MC²

October 6, 2009
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 with one half to Charles K. Kao, Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Harlow, UK, and Chinese University of Hong Kong “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication”, and the other half jointly [...]

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on 8th August, 1901, at Canton, South Dakota (United States). His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson) Lawrence, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, his father being a Superintendant of Schools. His early education was at Canton High School, then St. Olaf College. In 1919 he went to the [...]

Gustav Ludwig Hertz was born in Hamburg on July 22nd, 1887, the son of a lawyer, Dr. Gustav Hertz, and his wife Auguste, née Arning. He attended the Johanneum School in Hamburg before commencing his university education at Göttingen in 1906; he subsequently studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, graduating in 1911. He [...]

Pierre Curie was born in Paris, where his father was a general medical practitioner, on May 15, 1859. He received his early education at home before entering the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. He gained his Licenciateship in Physics in 1878 and continued as a demonstrator in the physics laboratory until 1882 when he [...]

Marie Skłodowska Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students’ revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of [...]

James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20th October, 1891, the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. He attended Manchester High School prior to entering Manchester University in 1908; he graduated from the Honours School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under Professor (later Lord) Rutherford in [...]

Werner Heisenberg was born on 5th December, 1901, at Würzburg. He was the son of Dr. August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. His father later became Professor of the Middle and Modern Greek languages in the University of Munich. It was probably due to his influence that Heisenberg remarked, when the Japanese physicist Yukawa [...]

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on 8th August, 1902, at Bristol, England, his father being Swiss and his mother English. He was educated at the Merchant Venturer’s Secondary School, Bristol, then went on to Bristol University. Here, he studied electrical engineering, obtaining the B.Sc. (Engineering) degree in 1921. He then studied mathematics for two [...]

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and Ida de Gattis. He attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was recognized and encouraged by his father’s colleagues, among them A. Amidei. In 1918, [...]

Max Born was born in Breslau on the 11th December, 1882, to Professor Gustav Born, anatomist and embryologist, and his wife Margarete, née Kauffmann, who was a member of a Silesian family of industrialists.
Max attended the König Wilhelm’s Gymnasium in Breslau and continued his studies at the Universities of Breslau (where the well-known mathematician Rosanes [...]