the scaling problem. It was thought that scaling towards asymptotic freedom in the ultraviolet region would never happen in a field theory; this would imply that any relativistic quantum system

with strongly interacting particles would explode nonperturbatively in the near ultraviolet, and therefore no perturbative quantum field theory would ever apply to such systems. Because of this universal agreement among the experts, no-one realized that all these arguments were wrong. Why had this faulty counter evidence not deterred me? Probably, Veltman's determination that there had to be something right about quantum field theory influenced me. But as a student I had also learned only to believe those arguments that I could truly understand.What I did understand from the Cargèse lectures is that renormalization is complicated and delicate. At least at this point I could agree with my advisor, Veltman. When I returned to Utrecht, his assignment to me was that I should first study the pure Yang-Mills system, without anything resembling a Higgs mechanism for generating masses. There was not much literature on the subject, except some very elegant papers by Richard Feynman, Bryce DeWitt and by Ludwig D. Faddeev and his coworker Victor N. Popov at Leningrad. But some of the papers seemed to contradict one another, and so I began to collect the pieces of information that I could understand.I learned how to formulate the Feynman rules for these Yang-Mills particles, and I learned that the discrepancy between the different papers was only an apparent one: you could perform gauge transformations to relate one to the other. I thought I was making tremendous progress towards formulating the exact renormalization procedure for this case, but Veltman had various objections. After long discussions, which again gave me many more insights, my first publication appeared. I had derived identities among amplitudes which were subsequently used by A.A. Slavnov and J.C. Taylor to derive more general identities, and their first references to my work made me feel very proud. The generally accepted name for these identities would be the "Slavnov-Taylor identities".After having learned so much about renormalizing massless Yang-Mills fields, doing the same thing for theories with Higgs mechanism was relatively easy. But it was this second paper with which I caught world-wide attention. Veltman realized that now the problem that he had been working on for years had been solved, and he was enthusiastic. As he was one of the organizers of an international conference on particle physics at Amsterdam in 1971, he decided to use his new pawn (me) in his battle for the recognition of Yang-Mills theories, and gave me 10 minutes (but no place in the Proceedings) to explain our new results. A period of intensive cooperation followed. Together, we worked out the so-called dimensional renormalization technique. Certainly, the work I had done was considered to be good enough for a PhD degree, and I graduated in 1972.This, by the way, was also the year of my marriage. While I was making my great discoveries in physics I had also discovered whom I wanted to

marry: Mrs Albertha A. Schik (Betteke). She had grown up in the town of Wageningen, and had studied medicine at Utrecht University.We went to CERN, Geneva, where I had a fellowship, and Betteke could begin her work to obtain her certificate as a specialist in anesthesia, at the Hôpital Cantonal of the town of Geneva. The day before she was to meet her new superiors and colleagues there, we had made a trip to the Mont Blanc; on the way back we were in a minor car accident, and she fractured a bone in her foot. Her entry at the hospital will be remembered.Veltman also came to CERN, and together we refined our methods for Yang-Mills theories. We were delighted with the great impact that our theories had. From 1971 onwards, all theories for the weak interactions that were proposed were Yang-Mills theories. Experiments were set up aimed at selecting out which of these Yang-Mills theories were correct. One of the simplest models continued to be successful; every now and then some particles were added to it, but its basic structure remained the same.At CERN, I became interested in the quark confinement problem. I could not understand why none of the expert theoreticians would embrace quantum field theories for quarks. When I asked them, why not just a pure Yang-Mills theory?, they said that field theories were inconsistent with what J.D. Bjorken had found out about scaling in the strong interactions. This puzzled me, because when I computed the scaling properties of Yang-Mills fields, they seemed to be just what one needs. I simply could not believe that no-one besides me knew how Yang-Mills theories scale. I mentioned my result verbally at a small conference at Marseille, in 1972. The only person who listened to what I said was Kurt Symanzik. He urged me to publish my result about scaling. 1f you don't, someone else will", he warned. I ignored his sensible advice. I had also made a remark about scaling in my 1971 paper on massive Yang-Mills fields. No-one had taken notice.Veltman told me that my theory would be worthless if I could not explain why quarks cannot be isolated. He attached more importance to another project we had embarked upon: we had started a lengthy calculation concerning the renormalizability of quantum gravity models. Although complete renormalization would never be possible, it was still worth-while to study these theories at the one-loop level, and there were some important things to be learned. Our work would be continued by Stanley Deser and a fellow PhD student of Veltman's, Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, who discovered patterns in the renormalization counter terms that would lead to the discovery of supergravity theories.But I also continued to think of gauge theories for the strong interaction. Quark confinement was indeed a problem, and I started to work on it. It was this question that led me to discover the magnetic monopole

solutions in Higgs theories, the large N behaviour for theories with N colours (instead of 3, the physical number), and later the very important effects due to instantons. In the mean time, the scaling properties were rediscovered by H. David Politzer and by David Gross and Frank Wilczek in 1973, who now realized that this invalidated the age-old objections against simple, pure Yang-Mills theories for the strong interactions. The pure Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU (3) was finally being accepted as the most likely explanation for the strong interactions, and it received the beautiful name "Quantum Chromodynamics" (QCD).In 1974 we returned to Utrecht. I had been given an assistant professorship there. I was making progress understanding confinement as an effect due to Bose condensation of colour-magnetic monopoles. An important observation by Kenneth Wilson was that permanent quark confinement appears naturally if one performs the 1/g expansion instead of the g expansion in gauge theories, provided that a lattice cut-off is used. We were just beginning to see the extremely rich topological structure of gauge theories, and its consequences for the quantized system.In 1976, 1 was invited for guest positions at Harvard (Morris Loeb lecturer) and Stanford. I worked on the question whether the delicate effects due to instantons - topologically twisted field configurations that should play a role in quantum chromodynamics - would survive when a renormalized perturbation expansion was applied. This led to one of the most complicated calculations I ever did: the one-loop corrections to instantons. It turned out that instantons in QCD give finite and well-defined contributions to the amplitudes. They give the symmetry structure a twist in such a way that many riddles in the experimental data concerning chiral symmetry were finally resolved, the most notable one being the problems with the eta particle, mentioned earlier. Several of my friends and colleagues at Harvard, MIT and Princeton such as Roman Jackiw, Sidney Coleman and David Gross but also physicists elsewhere (Moscow), students and postdocs joined the game of unraveling the secrets of instantons and monopoles. In the mean time my first daughter, Saskia Anne, was born, at Boston. When I returned to Utrecht I was appointed Full professor there. My second daughter, Ellen Marga, was born at Utrecht in 1978.The years that followed I spent much energy and inventiveness to shed more light on the quark confinement problem. The neat and clean treatment of QCD that I hoped to find did not exactly materialize, but by the beginning of the 1980s the elementary mechanism for this phenomenon had become clear. QCD can be treated numerically when lattice cut-offs are used, and nowadays increasing accuracies are being

reached by investigators using ever improving hardware and software. The problems remaining seem to be rather mathematical ones and not physical ones. QCD had become an integral ingredient of the Standard Model. I decided to turn towards the many open questions concerning the physics of this model.I felt pain and sadness when for personal reasons Veltman left Utrecht in 1981. What about the deep, open problems in the Standard Model? Many of my colleagues agree that supersymmetry, a symmetry relation between particles with different spins, should play an essential role. I had seen how supersymmetry was born, back at CERN during the early 1970s. Bruno Zumino and Julius Wess were producing highly intriguing papers, while Van Nieuwenhuizen and Sergio Ferrara, and many others were making progress in supergravity. But what should a supersymmetric "parent theory" be like? How and why should supersymmetry be broken to explain the world as we observe it today? Do we really have to believe that there are dozens of particle types called "super partners", none of which have ever been seen? Such questions make me feel uncomfortable with supersymmetric theories.The true answers must undoubtedly come from the incorporation of the gravitational force. At first sight it may seem difficult to believe that such an extremely weak force could cause so much havoc in a theoretical construction such as the Standard Model. The point is, however, that if gravity really corresponds to the curvature of space and time, as we must conclude from the successes of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, then Quantum Mechanics predicts quantum fluctuations in this curvature that, at the tiniest distance scales, grow out of control. This means that either gravity theory, or Quantum Mechanics, or both, must be replaced by some superior paradigm when we wish to describe physics at distance scales smaller than 10-33 CM. Whatever paradigm this would be, it is likely to entirely reform our understanding of the fundamental interactions, answering all our present questions at one stroke.In 1984, the superstring revolution took place. Many of my colleagucs were enchanted by the coherence of the mathematical structures they saw in this theory. Would this not be exactly what we are looking for, a new paradigm that naturally generates the gravitational force and an apparent complete unification of all interactions?But to me, superstring theories presented as many new problems as they may solve; I still cannot quite fathom the fundamental logical coherence of these ideas. The short distance structure is as mysterious as it was before and the predictive power of these theories was disappointing, to put it mildly. I decided to try a different route. When Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes will radiate due to quantum field theoretical effects, this to me appeared to be a more solid starting point. Are black

holes elementary particles? Are elementary particles black holes? I was stunned to learn that Hawking's result would put black holes in a category fundamentally different from any ordinary form of matter. If that were so, then what exactly are the laws of physics for black holes? The answer is that present theories are inconclusive. They clash. They lead to a paradox that may be as elementary as the paradox that, one century ago, led Max Planck to revise the black body radiation law, and which ultimately gave us Quantum Mechanics. By studying this paradox, I hoped to stumble upon something equally great. Needless to say, I was asking for more luck than in the average lottery system. The problem is a sturdy one, and it still has not been solved. To illustrate the paradoxical nature of our problem I formulated a feature of the quantum gravitational degrees of freedom which, in discussions with Leonard Susskind, was called the "Holographic Principle".For a long time, I was among a small selected group of extravagants who studied quantum black holes. But superstring theory was catching on. As I had expected, superstring theory was not within a stone's throw of "the final theory", which had been what its addicts had prophesied, but it underwent fundamental changes. Membranes of various dimensionalities ("p-branes") were added, and now a door was opened for studying black holes in string theory. Suddenly, I found myself to be nearly back in the "mainstream" of physics: string theoreticians are now seeing the "holographic principle" everywhere. But the solution to our problems, bringing the gravitational force fully in agreement with Quantum Mechanics, has not yet been achieved. As long as this is the case, we will not be able to produce verifiable predictions concerning the enigmatic details of the Standard Model.From Les Prix Nobel.

Yuan T. LeeBorn: 19 November 1936, Hsinchu, TaiwanAffiliation at the time of the award: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USAPrize motivation: "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes"Field: Physical chemistry, chemical kineticsBiographyYuan Tseh Lee was born on November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His father is an accomplished artist and his mother a school teacher.

He started his early education while Taiwan was under Japanese occupation - a result of a war between China and Japan in 1894. His elementary education was disrupted soon after it started during World War II while the city populace was relocated to the mountains to avoid the daily bombing by the Allies. It was not until after the war when Taiwan was returned to China that he was able to attend school normally as a third year student in grade school.

His elementary and secondary education in Hsinchu was rather colorful and full of fun. In elementary school, he was the second baseman on the school's baseball team as well as a member of the ping-pong team which won the little league championship in Taiwan. In high school he played on the tennis team besides playing trombone in the marching band.

Besides his interest in sports during this time, he was also an avid and serious reader of a wide variety of books covering science, literature, and social science. The biography of Madame Curie made a strong impact on him at a young age. It was Madame Curie's beautiful life as a wonderful human being, her dedication toward science, her selflessness, idealism that made him decide to be a scientist.

In 1955, with his excellent academic performance in high school, Lee was admitted to the National Taiwan University without having to take the entrance examination, a practice the Universities took to admit the best students. By the end of his freshman year he had decided chemistry was to be his chosen field. Although the facilities in the Taiwan University were less than ideal, the free and exciting atmosphere, the dedication of some professors, and the camaraderie among fellow students in a way made up for it. He worked under Professor Hua-sheng Cheng on his B.S. thesis which was on the separation of Sr and Ba using the paper electrophoresis method.

After graduation in 1959, he went on to the National Tsinghua University to do his graduate work. He received his Master's degree on the studies of the natural radioisotopes contained in Hukutolite, a mineral of hot spring sediment under Professor H. Hamaguchi's guidance. After receiving his M.S. he stayed on at Tsinghua University as a research assistant of Professor C.H. Wong and carried out the x-ray structure determination of tricyclopentadienyl samarium.

He entered the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in 1962. He worked under the late Professor Bruce Mahan for his thesis research on chemiionization processes of electronically excited alkali atoms. During his graduate student years, he developed an interest in ion-molecule reactions and the dynamics of molecular scattering, especially the crossed molecular beam studies of reaction dynamics.

Upon receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1965, he stayed on in Mahan's group and started to work on ion molecule reactive scattering experiments with Ron Gentry using ion beam techniques measuring energy and angular distributions. In a period of about a year he learned the art of designing and constructing a very powerful scattering apparatus and carried out successful experiments on N2+ + H2 --> N2H+ + H and obtained a complete product distribution contour map, a remarkable accomplishment at that time.

In February 1967, he joined Professor Dudley Herschbach at Harvard University as a post-doctoral fellow. He spent half his time working with Robert Gordon on the reactions of hydrogen atoms and diatomic alkali molecules and the other half of his time on the construction of a universal crossed molecular beams apparatus with Doug McDonald and Pierre LeBreton. Time was certainly ripe to move the crossed molecular beams method beyond the alkali age. With tremendous effort and valuable assistance from the machine shop foreman, George Pisiello, the machine was completed in ten months and the first successful non alkali neutral beam experiment on Cl + Br2 --> BrCl + Br was carried out in late 1967.

He accepted the position as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute of the University of Chicago in October 1968. There he started an illustrious academic career. His further development as a creative scientist and his construction of a new generation state-of-the-art crossed molecular beams apparatus enabled him to carry out numerous exciting and pioneering experiments with his students. He was promoted to associate professor in October 1971 and professor in January 1973.

In 1974, he returned to Berkeley as professor of chemistry and principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California. He became an American citizen the same year.

In the ensuing years, his scientific efforts blossomed and the scope expanded. His world leading laboratory now contains seven very sophisticated molecular beams apparati which were specially designed to pursue problems associated with reaction dynamics, photochemical processes, and molecular spectroscopy. His laboratory has always attracted bright scientists from all over the world and they always seem to enjoy working together. He takes great pride in the fact that more than fifteen of his former associates are serving as professors in major universities, and many others are making great contributions at the national laboratories and in the private sector.

Lee and his wife, Bernice Wu, whom he first met in elementary school have two sons, Ted (born in 1963), Sidney (born in 1966) and a daughter, Charlotte (born in 1969).Among some of the awards and recognitions he has received over the years include:Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1969-1971Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher Scholar Grant, Receipient 1971-1974.Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Science, 1975.Fellow, American Physical Society, 1976.John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, 1976-1977.Member, National Academy of Sciences, 1979.Member, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, China, 1980.Honorary Professor, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China, 1980.Honorary Professor, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 1980.Miller Professorship, University of California, Berkeley, California, 1981-1982.Ernest O. Lawrence Award, U.S. Department of Energy, 1981.Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar, California Institute of Technology, 1983.Harrison Howe Award, Rochester Section, American Chemical Society, 1983.

Peter Debye Award of Physical Chemistry, American Chemical Society, 1986.National Medal of Science, 1986.Honorary Professor, Chinese IJniversity of Science and Technology, Hofei, Anhuei, China, 1986.Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, University of Waterloo, 1986.From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1986, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1987 This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1986  Addendum, March 2006After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1986, Yuan Tseh Lee continued his research in chemical dynamics. Aside from research on reactive scatterings, his research group has made major contributions in the elucidation of various photochemical processes as well as in the determination of the structure of various protonated molecular clusters by obtaining infrared spectra. Many new instruments were developed for these purposes. He also directed much of his attention to the advancement of international scientific developments and to the promotion of general public affairs. As a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley from 1986 to 1993, Lee on different occasions served as Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Asian-American Affairs Committee at UC Berkeley, Member of the California Council on Science and Technology, and Member of the California Institute of Technology Board of Trustees. At the national level, he served on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and the Welch Foundation Science Advisory Board.In January 1994, after 32 years of research and teaching in the U.S., he took the important step of returning to his home country, Taiwan, to serve as President of Academia Sinica. Originally founded on the Chinese mainland in 1928, Academia Sinica has long been the most prominent research institution in Taiwan; at present, it has over 30 research institutes, covering the humanities, social sciences as well as the physical and biological sciences. During his tenure as President of Academia Sinica, Lee has worked hard to improve the quality of research in that institution. He believes the research conducted at Academia Sinica in several fields, including his own, now rivals the best works done in other parts of the world.Lee has also taken an active role in promoting scientific and cultural

developments in Taiwan. From 1994 to 1996, he was the chair of the national committee for educational reform. From 1996 to 2000, he led a national organization for community empowerment in Taiwan. From 2000 to 2002, he chaired a nonpartisan group that gave advice on matters concerning cross-strait relations (i.e. relations between Taiwan and China) to President Chen Shui-bian, whose electoral victory in 2000 marked the first change in the ruling party since World War II. Since his return to Taiwan, Lee has established several new foundations and aided existing organizations that support educational and research activities. He has also traveled extensively around the world to attend scientific conferences and hold lectures.Lee is scheduled to retire from his position as President of Academia Sinica in October 2006. Thereafter, he plans to work at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences and the Genomics Research Center, both at Academia Sinica. So far he has received 32 honorary doctoral degrees from universities around the world. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2006

Werner ArberBorn: 3 June 1929, Gränichen, SwitzerlandAffiliation at the time of the award: Biozentrum der Universität, Basel, SwitzerlandPrize motivation: "for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics"AutobiographyI was born on June 3rd, 1929 in Gränichen in the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland, where I went to the public schools until the age of 16. I then entered the gymnasium at the Kantonsschule Aarau where I got a B-type maturity in 1949. From 1949 to 1953 I studied towards the diploma in Natural Sciences at the Swiss Polytechnical School in Zurich. It is in the last year of this study that I made my first contacts with fundamental research, when working on the isolation and characterisation of a new isomer of Cl34, with a halflife of 1.5 seconds.

On the recommendation of my professor in experimental physics, Paul Scherrer, I took an assistantship for electron microscopy at the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva in November 1953. This laboratory was animated by Eduard Kellenberger and it had two prototype electron microscopes requiring much attention. In spite of spending many hours to keep the microscope "Arthur" in reasonable working condition, I had enough time not only to help developing preparation techniques for biological specimens in view of their observation in the electron microscope, but also to become familiar with fundamental questions of bacteriophage physiology and genetics, which at that time was still a relatively new and unknown field. My first contribution to our journal club concerned Watson and Crick's papers on the structure of DNA.

In the 1950's the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva was lucky enough to receive each summer for several months the visit of Jean Weigle. He was the former professor of experimental physics at the University of Geneva. After having suffered a heart attack, he had left Geneva to become a researcher at the Department of Biology of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. There, he had been converted to a biologist under the influence of Max Delbrück and had chosen to study bacteriophage lambda. This is why the first electron micrographs of phage lambda were made in Geneva. Stimulated by Jean Weigle we soon turned our interests also to other properties of lambda, and the study of defective lambda prophage mutants became the topic of my doctoral thesis.

In the summer of 1956, we learned about experiments made by Larry Morse and Esther and Joshua Lederberg on the lambda-mediated transduction (gene transfer from one bacterial strain to another by a bacteriophage serving as vector) of bacterial determinants for galactose fermentation. Since these investigators had encountered defective lysogenic strains among their transductants, we felt that such strains should be included in the collection of lambda prophage mutants under study in our laboratory. Very rapidly, thanks to the stimulating help by Jean Weigle and Grete Kellenberger, this turned out to be extremely fruitful. We could indeed show that lambda-mediated transduction is based on the formation of substitution mutants, which had replaced a part of the phage genes by genes from the bacterial chromosome. This made the so-called lambda-gal phage derivatives so defective that they were not able any longer to propagate as a virus. In fact, one of the at first sight rather frustrating observation was that lysates of lambda-gal, which indeed could still cause the infected host cell to lyse as does wild type phage lambda, did not contain any structural components of lambda (phage particles, heads or tails) discernible in the electron microscope. This was the end of my career as an electron microscopist and in chosing genetic and physiological approaches I became a molecular geneticist.

After my Ph. D. exam in the summer of 1958 I had the chance to receive an offer to work at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with Joe Bertani, a former collaborator of Jean Weigle. Several years before, Bertani had isolated and characterised another bacteriophage of E. coli, P1. Phage P1 rapidly had become a very welcome tool of bacterial geneticists, since it gives general transduction, i.e. any particular region of the host chromosome gets at some low frequency wrapped into P1 phage particles if P1 multiplies in a cell, and this enables the geneticists to carry out linkage studies of bacterial genes. While working as a research associate with Bertani, I received P1 at first hand which enabled me to study phage Pl-mediated transduction of monomeric and dimeric lambda prophage genomes as well as of the fertility plasmid F.

In the meantime, my Ph. D. thesis on lambda-gal, although written in French, had been read, or, what is perhaps more essential, understood in its conclusions by many leading microbial geneticists.

This may be the reason why I received offers to spend additional postdoctoral time in several excellent laboratories. On the other hand, I had remained in close contact with Eduard Kellenberger, and he urged me to come back to Geneva in order to lead an investigation on radiation effects on microorganisms. As a compromise, I decided to return to

Geneva at the beginning of 1960, but only after having spent several very fruitful weeks at each of the laboratories of Gunther Stent in Berkeley, Joshua Lederberg in Stanford and Salvador Luria at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

At the end of the 1950's, a special credit had been voted for by the Swiss Parliament for research in atomic energy, including radiation effects on living organisms. Eduard Kellenberger felt that important contributions to the latter questions could be expected from studies with microorganisms, and he had therefore submitted a research proposal which found approval by the granting agency, the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project could bring insight into the nature of radiation damage to genetic material and its repair mechanisms, as well as of the stimulation of genetic recombination by radiation. These topics had already engaged the attention of Jean Weigle and Grete Kellenberger for a number of years.

One of the first experiments after my return to Geneva was to render E. coli B and its radiation resistant strain B/r sensitive to phage lambda. The first step to accomplish this was easy thanks to a hint received from Esther Lederberg to look for cotransduction of the Ma1+ and lambdaS characters. However, the strains thus obtained still did not allow an efficient propagation of lambda. Very rapidly I realized that this was due to host-controlled modification, a phenomenon described for lambda and E. coli strains seven years earlier by Joe Bertani and Jean Weigle. However, I was not satisfied to know how to overcome this barrier. I was also anxious to know how the restriction of phage growth and the adaptation of lambda to the new host strain worked. When I started investigations on the mechanisms of host-controlled modification, I did not of course imagine that this sidetrack would keep my interest for many years. Otherwise I might not have felt justified to engage in this work because of its lack of direct relevance to radiation research. However, a lucky coincidence rapidly dissipated these concerns. At the same time, Grete Kellenberger had looked at the fate of DNA from irradiated phage lambda upon infection of host bacteria: part of it was rapidly degraded after injection into the host. And so was the DNA from unirradiated phage lambda used to measure adsorption and DNA injection into restrictive bacterial strains! This phenomenon became the topic of Daisy Dussoix's doctoral thesis, who very carefully not only studied the DNA degradation of phage that was not properly modified, but who also tried to detect parallels between the fate of unmodified DNA in restrictive conditions and of irradiated DNA in normal host cells.

Within about one year of study, it had become clear that strain-specific

restriction and modification directly affected the DNA, without however causing mutations. It soon also became obvious that restriction and modification were properties of the bacterial strains and acted not only on infecting bacteriophage DNA, but also on cellular DNA as manifested in conjugation experiments. These findings were reported by myself and Daisy Dussoix for the first time to the scientific community during the First International Biophysics Congress held in Stockholm in the summer of 1961. In a more extended version I presented them in 1962 to the Science Faculty of the University of Geneva as my work of habilitation as privatdocent. This work earned me in the same year the Plantamour-Prévost prize of the University of Geneva.

At a time before the Swiss Universities received direct financial help from the federal government, the Swiss National Science Foundation awarded "personal grants" to qualified researchers to allow them to guide projects of fundamental research at a Swiss University. I was lucky to benefit from such a support form 1965 to 1970. These years were devoted to hard work to consolidate the preliminary data and the concepts resulting from them, and to extend the acquired notions, in particular with regard to the mechanisms of modification by nucleotide methylation, with regard to the genetic control of restriction and modification and with regard to the enzymology and molecular mechanisms of these reactions.

This work would not have been possible without a very fruitful help by a large number of collaborators in my own laboratory and of colleagues working on related topics in their own laboratories. I was extremely lucky to receive in my laboratory in the basement of the Physics Institute of the University of Geneva a number of first class graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and senior scientists. It is virtually impossible to list them all in this context, but my warmest collective thanks go to all of them. In 1964 Bill Wood laid out a solid basis for the genetics of the restiction and modification systems EcoK and EcoB. Later, Stuart Linn, profiting from his fruitful contacts with Bob Yuan and Matt Meselson, who worked in the USA on the enzymology of EcoK restriction, set the basis for in vitro studies with EcoB restriction and modification activities. These studies culminated in the final proof that modification in E. coli B and K is brought about by nucleotide methylation. This concept had found its first experimental evidence during my two months' visit in 1963 with Gunther Stent at the University of California in Berkeley. Several years later Urs Kühnlein, a Ph. D student, and John Smith, working for various lengths of time with us, succeeded in careful in vivo and in vitro measurements on methylation to validate and extend the earlier conclusions. Their experiments also brought important conclusions with

regard to the concept of the sites of recognition on the DNA for the restriction and modification enzymes.

As an illustration that my work has not always been easy and accompanied by success, I would like to refer to my long, fruitless and thus largely unpublished attempts to find experimental evidence for the diversification of restriction and modification systems in the course of evolution. Systems EcoK and EcoB form a closely related family as judged from genetic and functional studies. Another family is formed by restriction and modification systems EcoP1 and EcoP15. One could expect that mutations affecting the part of the enzymes responsible for recognition of the specificity site on the DNA might result in new members of the family, recognizing new specificity sites on DNA. We have in vain spent much time in search for such evolutionary changes both after mutagenization and after recombination between two members of the same family of the above mentioned systems. That the basic idea for this search was good was recently shown by Len Bullas, Charles Colson and Aline van Pel (J. Gen. Microbiol. 95, 166- 172, 1976) who encountered such a new system in their work with Salmonella recombinants.

In 1965 I was promoted extraordinary professor for molecular genetics at the University of Geneva. Not only did I always enjoy a continued contact with the students, but I also considered teaching as a welcome obligation to keep my scientific interests wide. Although we had a few excellent students in our laboratories, the teaching of molecular genetics at the University of Geneva in the 1960's suffered a bit from a lack of interest by the young generation. This might have been related to a more general lack of public interest for this field, which was perhaps due to the economic structure of the city of Geneva and its environments. These, at that time perhaps more subconscious concerns, might have helped me to accept in 1968 an offer for a professorship at the University of Basel, since I felt that more general interest would be given to molecular genetics in this city with a long tradition of biomedical research at its industries.

I started my new appointment at the University of Basel in October 1971 after having spent one year as a visiting Miller Research Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of California in Berkeley. In Basel, I was one of the first persons to work in the newly constructed Biozentrum, which houses several University Departments, in particular those of Biophysics, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Structural Biology, Cell Biology and Pharmacology. This diversity within the same

house largely contributes to fruitful collaborative projects and it helps to keep horizons broad both in research and teaching. Additional contributions to this goal come from contacts with other nearby University Institutes as well as with the private research Institutions in the city.

Since my coming to Basel, I devoted relatively little of my time to further studies on restriction and modification mechanisms. Not that I have lost my interest in them. On the contrary, I was fortunate to be able to set up a junior group which under the leadership of Bob Yuan and more recently of Tom Bickle, became rapidly quite independent, and it continues to be very successful in its investigations on the more detailed aspects of the molecular mechanisms of restriction and modification. This allowed me to turn my main interests back to other mechanisms affecting either positively or negatively the exchange of genetic material. For a number of years Nick Gschwind, a Ph. D. student, and Dorothea Scandella, a postdoctoral fellow, explored two other mechanisms found in some E. coli strains or mutants and affecting more specifically than restriction and modification systems particular steps in the propagation of bacteriophage lambda.

For the last several years I have turned my principal interests to the intriguing activities of insertion elements and transposons, which by their actions on genetic rearrangements, seem to be the main driving forces of evolution in microorganisms. Because of their independence on extended nucleotide homologies these forces bring about exchange of largely unrelated genetic materials. Our postdoctoral workers Katsutoshi Mise, Shigeru Iida and Jürg Meyer brought important contributions to the understanding of these phenomena, mainly by the use of the bacteriophage P1 genome as a natural vector of transposable elements. But general knowledge on this to my mind extremely important field is still very scarce and deserves continued attention.

Solid notions on naturally occurring genetic exchange between organisms that are not directly related will also form a good basis for a scientific evaluation of conjectural risks of in vitro recombinant DNA research. Since this research largely makes use of restriction enzymes, although it in no way fully depends on them, I consider it a personal obligation to contribute to the best of my abilities to the solution of questions which arose in the scientific and public debate on this research in the last few years. I see two ways to reach this goal. The first is scientific and tends as just stated to better understand what nature does in its nonhomologous genetic exchange. The second is rather political and it consists in actions

to stimulate continued awareness of responsibility to work with a maximum of care in all scientific investigations, which should, however, be allowed to be done under optimal academic freedom.

A curriculum vitae would be incomplete without reference to my private life. I am fortunate to have found a continued support and steady encouragement by my family, in particular by my parents, and, since we became married in 1966, by my wife Antonia. In response to their interest and understanding for my scientific activities, I have tried to give them my personal affection needed for a harmonious life. Our two daughters Silvia and Caroline were born in 1968 and in 1974, respectively. When Silvia learned that I had been honored by the Nobelprize she not only wanted to know what this is, but also why I was chosen as a Laureate. After explaining her in simple terms the basic concepts of the mechanisms of restriction enzymes, she, after some reflection, reexpressed this message in her own terms by a tale, which in the meantime has found wide diffusion around the world. It might thus be justified to finish this curriculum vitae by its reproduction:

"The tale of the king and his servants

When I come to the laboratory of my father, I usually see some plates lying on the tables. These plates contain colonies of bacteria. These colonies remind me of a city with many inhabitants. In each bacterium there is a king. He is very long, but skinny. The king has many servants. These are thick and short, almost like balls. My father calls the king DNA, and the servants enzymes. The king is like a book, in which everything is noted on the work to be done by the servants. For us human beings these instructions of the king are a mystery.

My father has discovered a servant who serves as a pair of scissors. If a foreign king invades a bacterium, this servant can cut him in small fragments, but he does not do any harm to his own king.

Clever people use the servant with the scissors to find out the secrets of the kings. To do so, they collect many servants with scissors and put them onto a king, so that the king is cut into pieces. With the resulting little pieces it is much easier to investigate the secrets. For this reason my father received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the servant with the scissors".From Les Prix Nobel.

Samuel Chao Chung TingBorn: 27 January 1936, Ann Arbor, MI, USAAffiliation at the time of the award: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USAPrize motivation: "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind"Field: Experimental particle physicsAutobiographyI was born on 27 January 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first of three children of Kuan Hai Ting, a professor of engineering, and Tsun-Ying Wang, a professor of psychology. My parents had hoped that I would be born in China, but as I was born prematurely while they were visiting the United States, by accident of birth I became an American citizen. Two months after my birth we returned to China. Owing to wartime conditions I did not have a traditional education until I was twelve. Nevertheless, my parents were always associated with universities, and I thus had the opportunity of meeting the many accomplished scholars who often visited us. Perhaps because of this early infiuence I have always had the desire to be associated with university life.

Since both my parents were working, I was brought up by my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandfather lost his life during the first Chinese Revolution. After that, at the age of thirty-three, my grandmother decided to go to school, became a teacher, and brought my mother up alone. When I was young I often heard stories from my mother and grandmother recalling the difficult lives they had during that turbulent period and the efforts they made to provide my mother with a good education. Both of them were daring, original, and determined people, and they have left an indelible impression on me.

When I was twenty years old I decided to return to the United States for a better education. My parents' friend, G.G. Brown, Dean of the School of Engineering, University of Michigan, told my parents I would be welcome to stay with him and his family. At that time I knew very little English and had no idea of the cost of living in the United States. In China, I had read that many American students go through college on their own resources. I informed my parents that I would do likewise. I arrived at the Detroit airport on 6 September 1956 with $100, which at the time seemed more than adequate. I was somewhat frightened, did not know anyone, and communication was difficult.

Since I depended on scholarships for my education, I had to work very hard to keep them. Somehow, I managed to obtain degrees in both

mathematics and physics from the University of Michigan in three years, and completed my Ph.D. degree in physics under Drs. L.W. Jones and M.L. Perl in 1962.

I went to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as a Ford Foundation Fellow. There I had the good fortune to work with Giuseppe Cocconi at the Proton Synchrotron, and I learned a lot of physics from him. He always had a simple way of viewing a complicated problem, did experiments with great care, and impressed me deeply.

In the spring of 1965 I returned to the United States to teach at Columbia University. In those years the Columbia Physics Department was a very stimulating place, and I had the opportunity of watching people such as L. Lederman, T.D. Lee, I.I. Rabi, M. Schwarts, J. Steinberger, C.S. Wu, and others. They all had their own individual style and extremely good taste in physics. I benefitted greatly from my short stay at Columbia.

In my second year at Columbia there was an experiment done at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator on electron-positron pair production by photon collision with a nuclear target. It seemed to show a violation of quantum electrodynamics. I studied this experiment in detail and decided to duplicate it. I contacted G. Weber and W. Jentschke of the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) about the possibility of doing a pair production experiment at Hamburg. They were very enthusiastic and encouraged me to begin right away. In March 1966 I took leave from Columbia University to perform this experiment in Hamburg. Since that time I have devoted all my efforts to the physics of electron or muon pairs, investigating quantum electrodynamics, production and decay of photon-like particles, and searching for new particles which decay to electron or muon pairs. These types of experiments are characterized by the need for a high-intensity incident flux, for high rejection against a large number of unwanted background events, and at the same time the need for a detector with good mass resolution.

In order to search for new particles at a higher mass, I brought my group back to the United States in 1971 and started an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In the fall of 1974 we found evidence of a new, totally unpredicted, heavy particle - the J particle. Since then a whole family of new particles has been found.

In 1969 I joined the Physics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1977, I was appointed as the first Thomas Dudley Cabot Institute Professor of Physics at MIT. In recent years it has been

my privilege to be associated with M. Deutsch, A.G. Hill, H. Feshbach, W. Jentschke, H. Schopper and G. Weber. All have strongly supported me. In addition, I have enjoyed working with many very outstanding young physicists such as U. Becker, J. Burger, M. Chen, R. Marshall and A.J.S. Smith.

I married Dr. Susan Marks in 1985. We have one son, Christopher, born in 1986 and I have two daughters, Jeanne and Amy, from an earlier marriage.

I have been awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the US government in 1976 and the DeGasperi Award in Science from the Italian government in 1988. I have also received the Eringen Medal awarded by the Society of Engineering Science in 1977, the Golden Leopard Award for Excellence from the town of Taormina, Italy in 1988 and the Gold Medal for Science and Peace from the city of Brescia, Italy in 1988. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences (US) and the American Physical Society, the Italian Physical Society and the European Physical Society. I have also been elected as a foreign member in Academia Sinica, the Pakistan Academy of Science and the Academy of Science of the USSR (now Russian Academy of Science). I also hold Doctor Honoris Causa degrees from the University of Michigan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia University, the University of Bologna, Moscow State University and the University of Science and Technology in China and am an honorary professor at Jiatong University in Shanghai, China.From Nobel Lectures,