Nobel Prize Scientists

Robert S. Mulliken (June 7, 1896 ’Ŭ October 31, 1986) was an American physicist and chemist who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1966. He was a distinguished member of the faculty at the University of Chicago for 55 years. Mulliken was primarily responsible for the early development of molecular orbital theory (the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules). His father was Samuel Mulliken, a professor of organic chemistry at MIT. He graduated from high school in 1913 and received the same scholarship to MIT that his father had won. After graduation from MIT in 1917, he was drafted into the Army during World War I. After the war, he entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago and studied under Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert A. Millikan, which exposed him to the old quantum theory. He then went to Harvard and was able to associate with many future luminaries, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Harold C. Urey. In 1925 and 1927, Mulliken traveled to Europe and worked with quantum theorists Paul A. M. Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born, and Friedrich Hund, who were developing the new quantum mechanics that would eventually supersede the old quantum theory. In 1927, Mulliken worked with Hund and developed a molecular orbital theory, now referred to as the Hund-Mulliken theory. He returned to the University of Chicago and was promoted to full professor of physics and chemistry in 1931. Robert Mulliken became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1936, the youngest member in the organization’Ŵs history, at that time. Professor Mulliken participated in the 1983 Achievement Summit in Coronado, California and spoke to the student delegates about the joy of scientific research.

David H. Hubel received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discoveries concerning information processing in the human visual system. His work shed light on one of the mind's darkest mysteries, the process by which the brain interprets the signals it receives from the eyes. Born and raised in Canada, he attended McGill University Medical School and completed his residency in neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He began his research in the visual cortex of the brain while serving in the U.S. Army at Walter Reed hospital, where he developed the microelectrode and the modern hydraulic microdrive to observe neural activity in the visual cortex. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1959. His pioneering studies of the process by which the brain perceives contour, motion, depth and color have enabled treatment and prevention of numerous visual impairments in adults and children. In this podcast, recorded during his appearance before the Academy of Achievement at Coronado, California in 1983, he discusses his experimental process. He explores the role of different areas of the brain, and the physiology of human emotions, as well as the values of freedom and education in the United States. Today he is John Franklin Embers Professor of Neurology, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Leon Lederman is the world's foremost experimental physicist, one of the very small group of thinkers who revolutionized our understanding of the subatomic world. In the late 1950s and early '60s, he participated in the discovery of the K-meson particle and the non-conservation of parity during muon decay. In 1962, with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, he designed and performed an experiment that proved the existence of the muon neutrino. The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Lederman and his partners for "transforming the ghostly neutrino into an active tool of research." As Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois Lederman led the efforts which found the first anti-matter particle in 1965 and the bottom quark in 1977. He laid the groundwork for discovery of the mysterious top quark, detected by researchers at Fermi Lab in 1994. In addition to his scientific works, Leon Lederman has written highly accessible works for the general reader, such as The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? in which he described the elusive particle, now known as "Higg's boson," which physicists believe endows objects with mass. He discusses this, and many other questions in his 2011 book, Quantum Physics for Poets. This podcast was recorded during his address to the Academy of Achievement at the Academy's 1982 Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana.