The Impossible Takes Longer (27 page)

A
UMANN,
R
OBERT
(Israel, USA; born 1930). Economics, 2005. Born in Germany, Aumann's family left for the United States in 1938. He studied at City College, New York, then earned a Ph.D. in algebraic topology at MIT. He moved to Israel in 1956. Controversial for his conservative views, Aumann won the Nobel Prize for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis."

A
UNG
S
AN
S
UU
K
YI
(Burma, born 1945). Peace, 1991. The daughter of an assassinated general who was a hero of the Burmese independence movement, Suu Kyi studied at Oxford and worked in the UN Secretariat. On returning to Burma in 1988, she assumed leadership of the National League for Democracy, which won 82 percent of the vote in 1990. The military junta refused to relinquish power and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest. Since then she has spent more than ten years in detention.

B
ALCH,
E
MILY
(USA, 1867-1961). Peace, 1946. Educated at Bryn Mawr, Harvard, and in Chicago, Paris, and Berlin, Balch was a lifelong campaigner for peace, justice, and the rights of minorities, women, and children. A delegate to the International Congress of Women during World War I, and subsequendy secretary to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, she was dismissed from Wellesley College in 1918 for her pacifist views.

B
ALTIMORE,
D
AVID
(USA, born 1938). Medicine, 197$. A leader in biomedical research, Baltimore worked on the polio and leukemia viruses, and was appointed head of the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Committee in 1996. An outspoken advocate for science-based public policy, he became president of Caltech in 1997. He won the Nobel Prize for "discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell."

B
ANTING,
F
REDERICK
(Canada, 1891-1941). Medicine, 1923. The son of a farmer, Banting served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in France, where he was wounded and won the Military Cross. He received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921. When his student and fellow investigator Charles Best was not given the prize as well, Banting split his award money with him. An unpretentious man and gifted amateur painter, Banting died in a plane crash in Newfoundland while on a wartime medical mission to England.

B
ARDEEN,
J
OHN
(USA, 1908-1991). Physics, 1956; Physics, 1972. After studying electrical engineering and geophysics in Wisconsin, Bardeen completed a doctorate in mathematical physics at Princeton. He worked during World War II in the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and spent the next six years at Bell Laboratories, where he was codiscoverer of the transistor, for which he won his first Nobel Prize. The last twenty-five years of his career he spent at the University of Illinois, winning his second Nobel for research in the theory of superconductivity.

B
EADLE,
G
EORGE
(USA, 1903-1989). Medicine, 1958. The son of a Nebraska farmer, Beadle attended agriculture college and became a specialist on corn genetics. He taught at Caltech, Harvard, and Stanford, and became chancellor and president of the University of Chicago. His award was for work on the genes that specify proteins.

B
ECKETT,
S
AMUEL
(Ireland, France; 1906-1989). Literat ture, 1969. Born in Ireland, Beckett moved to France in 1938. During the Second World War, he worked for the Resistance. In 194$, he embarked on his full-time career as an author, writing in both French and English. His works, of which the most famous is the play
Waiting for Godot,
depict humanity struggling to live in a world that appears bleak and absurd.

B
EGIN,
M
ENACHEM
(Poland, Israel; 1913-1992). Peace, 1978. Born in Poland, Begin learned nine languages and trained as a lawyer. The leader of a militant Zionist youth organization, he was imprisoned first by the Poles and then in Siberia by the Russians. His parents died in the Holocaust. Arriving in Israel in 1942, he became commander of the Irgun underground military group fighting British rule. As prime minister, he signed the peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David in 1979.

B
ELLOW,
S
AUL
(USA, 1915-2005). Literature, 1976. Born in Quebec, Bellow served in the Merchant Marine in World War II and as a war correspondent in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. A Chicagoan from age ten, Bellow spoke four languages and was married five times. The Swedish Academy praised him "for the human understanding and subde analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."

B
ENAVENTE,
J
ACINTO
(Spain, 1866-1954) Literature, 1922. Benavente was honored for his plays, of which he wrote more than 170. Celebrated for his witty dialogue, he was influential in the development of Spanish theater. His later work, and his support of Franco after the Spanish Civil War, diminished his reputation.

B
ERG,
P
AUL
(USA, born 1926). Chemistry, 1980. The son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, Berg grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and served two years in the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II. Like several other science laureates, he was originally attracted to science by Paul de Kruif 's book
Microbe Hunters,
A professor at Stanford, he has been called "the father of genetic engineering." He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on recombinant DNA.

B
ERGSON,
H
ENRI
(France, 1859-1941). Literature, 1927. Born in Britain, Bergson was professor of philosophy at the College de France. Widely influential through his books on philosophy, psychology, and religion, he championed intuition and spirituality over intellect and materialism. Jewish by birth but Catholic in oudook, in 1941 he refused an offered exemption from the Vichy racial laws and stood in line to register as a Jew. He died of pneumonia a few days later.

B
INNIG,
G
ERD
(Germany, Switzerland; born 1947). Physics, 1986. As a teenager, Binnig was an active athlete and sang, played the violin, and played guitar in a rock band. He has spent most of his career at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich. He received the Nobel Prize for his design of the scanning tunnel electron microscope, which can resolve vertical features one tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom. He regards parenthood of his two children as the highlight of his life.

B
ISHOP,
J. M
ICHAEL
(USA, born 1936). Medicine, 1989. Son of a Lutheran minister, Bishop spent more than thirty years at the University of California at San Francisco. He shared the Nobel Prize for the "discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes." A pianist, he once said that if he were reincarnated, he would choose to be a musician in a string quartet.

B
JØRNSON,
B
J×RNSTJERNE
(Norway, 1832-1910). Literature, 1903. Son of a pastor, Bjørnson grew up in rural Norway. He wrote historical and realistic plays, dramatic sagas, peasant stories, rustic novels, lyric poetry, and literary criticism. Themes of morality and religion are prominent in his work. He worked as a theater manager and traveled widely in Europe. He was politically active in liberal causes. A vigorous patriot, he composed the lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem.

B
LACKETT,
P
ATRICK
(Britain, 1897-1974). Physics, 1948. Blackett trained as a regular navy officer and served in the Royal Navy through World War I. In World War II, he was a senior adviser in various war departments. He was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation." A lifelong socialist, Blackett was an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons.