2 AMERICANS WIN NOBEL PRIZE FOR CHEMISTRY
PHYSICS HONOR GOES TO WEST GERMAN
Author: Associated Press
Date: Thursday, October 17, 1985
Page: 3
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
Two American scientists won the 1985 Nobel Prize for chemistry yesterday for
their work in determining molecular structure, which has been used to develop
hundreds of drugs.
Also yesterday, Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 1985 Nobel
Prize for physics to Klaus von Klitzing of West Germany, who made a discovery
that is expected to lead to higher-quality electronic goods.
The American scientists, Herbert Hauptman and Jerome Karle, are
physicists, but Nobel officials took the exceptional step of awarding them the
chemistry prize because their work in finding a method to determine crystal
structure has become indispensable to chemists.
Karle, 67, is director of research at the Laboratory for Structure of
Matter at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Hauptman, 68,
is director of research at the Medical Foundation of Buffalo in Buffalo.
"I'm still numb. I was terribly surprised. I still can't believe it,"
Hauptman said.
(United Press International reported that Karle was on a flight from
Munich to Washington when the award was announced, and that the pilot of the
Pan Am jet surprised him with the news. A spokesman said the jetliner's 280
passengers and crew members erupted in applause.)
Nobel officials credited Hauptman and Karle with working out equations and
procedures for use by scientists trying to analyze crystal structure through
radiation.
Ingvar Lindqvist, a Nobel chemistry juror, told journalists that the two
formulated their technique in the 1950s but that their work generally was not
thought to be important at the time. Nobel officials said computers using the
Hauptman-Karle work have been used to develop hundreds of medications.
Von Klitzing, a 42-year-old researcher at Stuttgart's Max Planck Institute
for Solid State Research, won the physics prize for his discovery in 1980 of
the "quantized Hall effect."
His discovery established precise steps in the behavior of electrons under
certain applications in semiconductor electronics, a field of importance in
computers and other modern technology.
The discovery permits more precise measurement of electrical resistance
and more accurate testing of theories about electronic movements within atoms.
AA0690;10/16,14:44 CORCOR;10/17,16:13 NOBEL17
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