2 in U.S. Share Chemistry Prize : Canadian, Europeans Also Are Nobel Winners

Two Americans and a Canadian were awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for chemistry Wednesday for their studies of the basic mechanisms of chemical reactions, and three Europeans received the physics prize for developing instruments to view the ultra-miniature world of viruses and computer chips.

Yuan T. Lee of UC Berkeley, Dudley R. Herschbach of Harvard University and John C. Polanyi of the University of Toronto were awarded the chemistry prize for illuminating the pathways by whi1667768417materials.

Ernst Ruska of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Institute in West Berlin and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer of the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, received the physics award for their work on microscopy.

The physics prize represented a belated recognition of work performed in the early 1930s by Ruska. In 1933, Ruska constructed the first electron microscope--”one of the most important inventions of this century,” according to the Nobel citation.

An electron microscope uses a beam of electrons rather than light to illuminate the object being studied. Because the wavelength of electrons is much shorter than that of light, much smaller objects can be seen in an electron microscope, which is now routinely used by biologists to view the interior of cells, viruses and even large proteins.

The 79-year-old Ruska, the oldest recipient of a Nobel, was vacationing Wednesday in the Black Forest, where he told reporters that he had long ago given up hope of winning the prize.

“In those days (the 1930s), I thought it was a possibility,” said Ruska, who retired in 1972. “But I would never have believed I would still get the prize now. I finished all my work on the electron microscope a long time ago and thought this chapter of my life was closed.”

Works Like Phonograph

Ruska received half of the $290,000 prize. The remainder was divided by Binnig and Rohrer for their more recent development of the scanning tunneling microscope, which permits viewing objects as small as atoms.

The scanning tunneling microscope works in a manner similar to a phonograph. An extremely small needle, whose tip is formed by a single atom, passes over the surface of an object in a regular pattern. A principle of physics called the tunneling effect keeps the tip of the needle a precise distance from the surface of the object.

As the tip moves up and down to follow the contours of the object, sensitive electronics measure its motion and convert that information into a detailed picture of the surface.

“The scanning tunneling microscope is completely new,” the Nobel citation said, “and we have so far seen only the beginning of its development. It is, however, clear that entirely new fields are opening for the study of the structure of matter.”

Began Work 5 Years Ago

The primary use of the technique now is for viewing integrated circuits on silicon chips.

Rohrer, 53, is a Swiss national; Binnig, 39, is a West German. They started work on their project five years ago and saw their first image of an atom 2 1/2 years later.

“When we started, people in our lab told us we were completely crazy, but they said if it worked we would win the Nobel Prize,” Binnig told reporters in New York in a transatlantic press conference. Rohrer added: “If we didn’t think it would be a success, we wouldn’t have started.”

Herschbach, 54, and Lee, 49, each received one-third of the chemistry prize for their studies of chemical reactions in molecular beams--streams of atoms or molecules traveling through a vacuum in a specific direction with a precise energy.

In a normal chemical reaction, individual atoms or molecules move in all directions and with a wide spectrum of energies, colliding at random and reacting only when their combined energies are high enough to overcome the molecular forces that would normally keep them separated.

“This problem had not been solved satisfactorily before the development described here,” the Nobel citation said,

Broad Applications

Lee and Herschbach, working together at Berkeley in the 1960s, conceived the idea of arranging such collisions between two beams of atoms, each with known direction and energy. In this manner they could tell precisely how the reaction occurred, how much energy was required and what products were formed.

Each has subsequently used the technique to study a broad range of chemical reactions, which are used in the synthesis of drugs, plastics and industrial chemicals.

“I feel like a kid right now with a new toy,” Herschbach told the Associated Press in Boston. “But the thing that really counts is the joy of finding new things.”

He added: “You feel very humbled to think that your name is going to appear on a list with some true immortals of science such as Einstein, (Enrico) Fermi and all the rest. And that can’t help but raise goose bumps.”

Lee was at a scientific meeting in Los Alamos, N.M., when he received word of the award in an elevator en route to a meeting. “Somebody congratulated me, and I didn’t know what it was about,” he said at a press conference there.

When Lee returned to San Francisco in the late afternoon, his wife, Bernice, and two other Berkeley Nobel laureates in chemistry, Melvin Calvin and Glenn Seaborg, were at the airport to greet him. Referring to the chemistry department, Seaborg noted: “We’ve gone 25 years without a Nobel. We were ready for one.”

Lee arrived in a jovial mood. “I don’t think it will change my life at all. I really don’t take it too seriously.”

Baseball Analogy

Lee was born in Taiwan and came to the United States in 1952. He said the award recognizes his field of study, rather than himself. “I don’t feel this is a personal thing.” Lee is Berkeley’s 15th faculty member to win a Nobel Prize.

He said playing baseball as a child in Taiwan helped him come up with the idea that led to the prize. He likened the collision of molecular beams to hitting a foul ball.

Polanyi, 57, was fighting a fire at his neighbor’s house in Toronto when reporters reached him early Wednesday morning. “I’m amazed,” he told the United Press International. “It so happens I’m having a fire . . . next door. May I phone you back?”

He was recognized for his 1958 discovery that molecules emit weak infrared radiation immediately after they are formed during synthesis.

That infrared radiation represents a residue of the energy that is required for carrying out the reaction and provides useful information about the mechanism of the reaction. His work led to the creation of chemical lasers.

Times staff writer Lonn Johnston, in San Francisco, also contributed to this story.