Biography

An American-born British theoretical physicist who developed a causal, nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics, David Bohm was born on December 20, 1917, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the U.S. to a Hungarian Jewish immigrant father, Samuel Bohm, and a Lithuanian Jewish mother. He is one of...

A Hungarian-born American physicist, joint winner, with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany and Maria Goeppert Mayer of the United States, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963, Eugene Wigner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on November 17, 1902, to middle class...

An American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles, Luis Walter Alvarez was born in San Francisco, U.S. on June 13, 1911, the second child and oldest son of...

An American astronomer known for her discovery of the relationship between period and luminosity in Cepheid variables, pulsating stars that vary regularly in brightness in periods ranging from a few days to several months, Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868, in...

A German-born American biologist known for his work in avian taxonomy, population genetics, and evolution, Ernst Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany on July 5, 1904, to Dr. Otto Mayr and Helen Pusinelli. He was one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists. He...

An American chemist best known for his syntheses of complex organic substances, including cholesterol and cortisone (1951), strychnine (1954), and vitamin B12 (1971), Robert Burns Woodward was born on April 10, 1917, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Margaret (née Burns, an immigrant from Scotland, and...

An American neurobiologist, corecipient with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1981 for their investigations of brain function, Sperry in particular for his study of functional specialization in the cerebral hemispheres, Roger Wolcott Sperry...

An American chemist whose technique of carbon-14 (or radiocarbon) dating provided an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists, anthropologists, and earth scientists, Willard Frank Libby was born in Grand Valley, Colorado, on December 17, 1908, the son of farmers Ora Edward Libby and his wife...

An American biochemist who received the 1961 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery of the chemical pathways of photosynthesis, Melvin Calvin was born on April 8, 1911, in St. Paul, Minnesota, the U.S. to the son of Elias Calvin and Rose Herwitz, immigrants...