WILHELM CONRAD RONTGEN THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS 1901

Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen was born on March 27, 1845, at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany.
He did not show any special aptitude in the childhood, but showed a love of nature and was fond of roaming in the open country and forests.
He was especially apt at making mechanical contrivances, a characteristic which remained with him also in later life.
In the year 1865, he entered the University of Utrecht to study physics.
Rontgen’s first work was published in 1870, dealing with the specific heats of gases, followed a few years later by a paper on the thermal conductivity of crystals.
Among other problems, he studied were the electrical and other characteristics of quartz; the influence of pressure on the refractive indices of various fluids; the modifications of the planes of polarized light by electromagnetic influences, the variations in the functions of the temperature and the compressibility of water and other fluids, the phenomena accompanying the spreading of oil drops on water.
On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all lights, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when it was as far as two meters from the discharge tube.
Rontgen’s name remains chiefly associated with this discovery of the rays that he called X-rays.
He was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
Fours years after the death of his wife, Rontgen died at Munich on February 10, 1923, from carcinoma of the intestine.

PIETER ZEEMAN --1902 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

PIETER ZEEMAN was born on May 25, 1865, at Zonnemaire, a small village in the isle of Schouwen, Zeeland, The Netherlands.
After having finished his secondary school education at Zierikzee, he went to Delft for two years to receive tuition in the classical languages,
It was here also that he came into contact with Kamerlingh Onnes, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics for 1913, who was twelve years, his senior.
Zeeman’s wide reading, which included a proper mastery of works such as Maxwell’s Heat, and his passion for performing experiments amazed Kamerlingh Onnes in no small degree, and formed the basis for a fruitful friendship between the two scientists.
Zeeman’s talent for natural science first became apparent in 1883, when, while still attending the secondary school, he gave an apt description and drawing of an aurora borealis- then clearly to be observed in his country.
Zeeman’s main theme of investigation has always concerned optical phenomena. his first treatise Measures relatives du phenomena de Kerr, written in 1892, was rewarded with a Gold Medal from the Dutch Society of Sciences at Haarlem, his doctor’s thesis dealt with the same subject.
In Strasbourg he studied the propagation and absorption of electrical waves in fluids.
His principal work, however, was the study of the influence of magnetism on the nature of light radiation, started by him in the summer of 1896, which formed a logical continuation of his investigation into the Kerr effect.
The discovery of the so-called Zeeman Effect, for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of the extraordinary service for researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena, the prize was shared by Zeeman with his teacher Lorentz
The importance of the discovery at once be judged by the fact that at one stroke the phenomenon not only confirmed Lorentz’ theoretical conclusions with regard to the state of polarization of the light emitted by flames, but also demonstrated the negative nature of the oscillating particles, as well as the unexpectedly high ration of their .charge and mass (e/m)
During the last year of his professorship he suffered from ill-health. He died after a short illness on October 9, 1943.

Emil ADOLF BEHRING – THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE IN 1901

Emil ADOLF BEHRING, born on March 15, 1854 at Hansdorf, now in Poland, was a German Physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicines.
Since the family could not afford to keep Emil at a University, he entered, in 1874, the well-known Army Medical College at Berlin.
This made his studies financially practicable but also carried the obligation to stay in military service for several years after he had taken his medical degree in 1878.
Behring’s most important researches were intimately bound up with the epoch-making work of Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Loffer, Roux, Yersin and others, which led the foundation of our modern knowledge of the immunology of bacterial diseases, but he is himself chiefly remembered for his work on diphtheria and tuberculosis.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1901 was awarded to him for his work on serum therapy, especially its application against diphtheria, by which he has opened a new road in the domain of medical science and thereby placed in the hands of the physician a victorious weapon against illness and deaths.
Numerous distinctions were conferred upon Behring. Already in 1893 the title of Professor was conferred upon him, and two years later he became a Geheimer Medizinalrat and officer of the French Legion of Honor.
In the ensuing years followed honorary membership of Societies in Italy, Turkey and France, in 1901, the year of his Nobel Prize, he was raised to the nobility, and in 1903 he was elected to the Privy Council with the title of Excellency.
Behring died at Marburg on March 31, 1917.