The Nobel Prize

Iter Kolin, whose name appears on the two key papers wliich provided the impetus for the lopment of modern density functional theory, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in, jointly witli Jolin Pople. 

In the summer of 1963, I learned that I had won the American Chemical Society Award in Petroleum Chemistry for my work on Friedel-Crafts chemistry. It was a most welcome recognition for someone who only a few years earlier had fled his native country and started all over on a far-away continent. Although I have received numerous other awards and recognitions over the years, with the exception of the Nobel Prize, no other award touched me as much. 1 remember that my first ACS award carried with it a check for 5,000. My research director for some reason believed that a company employee was not... 

The new addition of the building was completed by the end of 1994 and dedicated in February 1995. Because I coincidentally won the Nobel Prize just two months before (more about this in Chapter 11), some believed that there was some relationship between the two events. This certainly was not the case. Katherine Loker and our other friends had made their wonderful gifts well before, and it was just a fortunate coincidence that we had such good timing to celebrate the opening of our enlarged institute. 

Was 1 prepared for the Nobel Prize 1 probably was, because over the years friends and colleagues had hinted that 1 had been nominated many times (of course, nobody really knows anything about the selection in advance). It is frequently said that the Nobel Prize represents the de facto end of the active research career of the recipients as they become public figures with little time left for scholarly work. However, I was determined that no prize or recognition would substantially change my life (see also Chapter 14). Furthermore, Judy, my life part-... 

Receiving the Nobel Prize from King Carl Gustav XVI, December 10, 1994... 

The Nobel Prizes also come with a monetary award, which that year amounted to close to a million dollars. Besides paying taxes on it (the U.S. is the only country that taxes the Nobel Prizes), we donated part of it to help endow a chair in chemistry at USC as well as a chemistry prize 111 Hungary. The balance was shared with our children. It was thus not difficult to dispose of the prize money, but money, of course, is really not the essential part of the Nobel. 

Winning the Nobel Prize inevitably brings with it, besides a brief period of wider publicity (which in America evaporates particularly fast), a steady stream of invitations, varied honors and recognitions, as well as more general public involvement. Professors and scientists in American life are usually not exactly at the top of the social ladder, nor are they used to much recognition. Personally, I rather like this, because it helps not to attach overgrown significance to one s importance, keeps one humanized, and, most important, allows one to stay centered without much distraction from one s work. It was, therefore,... 

One of the essentials of living with the Nobel Prize was to learn to firmly say no. Of the large number of invitations I receive for various... 

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was born in Portland Ore gon and was educated at Oregon State University and at the California Institute of Technology where he earned a Ph D in chemistry in 1925 In addition to re search in bonding theory Pauling studied the structure of proteins and was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for that work in 1954 Paul ing won a second Nobel Prize (the Peace Prize) in 1962 for his efforts to limit the testing of nuclear weapons He was one of only four scientists to have won two Nobel Prizes The first double winner was a woman Can you name her" ... 

The debye unit is named in honor of Peter Debye a Dutch scientist who did im portant work in many areas of chemistry and physics and was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1936... 

A particular kind of conjugate addition reaction earned the Nobel Prize in chemistry for Otto Diels and Kurt Alder of the University of Kiel (Germany) m 1950 The Diels-Alder reaction is the conjugate addition of an alkene to a diene Using 1 3 buta diene as a typical diene the Diels-Alder reaction may be represented by the general equation... 

Fischer determined the struc ture of glucose in 1900 and won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1902... 

Structural drawings of carbohydrates of this type are called Haworth formulas, after the British chemist Sir Walter Norman Haworth (St Andrew s University and the University of Birmingham) Early m his career Haworth contributed to the discovery that carbohydrates exist as cyclic hemiacetals rather than m open chain forms Later he col laborated on an efficient synthesis of vitamin C from carbohydrate precursors This was the first chemical synthesis of a vitamin and provided an inexpensive route to its prepa ration on a commercial scale Haworth was a corecipient of the Nobel Prize for chem istry m 1937... 

Much of the fundamental work on prostaglandins and related compounds was car ried out by Sune Bergstrom and Bengt Samuelsson of the Karohnska Institute (Sweden) and by Sir John Vane of the Wellcome Foundation (Great Britain) These three shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine m 1982... 

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