1960-1969

Melvin Calvin
Born: April 8, 1911 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA Married: to the former Genevieve Jemtegaard, daughter of Norwegain emigrant parents, they have two daughters, Elin and Karole, and one son, Noel. Died: January 8,1997 in Berkeley, California, USA Science Studies: Chemistry and Biology Institutions: Scientific Life: Reason for Nobel Prize:
 * Michigan College of Mining and Technology (B.S. degree in Chemistry)
 * University of Manchester
 * University of California, Berkeley( as a student, an instructor, and a professor)
 * Berkeley Radiation Laboratory
 * Science Advisory Committee
 * Lawrence Radiation Laboratory( as a director of the big-organic chemistry group)
 * Notable Awards: Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1961)
 * Priestley Medal
 * Davy Medal
 * Gold Medal from American Institute of Chemists
 * National Medal of Science (1989)
 * The American Philosophical Society
 * The American Academy of Arts and Science
 * The Royal Society of London
 * The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters
 * The German Academy of Scientists, Leopoldina
 * Honorary D.Sc. degrees from Michigan College of Mining and Technology, the University of Nottingham, Oxford University, and Northwestern University
 * It began with a thesis on the electron affinity of halogens which completed in 1935.
 * His interest in coordination was awakened. This interest is still paramount and has resulted both in theoretical and practical applications.
 * His interest turened to general theoretical aspects of organic molecular structure and behavior.
 * This interest combined with the earlier one on the catalytic behavior of coordination compounds were the natural parents of his present preoccupation with the problem of work to development of techniques for its use and its application to the exploration of photosynthetic carbon dioxide reduction.
 * Melvin Calvin got Nobel Prize for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants.
 * Every living organism needs a supply of energy in some suitable form. One group of organism is auto-trophic organism, i.e. the green plants and certain bacteria, do not require organic material supplied from without. They synthesize organic compounds from simple substances, carbon dioxide and water, substances that do not contain any calories. The energy needed for the synthesis is supplied by light which is absorbed by the organisms and subsequently converted by them from light energy into chemical energy. The sequence of reactions by which carbon dioxide and water are converted to carbohydrate is called carbon dioxide assimilation or taking into account the role of light energy, photosynthesis.
 * Melvin Calvin got awarded Nobel Prize because he found out the chemical reaction needed in this sequence of reactions called carbon dioxide assimilation.

Work Cited [] [] []


 * Ally- 1964**
 * Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin:**
 * Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin was born on May 12th, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt. Her father, John Winter Crowfoot worked in the Egyptian Educational Service and her mother, Grace Mary Crowfoot worked very closely with her husband in his work. **


 * As a child, Dorothy lived in Asia Minor and visited England every once in a while. During World War I, she and her sisters were separated from their parents and were taken care of by friends and family. At around age 10, she became interested in chemistry when a friend of her parents’, Dr. A.F.Joseph, of whom she stayed with during the War times, had introduced her to chemicals and helped her analyse them. By the time she was 18, she started studying chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. She also got to study at an all-girl’s University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. The University of Cambridge is where she learnt o f X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins. After, she went back to Somerville College to help with research. Later on, in 1937, she got married to Thomas Hodgkin. **


 * In 1953, Dorothy along with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel and Beryl Oughton, were able to see the structure of DNA (they were the first people to do so). **


 * Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize in 1964 specifically for advancing X-ray crystallography and finding the confirmed structure of penicillin and for the discovery of Vitamin B12. She also won the Copley Medal in 1976, the Order of Merit Medal, the Lenin Peace Prize, became a Fellow of the Royal Society and was also the Chancellor of Bristol University in 1970-1988. **


 * Sadly, Dorothy died on July 29th, 1994. **
 * Sources: [] **
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 __Robert B. Woodward __ Robert B. Woodward was born in April 10, 1917 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in 1937. In 1938-1979 he taught at Harvard University. Woodward started as a postdoctoral fellow in 1937. His entire career was spent at Harvard. Woodward is a U.S chemist and developed “Woodward’s rules.” Woodward’s rules determine structure by ultraviolet spectroscopy. He was able to determine this by recognizing that physical measurement can be revealed by molecular structure better than chemical reaction can. This was determined in 1940-1942. In 1944 he worked with William Eggers Doering and synthesized quinine from the basic elements. This became historical because William Perkin attempted to synthesize the quinine molecule in 1855. The structure of penicillin and other complex natural products were understood in 1945. Woodward later synthesized other molecules. The most important were cholesterol and cortisone which was done in 1951. Woodward and Roald Hoffman worked on the synthesis of B12 which led them to introduce the principle of conservation of orbital symmetry. The principle of conservation of orbital symmetry provided a understanding of a big group of chemical reactions. He was one of the most accomplished syntheses of complex organic compounds. Woodward received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1965. Robert B. Woodward died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 8th, 1979 due to heart failure. His death caused him not to win a second Nobel award, which was awarded to his colleague Hoffmann in 1981 for their work on the orbital theory.



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(Diana Overholser)

__Robert Mulliken__ Robert Mulliken was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on June 7th, 1896. His father was a professor of organic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began influencing Mulliken’s interest in science by teaching him the nomenclature of different plants. After graduating high school in 1913, he won a scholarship to MIT, where his father worked, and sought a major in chemistry. He received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from MIT in 1917. Following his graduation from MIT, Mulliken began to work at the American University in Washington, DC, formulating poison gas for use in World War I which had recently begun. After the war ended, Mulliken decided to extend his education and so enrolled in the Ph. D. program at the University of Chicago. He received his doctorate in 1921based on the separation of mercury isotopes by evaporation. At the University of Chicago, he took courses under former Nobel Prize winner Robert Millikan who got him interested in the quantum theory. After leaving Chicago, Mulliken went to New York and taught at the University of New York from 1926 to 1928 in the physics department. He then returned to Chicago and became a certified professor in 1931. Here, he continued to work on his molecular orbital theory, dealing with bonds between atoms and isotopes of different elements. Before Mulliken, the primary way to calculate electronic structure was through a method known as Valence Bond (VB) found by Walter Heitler and Fritz London. However, Mulliken’s method, along with contributions from John Lennard-Jones and Friedrich Hund, proved to be more efficient and applicable to different varieties of molecules. He also derived a new scale of measuring electronegativity in 1934, known as the Mulliken scale, and became Distinguished Professor of Physics and Chemistry in 1961 at the University of Chicago. As a result of his contributions, Mulliken won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1966. He died from congestive heart failure at his daughter’s home in Virginia in 1986 after retiring just two years prior. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Mulliken [] []
 * Lauren- 1966**

**Evan Jones**
 * 1968 Winner: Lars Onsager**



Lars Onsager was born in 1903 in Oslo, Norway to parents Erling and Ingrid Onsager. Lars' father was a member of the supreme court of Norway putting him in a position for a good education and success in his later years. Young Onsager started his learning career with private educators Inga and Anna Platou in his hometown of Oslo. After a period of limbo, Lars resumed his formal education at Frogner School where he skipped a grade and graduated in 1920. From there he began his journey as a chemist at Norges tekniske høgskole where he was a student of chemical engineering. From this point on Lars continued his education and went on to study and work at such universities as Brown, Oxford, Caimbridge and others. While in his later years of college Lars started the study that would win him his nobel prize. The study, a complicated one, was of irreversible processes wich are essential to the laws and study of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of chemical changes in energy and Lars' irreversible processes show the relation between energy changes and substances in a solution. He received much criticism for what is now known as the "fourth law of thermodynamics", for the most part because is was far ahead of its time. Today, however, it has become an important part of thermodynamics. In addition Lars has won numerous other scientific acheivement awards and is undoubtedly a key figure in modern science. Sources: [] [] []