6 Explorers of Tiny World Saluted With Nobel Prizes

Two Americans and a Canadian won the Nobel Prize in chemistry today, and three Europeans shared the physics prize, with all six cited for helping man to peer into the tiny world of molecules and atoms.

It was only the third time in the last 12 years that the Nobel physics prize has gone to anyone other than U.S. citizens. Non-Americans won in 1985 and 1984.

Dudley R. Herschbach, 54, of Harvard University; Yuan T. Lee, 49, of UC Berkeley, and John C. Polanyi, 57, of the University of Toronto shared the chemistry prize for their study of how molecules interact to form new substances, the Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The academy awarded the physics prize to three inventors of high-powered microscopes: Ernst Ruska of West Berlin, who built the first electron microscopes in the 1920s and 1930s; and Gerd Binnig of Frankfurt, West Germany, and Heinrich Rohrer of Switzerland, who designed a new type of electron microscope called the scanning tunneling microscope.

Ruska, 79, was awarded half of the $290,000 physics prize. Binnig, 39, and Rohrer, 53, who work together at the IBM laboratory outside Zurich, Switzerland, will share the other half.

The academy described Ruska’s microscope as “one of the most important inventions of this century” and said it made possible important advances in physics, biology and medicine.

300-Million Magnification

For example, electron microscopes, which magnify objects up to 1 million times, enabled scientists to see many viruses too tiny to be perceived through conventional microscopes.

The scanning tunneling microscope developed by Binnig and Rohrer can magnify objects up to 300 million times.

It has applications in medical research and the manufacture of tiny silicon computer chips.

Herschbach, 54, said after learning of the award that he felt “like a kid right now with a new toy.”

He jokingly described himself and his fellow chemistry winners as being on the “lunatic fringe” of the research community for their study of reactions that can last only a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Herschbach developed a vacuum-room apparatus in which the super-fast movements of molecular particles can be studied with the aid of lasers. The Swedish academy said Lee further developed Herschbach’s method.

Transfer of Energy

Polanyi, who was pursuing the same goal as Herschbach and Lee, separately developed a method of measuring the weak infrared emissions of newly formed molecules to discover how energy is transferred during chemical reactions.

Sture Forsen, a chemistry professor and member of the Swedish Academy, said the three chemists’ research can eventually be used to fight air pollution, acid rain and erosion of the ozone layer of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In Reuschlikon, a suburb of Zurich, Rohrer and Binnig were applauded by co-workers when they appeared at a news conference.

Rohrer said his wife “almost fell off her chair” upon hearing the news.

“We’re just at the very beginning” of research, said Binnig, visibly moved.