Nobel Prizes for 1954

THE Nobel Prize in physics for 1954 has been awarded jointly to two German physicists, Max Born and Walther Bothe, with the Prize in chemistry going to an American, Linus Pauling. Born, now 73 and living in retirement at Bad Pyrmont, Germany, was honored ‘for his fundamental works in quantum mechanics, especially his statistical interpretation of the wave function”. Until recently he taught at the University of Edinburgh, and before that at Cambridge and Göttingen. Bothe, 63, is presently at the Max Planck Institute at Heidelberg. His award was in recognition of his development of the coincidence counting method in the study of cosmic radiation “and the discoveries he made with it”, notably that charged particles were present in cosmic rays. The work for which Born and Bothe share the Nobel Prize was done about twenty-five years ago. Pauling, 53, was born in Portland, Oregon, and is on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology. He was cited for “his works on the nature of chemical bonds, especially as applied to the structure of complicated substances”. The Nobel Prize carries with it a gold medal and a cash award currently worth about $35 000. The presentation ceremonies take place on December 10th in Stockholm.