Mass. native shares Nobel Prize in chemistry
By Jim Suhr, Associated Press, 10/10/01
ST. LOUIS -- For much of his four decades at Monsanto Co., William S. Knowles lived the researcher's life: Married to a microscope, he seldom drew much attention in pursuit of the latest, greatest find.
Now 84 and long retired, the Massachusetts native is getting his due.
Knowles' anonymity vaporized with a 4 a.m. wakeup call Wednesday with a message he may have confused as a prank: Congratulations, the caller from Sweden said, you've won a share of the latest Nobel Prize in chemistry.
"It just kind of overwhelmed me. I made sure it wasn't a joke," Knowles said from his suburban Kirkwood home, hours after being told his breakthrough in the late 1960s was being rewarded. "It was like, 'What, little old me?' I haven't been to sleep since. It hasn't sunk in yet.
"I never even thought such a thing was in the offing. I just really never thought I had any chance."
Knowles, who retired from Monsanto in 1986 after 44 years with the company, shares the prize with another American and a Japanese scientist for discoveries now used to make various medicines, including antibiotics, heart drugs and a widely used treatment for Parkinson's disease.
While working for Monsanto in 1968, Knowles found a way to produce the helpful form of the amino acid L-dopa, which is used to treat Parkinson's.
"I'm not a spring chicken anymore," he said. "I think the field has burgeoned since then, and (the Nobel committee) recognized that."
Knowles and Ryoji Noyori, 63, of Nagoya University in Japan shared half of the $943,000 award. K. Barry Sharpless, 60, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., won the other half.
They overcame a key problem in making drugs: The molecules of many substances used as drugs come in two forms that are mirror images of each other, just as the left hand mirrors the right. And only one of these forms is helpful, while the other is inactive or even harmful.
The three men developed chemical catalysts to produce only the useful form of such molecules. The resulting batches of drug are more potent and lack the side effects that the other form of the molecule would cause.
The coveted prizes were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite and were first awarded in 1901. Nobel gave little guidance other than to say the chemistry prize should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement."
"It couldn't have happened to a nicer person," said Nancy Knowles, who for 56 years has shared a home -- and wakeup calls, none like Wednesday's -- with her modest, unassuming scientist husband.
"I'm so thrilled for him," she beamed. "It's great he got such a prestigious award."
Born in 1917 in Taunton, Mass., and reared in New Bedford, Knowles even as a young child wanted to be a scientist and made it happen, getting a chemistry degree from Harvard in 1939, then a graduate degree in the field from Columbia three years later. He joined Monsanto in 1942, swiftly growing to love using his head and hands in a lab's sterile, silent environs.
Knowles hasn't slowed in his golden years. He still bikes the Katy Trail, hikes and embraces environmental causes. With a summer cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Knowles now plans a December trip to Sweden -- to collect his share of the winnings, $235,750, he's not quite sure how he'll spend.
"I haven't had a chance really to think about that," he said, having spent hours Wednesday on the telephone with well-wishers and reporters, from the United States to Germany and Sweden.
"It's been real wild," added his wife, herself undecided on what to do with the winnings. "We're still on Cloud Nine. We haven't gotten down to practical matters yet."
--- On the Net:
Nobel site, http://www.nobel.se
