Nobel - Michael Worek

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Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

      Anatole France (1844–1924)

      1921 Literature

      In recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace and true Gallic temperament.

      Anatole France, the pseudonym of Jacques-Anatole Thibault, created remarkably clear works full of skepticism, irony and social criticism, qualities that made him heir to the tradition of Voltaire.

      The son of a bookseller, Thibault always lived surrounded by literary works. Since he was devoted to reading from his youth, and throughout his life he would maintain a passion for knowledge and storytelling. When he was 7 years old, Thibault told his parents he wanted to be famous.

      Although his mother was unhappy with what she considered to be her son’s vanity, Thibault’s father believed that, with a bit of experience in the world, the young Jacques would soon grow tired of fame. Time proved his prediction right.

      Thibault received a classical education at Stanislas College, an all-boys school in his native Paris, before a brief attendance at the Chartes School. Over the next years he worked at various jobs, all of them involving writing. He was a freelance journalist from 1862 to 1877, a librarian at the Senate from 1876 to 1890 and a literary critic for the newspaper Le Temps from 1888 to 1892. Despite demanding occupations, Thibault, under the pseudonym Anatole France, dedicated time to his personal writing. He explored almost all genres, but was a novelist and storyteller at heart. He wrote in classical French, which lent itself wonderfully to his style and subject matter.

      France’s first major success was Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (Sylvestre Bonnard’s Crime), published in 1881, and the novel received a prize from the prestigious French Academy. Balthazar (1889) and Thaïs (1890) followed, but his most celebrated novel, La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque), was published in 1893. A year later he wrote Histoire Contemporaine (Contemporary Stories), which marked a change in direction. This collection protested against the Dreyfus case, a political scandal involving anti-Semitism that divided the country for a decade, and showed his concern with other current events. In later years France was increasingly concerned with social questions, and they filled the pages of most of his last works.

      His private life had three distinct periods. His first marriage, to Marie-Valérie Guérin de Sauville, was celebrated in 1877 but ended in divorce 16 years later. He met Leontine Arman de Caillavet, the inspiration for his Thaïs, in 1888 and had a relationship with her until 1910, and then he married Emma Laprévotte in 1920.

      Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

      1921 Physics

      For his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

      Few men today are more closely associated with genius than Albert Einstein. Born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, his family moved to Munich. His high school years were spent in Aarau, Switzerland, when his family moved once more, this time to Italy.

      Einstein entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School at 18 with the intention of becoming a mathematics and physics teacher and, upon completion of his studies, was made a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1901. Unable to get a job as a teacher, he went to work as a technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office. In his free time, however, besides preparing for his doctorate degree — which he obtained in 1905 — Einstein was developing some of his most notable work, which was soon to shock the academic world.

      In 1908 he was nominated to be an assistant in Berne, Switzerland, but the following year he was made an associate professor at the University of Zurich. In 1911 he took up the chair of theoretical physics at the University of Prague, and then he moved to Switzerland in 1912 to take up a similar position. Einstein returned to Germany in 1914, reacquired his citizenship, took up a chair at the University of Berlin and became head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics.

      Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his extensive work in theoretical physics, particularly for discovering the law of photoelectric effect. He stayed in Berlin until 1933, the year in which he renounced his German citizenship for political reasons and immigrated to the United States, where he became a professor of theoretical physics at Princeton University. In 1940 he became a naturalized American citizen and retired five years later.

      He abhorred all nationalism and in the postwar period became a prominent figure in the world government movement. He was invited to be president of the State of Israel, an offer he turned town, but he did collaborate with Chaim Weizmann in creating the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

      His work brought him numerous prizes besides the Nobel, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925 and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute a decade later. Einstein left the world a rich store of publications and manuscripts, the most significant of the scientific works being Special Theory of Relativity (1905), General Theory of Relativity (1916) and The Evolution of Physics (1938). His nonscientific works include Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934) and Out of My Later Years (1950).

      He married twice, first in 1901 to Mileva Maritc, with whom he had a daughter and two sons, and after their divorce to his cousin Elsa Löwenthal in 1917. He was made a widower in 1936 and died 19 years later in Princeton, New Jersey.

      Frederick Soddy (1877–1956)

      1921 Chemistry

      For his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes.

      The son of a London merchant, Frederick Soddy was born on the September 2, 1877, in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. A man of strong principles and fixed ideas, he was always friendly with his students but showed a strict character with his colleagues. A notable scientist, he carried out research in the field of radioactive substances and developed the theory of isotopes, which earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

      Soddy began his studies in his hometown before attending University College of Wales. He received a scholarship to Oxford in 1895 and graduated with honors at the age of 21. He then carried out research there for two years before moving to Canada. Between 1900 and 1902, he was an assistant in the department of chemistry at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Along with the physicist Ernest Rutherford, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he published a series of studies on radioactivity.

      On his return to the United Kingdom, Soddy worked with the chemist William Ramsay at University College, London. He then lectured on physical chemistry, and radioactivity at the University of Glasgow between 1904 and 1914, continuing his experiments with radioactive material during this time.

      Frederick Soddy reached the peak of his scientific career in 1913, when he became the first person to demonstrate the existence of isotopes. The following year, he was made professor of chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. The outbreak of World War I, however, prevented him from further major research. After the war ended, in 1919, Soddy began lecturing in chemistry at Oxford University. He remained at Oxford until 1937, the year his wife, Winifred Beilby, whom he had married in 1908, died.

      The success he achieved as a chemist did not prevent Soddy from turning his attention to social, political and economic affairs. He was extremely critical of the failure of economic systems

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