Winner’s Circle
On the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, the government of Sweden and more than a dozen California educational institutions remind us that a disproportionate number of laureates have ties to the state--ties, it must be admitted, that in some cases seem comparable to an innkeeper’s boast that George Washington slept there.
So be it. The Golden State is nothing if not inclusive. Of the 732 Nobel laureates, 105 have some California connection, according to Mardi de Veuve Alexis, one of two coordinators of the California Nobel Prize Centennial Project sponsored by the Consulates General of Sweden in Los Angeles and San Francisco. More than half of those winners are still living.
Here, we salute 100 of the laureates with California ties in brief profiles (arranged alphabetically within prize categories, and based on information drawn from the Nobel Foundation and other sources) by writer Debra J. Hotaling. Also, Times staff writer Terence Monmaney sketches the work of five more scientists whose prizewinning research swiftly led to practical applications that remain newsworthy. As it happens, all five are laureates in chemistry, a science that can be as penetratingly pure as any other but that also rolls up its sleeves to create new material for our material world.
K. Barry Sharpless / Chemistry
When K. Barry Sharpless describes his research synthesizing molecules, for which he was awarded a share of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry, he sounds like an ad for a soap opera, with his talk of passion, obsession, suffering, excitement, love and monomania. In experiments dating back more than two decades, the 60-year-old Sharpless, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla since 1991, created ways to synthesize valuable chemicals--including insecticides, fragrances, flavors and a variety of drugs, from taxol, a cancer chemotherapy, to erythromycin, an antibiotic. His work has dazzled chemists, saved drug and chemical companies vats of cash and helped bring to market lots of stuff that people need.
Among other things, the tools he invented, known to chemists as the Sharpless Asymmetric Epoxidation, acknowledge that many complex organic compounds come in two forms that are mirror images of each other. They are colloquially referred to as left-handed and right-handed. Like gloves, such compounds are essentially the same but not interchangeable. And nature tends to prefer one version over the other.
For instance, a living cell might make a protein using a left-handed amino acid; to the cell, the right-handed version of the amino acid would be like a key that doesn’t fit the lock. Even you can tell the difference between the two forms of a so-called chiral molecule: While the left-handed form of the compound limonene smells like a lemon, its right-handed twin smells like an orange.
For chemists, the problem had been that the usual approaches to synthesizing a compound atom by atom created both the left- and right-handed versions. In essence, half of nearly every batch was wasted. Then, in 1980, Sharpless, working at MIT with Tsutomou Katsuki, found a way to steer certain synthesis reactions to produce either the left- or right-handed version, as desired.
The importance of being able to do so is hard to overestimate. Consider the thalidomide crisis of the early 1960s, in which thousands of pregnant women in Europe and Canada who took the drug gave birth to deformed babies. The pills contained a mixture of the left-handed and right-handed forms of the drug; one eased symptoms of morning sickness and the other caused the birth defects.
If the Dartmouth- and Stanford-educated Sharpless looks like a chemist--thin, khaki slacks, button-down shirt, eyeglasses--he often sounds like a poet, offering rhapsodies on “conformational analysis” and forever comparing his laboratory adventures to fishing, which he fervently pursued while growing up on the New Jersey shore. “What the ocean was to me as a child, the periodic table is to the chemist,” he wrote of the chart of the elements in a 1994 essay.
Around Scripps, it’s occasionally said that someone who’s late for an appointment must be talking with Sharpless, so captivating is his enthusiasm. Winning the Nobel, says Sharpless, was “empowering” and also something of a relief, given that chemists had been kidding him for years that he would one day receive the honor.
At the same time, he says, he’s somewhat frustrated because the obligations and celebrity of the prize made demands on his time that are keeping him from the lab, where he is working “on a different scale from anything I’ve ever done before. I need time for that. So I’m suffering.” He added, “The Nobel Prize can cause a lot of trouble for a guy like me, who’s just a nut about science.”
--T.M.
Paul Berg / Chemistry
Stanford University’s Paul Berg created the first recombinant DNA molecule in 1971. When the Nobel Prize committee bestowed the award on Berg in 1980, it said his “pioneering experiment has resulted in the development of a new technology, often called genetic engineering.”
That overstates things a bit--scores of scientists contributed to the field--but in splicing together DNA from a bacterium with DNA from a virus and getting the bacteria to function with the recombined DNA, Berg did show for the first time that genetic material from two different species could be successfully joined, breaching nature’s species barrier. He followed up that Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough with a feat nearly as remarkable: Even though the wide world of genetic engineering lay just ahead, thanks in large part to his own efforts, he helped persuade scientists to delay the next steps until they knew the experiments were safe.
Among other things, Berg organized a historic 1975 conference near Monterey at which scientists from the United States, England and five European nations agreed to postpone genetic engineering of mammalian cells and disease-causing microbes and work only with hobbled bacteria that couldn’t survive outside a laboratory. The fears--such as that a genetically engineered microbe might escape a lab and cause a horrible epidemic--proved unfounded, and the scientists’ self-imposed research restrictions, which became federal policy, were soon lifted.
But historians and scientists still praise Berg’s statesmanship, for seldom in science’s advance-at-all-costs culture has an innovator of a powerful technology worked so hard to restrict its use.
Other scientists went on to develop better methods of gene-splicing and then harnessed those tools to manufacture valuable biological substances--engineering bacteria to crank out human insulin, for instance. Now biotechnology is a $22-billion-a-year industry in which more than 1,200 U.S. companies offer 117 drugs and vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The most surprising thing, Berg says, “is how pervasive the technology has become, even in fields that one would not even have imagined it would impact.”
The 75-year-old Berg, a Brooklyn native, has a doctorate in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He’s a seminal figure, yes, but also approachable, which may help explain his success as a liaison between science and the public. He’s soft-voiced, patient, with a reassuring regular-guyness and a let’s-work-this-out straightforwardness.
No longer actively engaged in lab research, he remains a prominent voice in public-policy issues, most recently arguing against federal restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research--a limit that Berg and others contend will hamper understanding and treating diseases. After decades of research and policy work, he’d like to see people welcome what science might learn about the unknown.
“That’s what disturbs scientists the most. People are prepared to forgo certain lines of investigation because they’re afraid of what [scientists will] turn up. It’s that attitude I find most threatening or discouraging, because there isn’t a field of science that can’t be abused.”
--T.M.
Kary B. Mullis / Chemistry
Genius. Hippie. Womanizer. Brilliant. Outlaw. Out to lunch. Honest. Fearless. Hothead. Acidhead. World-changing.
Thus have colleagues, friends and detractors described Kary B. Mullis, a stereotype-busting scientist awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for inventing a technique that niftily generates lots of useful copies of DNA from a mere trace of the genetic material.
The technique, known as the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, is the basis of DNA-identifying tools that almost immediately advanced many fields, including biology, forensics, medicine and paleontology. How did archeologists determine the age of a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy? PCR. How have lawyers and other advocates freed scores of men wrongly imprisoned for murder, rape and other crimes since the mid-1980s? PCR treatment of crime-scene blood, semen, hair or skin, which showed that the perpetrators’ and prisoners’ DNA didn’t match. How do microbiologists identify a strain of anthrax bacteria from an exceedingly small sample? Yup. PCR.
Mullis, who turns 57 this month, also is known as the laureate who ran amok. He has been scorned for his mischief and, as his critics see it, for squandering his reputation on dangerous folly. He claims to believe in astrology, astral plains and a talking raccoon he met in the woods. He has peppered scientific talks with slides of nude women. He once addressed the empress of Japan as “sweetie.” He insists that global warming is not a problem and that the ozone layer is not in danger.
Most annoying to scientists, he claims that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and remains unmoved by the more than 5,000 physicians and academic scientists, including 11 other Nobel laureates, who signed a declaration last year saying unambiguously that HIV does cause AIDS.
One gets the impression that Mullis enjoys being naughty, that his assessment of scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “stupid” somehow reinforces his self-image as a free thinker. To his critics, though, his fringe views on non-genetic matters only prove that excellence in one scientific field doesn’t always translate to others.
Mullis was born in North Carolina, and he received a chemistry degree at Georgia Tech in 1966 before heading to Berkeley. He was only 39 when, working at the now-defunct Bay Area biotech firm Cetus in 1983, he created PCR, which uses the DNA-assembling enzyme polymerase to copy pieces of a sample’s DNA, generating enough of the stuff to then decode. Mullis says he most enjoys seeing how the tool has been used to shed light on evolution and history.
“Looking back at the past, trying to figure out, say, where humans migrated, looking at old bones, digging up all kinds of stuff and trying to figure out who was related to whom and how long ago--that’s a fun use of PCR,” he says.
He also cuts an often contradictory figure--a rhapsodizing LSD-using Berkeley progressive who made his mark in the competitive world of commercial genetics during its gold-rush years. Though he earned his doctorate in biochemistry at UC Berkeley, he published one of his first scientific papers, in the prestigious journal Nature, on black holes in space. He splits his time between an apartment in Newport Beach and a house in Mendocino County, and disputes rumors that he does little more than make trouble and go surfing. “I’m a hard-working boy,” he says. “Not rich.”
With no university appointment or full-time company job, he’s one of science’s most prominent freelancers. He advises a company creating software to manage laboratory data, another trying to apply optical scanning equipment to diagnose diseases from a drop of blood. He says he’s helping put together a government-funded biotechnology school in Italy. Some scientists say that Mullis’ productive career is over, but he’s still engaged in discovering. “I’m desperately curious about what life is all about,” he says. “I read the latest scientific journals the way my wife reads fashion magazines, with the same kind of thrill. I love science, and I’m glad that in this lifetime that’s what I’m doing.”
--T.M.
F. Sherwood Rowland / Chemistry
Sherwood Rowland wasn’t always a rabble-rouser. That role came later, after a discovery that challenged basic ideas about the fate of man-made chemicals in the atmosphere.
A distinguished chemist specializing in radioactive processes at UC Irvine, he was exploring new problems in the early 1970s when he chanced upon another scientist’s observation. Aerosol propellants--the gases that put the spray in hair spray--didn’t vanish into thin air, the scientist had noted, but accumulated in the stratosphere six to 30 miles above Earth.
The propellants, known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were believed to be harmless, inert. But Rowland, now 74, wondered whether that was true, and he and a chemist in his group at UC Irvine, Mario Molina, pursued the question. What they quickly found would rock the government, threaten a huge industry and transform global environmental policy. It also earned them and Paul Crutzen of the Netherlands--upon whose earlier research they built--a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995.
Molina and Rowland showed in their laboratory experiments that CFCs could react with the ultraviolet sunlight that strikes the upper atmosphere, setting off a chain reaction that destroys ozone there. And because ozone normally blocks UV light, they theorized, more and more UV rays would reach Earth as CFC levels rose. That, they argued, could cause more skin cancer and damage crops and forests.
With that data in, Rowland and his wife searched their Corona del Mar house, found 15 aerosol spray cans, and tossed them out. Many other Americans would soon do the same. After Rowland and Molina presented their work at scientific meetings in 1974, controversy erupted, and the chemists found themselves in the policy hot seat.
Their opponents were the CFC industry, which in 1974 produced an estimated $2 billion in sales, and corporations such as DuPont that relied on the propellants. Industry foes even fronted a sham environmental group that disputed their work. The National Academy of Sciences formed commissions in 1982 and 1984 to analyze data accumulated by scientists worldwide.
Doubts about their findings eased in 1985, when scientists documented a seasonal lack of ozone in the stratosphere over Antarctica that they attributed to CFCs. Then, in 1987, at a United Nations-sanctioned meeting in Montreal, scientists and officials from 56 nations--including the United States--forged an unprecedented agreement to phase out CFC propellants and refrigerants. Perhaps more surprising than the creation of the Montreal protocol, as it is called, is that the protocol works, Rowland says.
“We have in place an international agreement that we can tell is being followed because you can make measurements in the atmosphere and you see that CFCs are no longer increasing. In that sense, it is a demonstration that global environmental policy is possible and it will be followed.”
An Ohio native whose parents were college professors, Rowland attended Ohio Wesleyan (where his parents taught) and received his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Chicago. He played baseball and basketball in college and grad school--and semipro baseball in Canada--and is the only Nobel laureate in college sports’ GTE Academic All-America Hall of Fame. He taught at the University of Kansas before going to Irvine in 1964 as founding chairman of the chemistry department at the new UC campus.
Rowland’s discoveries came only after he gave up his chairmanship and returned to life as a researcher, this time focusing on atmospheric chemistry. “That was something I consciously did,” he says. “I changed fields when I was 46.”
These days, Rowland is studying how CFCs, methane and other atmospheric gases might contribute to that other potential climatic crisis, global warming. He works in a building named after him, passing in the lobby a bust of himself that, he says, looks less and less like him as the years go by. “Pretty soon, I’m going to have to start slinking in the back way.”
--T.M.
George Olah / Chemistry
George Olah was awarded the chemistry prize in 1994 for illuminating basic chemical reactions that had never before been observed, and also for showing that carbon itself, the backbone of organic chemistry, could be cajoled into behaving in ways that scientists had not believed possible.
Those findings have had multiple real-world benefits, including the development of better methods to create high-octane gasolines that burn more cleanly than pre-Olah distillates. Olah, born in Hungary and a doctoral graduate of the Technical University in Budapest, moved his laboratory to Los Angeles in 1977 after toiling two decades as a research chemist at Dow Chemical and then Case Western Reserve University. He now directs USC’s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and lives with his wife of 52 years atop a canyon near Beverly Hills.
At Case Western, Olah and his co-workers made the discoveries that, for chemists, expanded the boundaries of the possible. Using acids billions of times stronger than concentrated sulfuric acid, Olah was able, in effect, to slow down certain chemical reactions and study carbon atoms in the process of reacting with another element--a step that scientists had long assumed existed but couldn’t prove, given that it takes place as quickly as one ten-billionth of a second.
And contrary to decades of chemistry teachings, which held that carbon could form only four chemical bonds, Olah showed that it could be made to accommodate five, six, or even seven. That was akin to finding a 10th planet in the solar system. When chemists talk about Olah’s work, they talk about how it altered their thinking. But Olah also had an eye on the practical. His name appears on more than 100 patents.
Long after a less willful man would have yielded to the siren calls of fame and leisure, Olah is still teaching, running a lab and putting in long days. He hopes to oversee development of new methods of converting carbon dioxide--a waste product of combustion--into methane and methanol, which could then be used as fuel or to synthesize hydrocarbons, plastics and the like. With USC and Caltech colleagues, he has built a prototype fuel cell that generates electricity from methanol.
At 74, the man who survived World War II in Eastern Europe as a teenager and fled Hungary with two boxes of belongings during the Soviet crackdown of 1956, who shook the world of chemistry and survived stomach cancer, is very much an optimist. “I’ve always felt that what drives me is to do something, to learn, to inquire and so on,” he says. “Look, we have great problems, but I think the human race is very ingenious, and we will overcome them.”
--T.M.
Physiology / Medicine
David Baltimore, 1975
(with Renato Dulbecco and Howard Martin Temin)
California connections: Taught at Salk Institute in La Jolla. Currently president of Caltech.
Biggest hit: Teased out the relationship between DNA and RNA in a cell’s internal functions--specifically, how cancer-causing RNA viruses manage to infect a healthy cell. Bonus points: Early champion of AIDS research.
George Beadle, 1958
(with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg)
California connection: Fellow at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Beadle and his colleagues proposed and proved the theory that each gene was responsible for the production of a single enzyme, which itself controlled a particular chemical reaction in the cell. Their work represented a major step in the development of microbial genetics.
J. Michael Bishop, 1989
(with Harold Varmus)
California connection: Chancellor of UC San Francisco.
Biggest hit: Identified a large family of genes that control the normal growth and division of cells. Disturbances in one or some of these so-called oncogenes can lead a normal cell to transform into a tumor cell and result in cancer. Research is helping scientists understand the complicated signal systems that govern the normal growth of cells.
Baruch Blumberg, 1976
(with Carleton Gajdusek)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Made huge strides in helping researchers understand hepatitis B infections.
Francis Harry Compton Crick, 1962
(with James Dewey Watson and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins)
California connection: Teaches at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Biggest hit: With Watson, Crick co-discovered the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, also known as DNA--a finding that reshaped the study of genetics, launched the science of molecular biology and opened the door to new fields of study in medicine.
Max Delbruck, 1969
(with Alfred Hershey and Salvador Luria )
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hits: Wanting to find a simple organism on which to study fundamental life processes, Delbruck and his colleagues became interested in bacteriophage, any virus that infects bacteria. The team made a series of fundamental discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses and offered substantial insight into the nature of viruses and viral diseases.
Renato Dulbecco, 1975
(with David Baltimore and Howard Martin Temin)
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hit: See Baltimore.
Gerald Edelman, 1972
(with Rodney Porter)
California connection: Teaches at Scripps Research Institute.
Biggest hits: Made discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies, the collective name for a group of blood proteins that play an important part in the defense against infections and in the development of several different diseases.
Roger Guillemin, 1977
(with Andrew Schally and Rosalyn Yalow)
California connections: Teaches at Salk Institute in La Jolla and also Whittier Institute for Diabetes and Endocrinology at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.
Biggest hit: Made breakthrough discovery of brain-manufactured hormones that influence a range of body functions. First researcher to isolate and synthesize brain peptides called endorphins.
Leland Hartwell, 2001
(with R. Timothy Hunt and Sir Paul Nurse)
California connections: Studied at Caltech. Later taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: By identifying key molecules that regulate the cell cycle in all eukaryotic organisms, including yeasts, plants, animals and humans, Hartwell and his colleagues opened the door to learning how cells become cancerous. This may open new possibilities for cancer treatment.
Robert Holley, 1968
(with Marshall Nirenberg and Har Gobind Khorana)
California connections: Taught at Caltech, Salk Institute in La Jolla, UC San Diego. Biggest hit: Cracked the genetic code by showing how RNA transcribes genetic “messages” encoded in DNA and translates them so that amino acids know how, and in which order, to combine to make proteins.
Louis Ignarro, 1998
(with Robert Furchgott and Ferid Murad)
California connection: Teaches at UCLA.
Biggest hit: Discovered that nitric oxide is a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. This was the first indication that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism. It offers new approaches to how to treat heart attacks, cancer, shock and inflammatory diseases such as asthma.
Arthur Kornberg, 1959
(with Severo Ochoa)
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Successfully reproduced the conditions necessary for DNA replication in a test tube. His work moved science closer to being able to create life in the laboratory.
Joshua Lederberg, 1958
(with George Beadle and Edward Tatum)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Beadle.
Edward Lewis, 1995
(with Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus)
California connection: Studied and teaches at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Employing the humble fruit fly, Lewis and his colleagues identified and classified a small number of genes that are of key importance in determining the body plan and the formation of body segments. Their breakthrough promises to help explain congenital malformations in humans.
Thomas Morgan, 1933
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hits: Teased out the mechanism in the animal cell responsible for inheritance. Using rapidly reproducing fruit flies, Morgan advanced his theory of the linear arrangement of genes in chromosomes. Produced the first chromosome maps. Morgan’s work firmly established the link between chromosomes and inheritance.
Ferid Murad, 1998
(with Robert Furchgott and Louis Ignarro)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Ignarro.
George Palade, 1974
(with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve)
California connection: Teaches at UC San Diego.
Biggest hits: Using electron microscopy, Palade proved that the mitochondria were the sites of energy production in a cell. He also showed that ribosomes carry out protein synthesis.
Stanley B. Prusiner, 1997
California connections: Neurologist at UC San Francisco.
Biggest hit: Discovered “prions”--rogue proteins that cause disease by turning other proteins to the dark side as prions. Although there’s still dissent in the scientific community whether these mutated proteins really exist, Prusiner’s work has helped experts understand the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as “mad cow” disease.
Bonus points: Prusiner is only the fifth person in the past 40 years to win the physiology/medicine award solo.
Roger Sperry, 1981
(with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Discovered how the split brain works. Sperry’s research illustrated the left hemisphere’s focus on abstract thinking and the right hemisphere’s capacity for concrete thinking, spatial consciousness and comprehension of complex relationships.
Edward Tatum, 1958
(with George Beadle and Joshua Lederberg)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Beadle.
Howard Martin Temin, 1975
(with David Baltimore and Renato Dulbecco)
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: See Baltimore.
Harold Varmus, 1989
(with J. Michael Bishop)
California connection: Teaches at UC San Francisco.
Biggest hit: See Bishop.
Chemistry
Paul Boyer, 1997
(with John Walker and Jens Skou)
California connection: Teaches at UCLA.
Biggest hit: Discovered the molecular machinery that turns sunlight into energy powering all living things. Focusing on the chemical ATP (adenosine triphosphate), Boyer found that an enzyme, rotating like a little engine, enables the chemical to grab and release energy.
Melvin Calvin, 1961
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: First to use radioactive carbon-14 to show how plants turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar during photosynthesis. His work sparked widespread interest in the feasibility of solar power.
Bonus points: Dubbed “Mr. Photosynthesis” by Time magazine.
Donald Cram, 1987
(with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles Pedersen) California connection: Taught at UCLA. Biggest hit: Developed molecules that can “recognize” each other and choose which molecules they will form complexes with. His work laid the foundation for new areas of research called host-guest chemistry.
Paul Crutzen, 1995
(with Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland)
California connection: Teaches at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. Biggest hit: Made pioneering contributions in explaining how ozone is formed and decomposes through chemical processes in the atmosphere.
Paul Flory, 1974
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hits: Flory used statistical methods to tackle the problem of how to work with polymer molecules given that they don’t have a definite size and structure. He also developed a theory of nonlinear polymers, which involve cross linkages between molecular chains, showing how such extended structures can form from a solution of linear polymers. Rubber, nylon and plastic are all polymers.
William F. Giauque, 1949
California connection: Graduated from and taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Discovered a way to produce temperatures approaching absolute zero, which allowed scientists to see how substances behave at extremely low temperatures. A variety of consumer goods--including steel, rubber and glass--have become cheaper, stronger, more durable as a result of his research’s applications.
Alan Heeger, 2000
(with Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa)
California connection: Teaches at UC Santa Barbara.
Biggest hit: His research developing electrically conducting plastics. This team’s work has launched a field of chemistry that may one day translate into plastic computer screens that can be rolled up, illuminated wallpaper and molecular computers smaller than watches.
Dudley Herschbach, 1986
(with Yuan Lee and John Polanyi)
California connections: Born in San Jose. Studied at Stanford. Taught at UC Berkeley. Biggest hit: Explored the nature of chemical reactions. Molecules and atoms in all substances are in perpetual motion, and collisions between the molecules in a gas or a liquid occur continuously. When molecules come in close enough contact with each other, redistribution of the atoms can take place between or within them. Using a method of crossed molecular beams, Herschbach and his colleagues found they could conduct detailed studies of chemical reactions and, in doing so, opened up a new field of research.
Walter Kohn, 1998
(with John Pople)
California connection: Teaches at UC Santa Barbara.
Biggest hit: Explored the inner world of the atom. Kohn figured out how to take averages of electrons’ motions as they moved around molecules. Using Kohn’s approach, researchers now can design and manipulate molecules on their computers to see how they work. These custom-designed molecules promise to advance everything from drug design to new materials to faster computers.
Bonus points: When he was about 7, Kohn attended a costume party wearing a dark suit and carrying a sign that read “Professor Know-Nothing.”
Yuan Lee, 1986
(with Dudley Herschbach and John Polanyi)
California connection: Studied and later taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: See Herschbach.
Willard Frank Libby, 1960
California connections: Grew up near Sebastopol. Received doctorate from UC Berkeley. Taught chemistry at Berkeley and UCLA, where he was appointed director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics in 1962.
Biggest hit: Invented a method employing carbon-14--radiocarbon--for dating archeological artifacts as well as ancient plants, minerals and animals. Carbon-14 dating has become the most powerful method for determining the dates of objects as old as 50,000 years.
William Lipscomb, 1976
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hits: Until Lipscomb began his research, not much was known about boranes--compounds of boron and hydrogen. Using quantum mechanical calculations, Lipscomb was able to determine and, in many cases, predict the stability and reactions of the molecules under varying conditions. His work led to new conclusions about how chemicals bond.
Rudolph A. Marcus, 1992
California connection: Teaches at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Developed a mathematical way to determine how and where electrons jump between molecules without breaking chemical bonds. Marcus’ work linking electron transfers and energy opened the door to a variety of applications, including solar energy, synthetic chemicals, even photocopying.
Edwin Mattison McMillan, 1951
(with Glenn Theodore Seaborg)
California connections: Born in Redondo Beach. Grew up in Pasadena. Attended Caltech and later UC Berkeley, where he joined the physics department.
Biggest hit: Co-discovered plutonium, which made atomic bombs easier and less costly to make.
John Howard Northrop, 1946
(with James Batcheller Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley)
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Building on his colleague Sumner’s work isolating enzymes, Northrop continued crystallizing enzymes and proving that they consist of protein. Later, he launched into research focusing on the origin of viruses.
Glenn Theodore Seaborg, 1951
(with Edwin Mattison McMillan) California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: See McMillan.
Wendell Meredith Stanley, 1946
(with James Batcheller Sumner and John Howard Northrop)
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Stanley’s research on the tobacco mosaic virus allowed him to observe it in action--it appeared to act like an inanimate chemical but presented evidence of being a living and growing organism. This work led to the development of the flu vaccine. Bonus points: Didn’t seriously consider a career as a scientist until he was about to graduate from college. Planned to be a football coach.
Henry Taube, 1983
California connections: Studied at UC Berkeley. Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Developed techniques for studying the kinetics and mechanism of inorganic reactions, in particular electron-transfer reactions. Taube discovered that during a reaction, a temporary “bridge” forms between the ions of metal atoms. Electrons can be transferred across this bridge, speeding up reactions that would otherwise happen slowly or not at all. His ideas proved relevant beyond his own field of study--for example, in biochemical processes such as respiration.
Harold Urey, 1934
California connections: Studied at UC Berkeley and taught at UC San Diego. Biggest hit: Co-discovered the existence of heavy water, in which molecules consist of an atom of oxygen and two atoms of heavy hydrogen or deuterium. Heavy water is used in the nuclear industry because it can slow down fission reactions.
Bonus points: Served as a senior scientist for the Manhattan Project. Later advocated nuclear disarmament. In 1952, wrote to President Truman asking for clemency on behalf of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Einstein called his crusade to free the Rosenbergs “one of my most heartening experiences in the human sphere.”
Ahmed Zewail, 1999
California connections: Taught at UC Berkeley. Currently at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Using ultrashort laser flashes, Zewail showed how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction. Zewail’s work helps scientists understand why certain chemical reactions take place but not others. His discovery informs everything from how catalysts function and how molecular electronic components must be designed, to the most delicate mechanisms in life processes and how the medicines of the future should be produced.
Bonus points: In Zewail’s native Egypt, the government issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honor.
Physics
Hannes Olof Gosta Alfven, 1970
(with Louis Eugene Felix Neel)
California connection: Taught at UC San Diego.
Biggest hit: His work in plasma physics--the study of charged particles that represent 99% of all matter in the universe. Alfven figured out how electrical currents affect plasma, which can be found in interstellar space. Research offers clearer understanding of the nature of stars and the solar system.
Luis Alvarez, 1968
California connections: Born in San Francisco. Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Helped in the development of the hydrogen bubble chamber used to detect subatomic particles. Research led to the discovery of about 70 elementary particles and resulted in a major revision of nuclear theories.
Bonus points: Science buddies nicknamed him “Prize Wild Idea Man” because of his “Zelig”-like career. Was on board a bomber flying just behind the Enola Gay when it dropped atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Assisted the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. Held 22 patents, including an indoor golf-training machine he developed for President Eisenhower. With his son developed the theory that a giant asteroid struck Earth and killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Carl Anderson, 1936
(with Victor Hess)
California connections: Attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High School. Studied at Caltech, where he later taught.
Biggest hit: While using a cloud chamber to investigate cosmic rays, he discovered the positron--the first known antiparticle. Discovery contributed significantly to the understanding of cosmic radiation.
Felix Bloch, 1952
(with Edward Mills Purcell)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Developed the nuclear magnetic resonance technique for magnetic field measurements in atomic nuclei. His discovery made possible magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.
Bonus points: Worked on the Manhattan Project.
Owen Chamberlain, 1959
(with Emilio Gino Segre)
California connection: Studied and taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: In collaboration with Segre and others, Chamberlain discovered the antiproton--a particle with the same mass and spin as the proton, but with a negative charge and opposite magnetic movement. Discovery gave credibility to the notion that, for every particle, there exists a corresponding antiparticle, or antimatter.
Steven Chu, 1997
(with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Phillips)
California connections: Studied at UC Berkeley. Teaches at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Co-developed methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, which functions as a thick liquid--nicknamed “optical molasses”--that slows down atoms. Using this approach, scientists can study individual atoms, including their inner structure, with great accuracy. The methods may lead to the design of more precise atomic clocks for use in space navigation and highly accurate global positioning systems.
Eric Cornell, 2001
(with Carl E. Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle)
California connection: Studied at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Co-created the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter that occurs at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero. This 1995 discovery allows scientists to study the extremely small world of quantum mechanics as if they are looking through a giant magnifying glass. Helped launch a new branch of atomic physics.
Richard Feynman, 1965
(with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger)
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Claiming he could not understand the version of quantum electrodynamics presented in textbooks, Feynman developed a much simpler one. His method also was more accurate and enabled scientists to tackle physical processes that lay beyond the scope of conventional quantum theory.
William Fowler, 1983
(with Subramanyan Chandrasekhar)
California connection: Studied and taught at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Fowler’s work deals with the nuclear reactions that take place in stars during their evolution. In the 1950s, Fowler developed a complete theory of the formation of the chemical elements in the universe from which stars, planets and people are formed.
Murray Gell-Mann, 1969 California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hits: Gell-Mann found that the particles inside the atom’s nucleus, including the neutron and proton, are composed of fundamental building blocks that he named “quarks.” The quarks are permanently confined by forces coming from the “gluons.” He and others later constructed the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons, called “quantum chromodynamics.” His work has led to the emergence of a theory of elementary particles and all the forces of nature called the “superstring theory.”
Donald Glaser, 1960
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Invented the bubble chamber--a device that allowed researchers to trace movements of high-energy atomic particles as they passed through bubbles in a chamber filled with liquid and gas. Glaser’s bubble chamber has also played a part in the discovery of new atomic particles and in the study of particle mass, lifetime and decay. Bonus points: In his first experiments, Glaser exposed beer to gamma rays.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer, 1963
(with Eugene Wigner and J. Hans Jensen )
California connection: Taught at UC San Diego.
Biggest hit: With her colleagues, Goeppert-Mayer developed the groundbreaking nuclear shell theory that concluded protons and neutrons are arranged in a series of layers, or shells, and that helped explain why some nuclei are more stable than others.
Bonus points: On her father’s side, Goeppert-Mayer was the seventh consecutive generation of university professors. She was the first woman since Marie Curie in 1903 to receive the prize in physics.
Robert Hofstadter, 1961
(with Rudolf Mossbauer)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hits: Using a linear accelerator, Hofstadter studied the scattering of high electrons fired at atomic nuclei. He found that the distribution of charge density in the nucleus was constant in the core, but decreased sharply at a peripheral region. The radial distribution of charge was found to vary in a mathematical relationship that depended upon the nuclear mass. Further, Hofstadter was able to show that nucleons--that is, protons and neutrons--were not simply point particles, but had definite size and form.
Herbert Kroemer, 2000
(with Zhores Alferov and Jack Kilby)
California connection: Teaches at UC Santa Barbara.
Biggest hit: Kroemer invented semiconductor heterostructures used to build high-speed transistors. The results of his work can be seen in everything from mobile phones to CD players to radio link satellites.
Willis Lamb Jr., 1955
(with Polykarp Kusch)
California connections: Born in Los Angeles Studied at UC Berkeley. Taught at Stanford. Biggest hit: Lamb’s research drew him into the quantum mechanical theory that predicted the hydrogen atom had two possible energy states with equal energies. His research revealed a minute difference in these two levels. The discovery of this slight variation--the Lamb Shift--meant scientists had to revise their theories about how electrons interact with electromagnetic radiation.
Robert Laughlin, 1998
(with Horst Stormer and Daniel Tsui)
California connections: Born in Visalia. Studied at UC Berkeley. Worked at Lawrence Livermore labs. Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Through theoretical analysis, Laughlin showed that in a powerful magnetic field, electrons can condense to form a kind of quantum fluid related to the quantum fluids that occur in superconductivity and in liquid helium. This breakthrough affords researchers new insights into the structure and dynamics of matter.
Ernest O. Lawrence, 1939
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley. Biggest hit: Invented cyclotron, a device used for accelerating nuclear particles to very high velocities without the use of high voltages. These swiftly moving particles were used to disintegrate atoms, allowing scientists to discover hundreds of radioactive isotopes of the known elements. Discoveries contributed to development of the atomic bomb. Bonus points: In 1958, the UC Board of Regents named its Berkeley and Livermore laboratories after Lawrence.
Robert Millikan, 1923
California connection: Taught at Caltech. Biggest hit: Devised a process that enabled scientists to determine the electric charge of an electron.
Rudolf Mossbauer, 1961
(with Robert Hofstadter)
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hits: See Hofstadter.
Douglas Osheroff, 1996
(with David Lee and Robert Richardson)
California connections: Studied at Caltech. Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Co-discovered superfluid helium-3, which possesses atoms so well ordered that they behave like a single atom. This characteristic allows them to flow virtually friction-free, even uphill. Because helium-3 shares the same complex structure as “high temperature” superconductors, it may help researchers figure out how to bring the theory of superconductivity to reality.
Arno Allan Penzias, 1978
(with Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa and Robert Woodrow Wilson)
California connection: Taught at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Using a radio telescope to listen in on the Milky Way, Penzias and Wilson discovered cosmic microwave background radiation. Their findings bolster the theory that the universe was created by a giant explosion billions of years ago.
Martin Perl, 1995
(with Frederick Reines)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Discovered the “tau lepton” particle, a super-heavy electron that scientists didn’t even suspect existed. This subatomic particle was so unexpected that it was originally called the “U” particle, for “unknown.” It was described by the Nobel committee as one of nature’s most remarkable subatomic particles.
Leo Rainwater, 1975
(with Aage Niels Bohr and Ben Roy Mottelson)
California connections: Grew up in the Central Valley. Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Co-discovered the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei. Before Rainwater’s work, two independent models existed to explain the structure of an atom. Rainwater offered a unified theory that reconciled both models. Bonus points: Worked on Manhattan Project. Colleague Bohr is son of the eminent physicist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr.
Frederick Reines, 1995
(with Martin Perl)
California connection: Taught at UC Irvine.
Biggest hits: See Perl. Also discovered the neutrino, a chargeless elementary particle.
Burton Richter, 1976
(with Samuel Chao Chung Ting)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: With collaborators, Richter discovered a new kind of heavy elementary particle, which they named “psi.” Two thousand miles away, at Long Island’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, another group, led by Ting, made the same discovery, calling the particle “J.” In recognition of the simultaneous discovery, the particle is now referred to as the “J/psi.”
Arthur Schawlow, 1981
(with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Determined to find a practical way to produce highly concentrated beams of light, Schawlow came up with the idea of using a long chamber with a mirror at each end to concentrate and amplify light waves. What he came up with: the laser.
Bonus points: Used his $45,000 in Nobel Prize money to help rescue a bankrupt home for autistic adults.
John Schrieffer, 1972
(with John Bardeen and Leon Cooper)
California connection: Taught at UC Santa Barbara.
Biggest hit: Co-developed the theory of superconductivity. While superconductivity--that is, the complete disappearance of electrical resistance--was discovered early in the 20th century, its underlying mechanism continued to puzzle scientists. With his colleagues, Schrieffer developed a complete theoretical explanation of the phenomenon that opened up new avenues of theoretical and experimental research.
Melvin Schwartz, 1988
(with Leon Lederman and Jack Steinberger)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Through his neutrino beam method, Schwartz allowed scientists to gaze into the innermost structure and dynamics of matter. Work focused on the neutrino, which is completely transparent, emits no electrical charge and travels at the speed of light. Helped develop a method by which he and colleagues could produce and use a beam of neutrinos to study the reactions of neutrinos and other particles with which they collide.
Julian Schwinger, 1965
(with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Richard Feynman)
California connection: Worked at UC Berkeley, first as a National Research Fellow and then as an assistant to J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Biggest hits: See Feynman. Also co-founded the theory of quantum electrodynamics, bringing quantum mechanics into line with Einstein’s relativity theory. His work was the first to describe mathematically not only all interactions of light with matter but also those of charged particles with one another.
Bonus points: After skipping three grades, Schwinger graduated from high school at 14 and entered the College of the City of New York. Oppenheimer said of Schwinger: “His greatest work has been to give us a new understanding of that old and deep problem of the interaction of light and matter.”
Emilio Gino Segre, 1959
(with Owen Chamberlain)
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: See Chamberlain.
Bonus points: Member of scientific team that split the atom. In 1943, Segre was invited to serve as a group leader for the Manhattan Project.
William Shockley, 1956
(with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain)
California connections: Studied and taught at Caltech and, later, Stanford.
Biggest hit: Invented the semiconductor. (See related story on Page 32.)
Richard Taylor, 1990
(with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall)
California connections: Studied at Stanford. Joined staff at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Biggest hit: First detected the universe’s tiniest known particles, quarks, which Murray Gell-Mann had theorized many years earlier. Taylor and his colleagues found clear signs that there exists an inner structure in the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus. That paved the way for further investigations of the innermost structures of matter. Bonus points: First native Canadian to win the Nobel physics prize.
Charles Townes, 1964
(with Nicolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov)
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Helped develop the first maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), the forerunner of the laser.
Carl E. Wieman, 2001
(with Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle)
California connection: Doctorate from Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Cornell.
Kenneth Wilson, 1982
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Discovered how bulk matter undergoes “phase transition”--sudden and profound structural changes resulting from variations in environmental conditions (think of boiling water turning into steam or how a magnet, when sufficiently heated, will lose its magnetism). His work may help scientists understand quarks.
Robert Woodrow Wilson, 1978
(with Arno Allan Penzias and Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa)
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: See Penzias.
Economics
George Akerlof, 2001
(with A. Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz)
California connection: Teaches at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Demonstrated how a market where sellers have more information than buyers about product quality can contract into an adverse selection of low-quality products. For example, Akerlof’s work showed how asymmetric information of borrowers and lenders may explain skyrocketing borrowing rates on local Third World markets. He also explored the difficulties the elderly have in finding individual medical insurance, and labor-market discrimination of minorities.
Kenneth Arrow, 1972
(with John Hicks)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: Pioneered contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory. Arrow showed that it was impossible for a community to knit together a single order of priorities based on personal preferences that would make everyone happy.
Gary Becker, 1992
California connection: Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Biggest hit: For his research into “human capital”--including how families behave, the nature of crime and punishment and discrimination in the workplace. In his work, Becker explores the idea that people make rational choices about abortion, marriage, divorce and the number of children they have based on economic theories such as cost-benefit and incentives.
Gerard Debreu, 1983
California connection: Teaches at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Figured out the equilibrium between prices in a free-market economy as well as the balance between what producers supply and what consumers want.
Milton Friedman, 1976
California connection: Senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford. Biggest hit: Developed the quantity theory of money, which asserts that if there is a change in the money supply, either the price level or the supply of goods will change. Friedman also was a pioneer among those recommending the reorganization of the international monetary system based on free rates of exchange, using empirical studies to assess how such a system could be made to work.
Bonus points: Believed to have coined the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
John Harsanyi, 1994
(with John Nash Jr. and Reinhard Selten)
California connection: Taught at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Building on game theory, a specialized field of mathematics where complex logic is applied to real-world scenarios, Harsanyi developed mathematical models that showed rivals how to compete effectively without knowing their competitors’ next step.
Harry Markowitz, 1990
(with William Sharpe and Merton Miller)
California connection: Worked at Rand in Santa Monica.
Biggest hits: Developed the theory--and did the math--showing that investors should diversify their stock holdings to minimize risks while maintaining high returns. Invented the beta coefficient, a mathematical index widely used by investment managers to determine how best to diversify their holdings. His work continues to deeply influence how large and small investors handle their portfolios.
Daniel McFadden, 2000
(with James Hechman)
California connection: Teaches at UC Berkeley.
Biggest hit: Devised a method to predict how people make daily choices.
Robert Merton, 1997
(with Myron Scholes)
California connection: Studied at Caltech.
Biggest hit: Co-developed a pioneering formula to value stock options. Traders and investors use this formula in markets throughout the world.
Douglass North, 1993
(with Robert Fogel)
California connections: Studied at UC Berkeley. Taught at the Maritime Service Officers’ School in Alameda.
Biggest hits: Analyzed the role institutions play in economic growth. Observed that institutions are created when groups see an opportunity for profit that cannot be realized under prevailing conditions. Pointed out that economic, political and social factors must be taken into account if we are to understand the development of those institutions that have played a role for economic growth, and how these institutions have been affected by ideological and non-economic factors.
Bonus points: Photographer Dorothea Lange tried to convince North to become a photographer.
Myron Scholes, 1997
(with Robert Merton)
California connection: Taught at Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Merton.
William Sharpe, 1990
(with Harry Markowitz and Merton Miller)
California connections: Grew up in Northern and then Southern California. Studied briefly at UC Berkeley. Transferred to UCLA. Joined Rand in Santa Monica. Taught at UC Irvine and later Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Markowitz.
A. Michael Spence, 2001
(with George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz)
California connection: Teaches at Stanford.
Biggest hit: See Akerlof.
Peace
Herbert Abrams, 1985
California connection: Went through medical residency and taught at Stanford University. Biggest hits: Co-founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Succeeded in getting doctors from the Soviet Union, Japan, Canada, U.S. and various Western European nations to grapple with the medical implications of nuclear conflict and to debunk the myth of a “winnable” nuclear war.
Bonus Hollywood points: His brother, Mason Adams, played Managing Editor Charlie Hume in “Lou Grant.”
Ralph Bunche, 1950
California connections: Grew up in Los Angeles. Valedictorian at Jefferson High School and UCLA.
Biggest hit: Negotiated the 1949 Arab-Israeli truce.
Linus Pauling, 1954, 1962
California connections: Doctorate from Caltech, where he later taught. Research professor at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. Chemistry professor at UC San Diego. Staff at Stanford.
Biggest hits: Received Nobel chemistry prize in 1954 for his study of molecular structure and chemical bonding, especially of complex biological macromolecules. His suggestion of the helix as a possible structure for proteins laid groundwork for understanding DNA structure. Received peace award in 1962 for his attempts to ban nuclear weapons.
Bonus points: Only person to win Nobels in two categories. Led crusade claiming therapeutic value of high doses of vitamin C.
Jody Williams, 1997
(with International Campaign to Ban Land Mines)
California connection: From 1986 to 1992, developed and directed humanitarian relief projects as deputy director of the Los Angeles-based Medical Aid for El Salvador.
Biggest hit: Her work toward the banning and clearing of antipersonnel land mines.
Literature
Thomas Mann, 1929
California connection: Lived in Santa Monica from 1941 to 1953. Biggest hit: His novel “Buddenbrooks.” According to the Nobel committee, Mann “reconciled the loftiness of poetry and the intellect with a yearning love for the human and for the simple life.”
Czeslaw Milosz, 1980
California connection: Settled in Berkeley as a naturalized citizen, has taught at UC Berkeley since 1961.
Biggest hit: Described in the Nobel citation as one who “with uncompromising clearsightedness voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts.”
Eugene O’Neill, 1936
California connections: Lived in Danville from 1937 to 1944. Wrote his last and most famous plays at Tao House, now a National Historic Site in Danville.
Biggest hits: His evocative, exuberant and tragic body of work as a playwright, including “The Hairy Ape,” “The Emperor Jones,” “Mourning Becomes Electra.”
John Steinbeck, 1962
California connections: Born in Salinas. Studied at Stanford and devoted his creative life to writing about and drawing inspiration from the Golden State.
Biggest hits: His unflinching observations of the dispossessed and forgotten as demonstrated in “The Red Pony,” “East of Eden,” “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” for which Steinbeck received a Pulitzer Prize
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Portraits by Michael Kelley
