The Impossible Takes Longer (37 page)

P
AULING,
L
INUS
(USA, 1901-1994). Chemistry, 1954; Peace, 1962. Popularly known for his advocacy of vitamin C, Pauling is widely considered the most outstanding American chemist of the twentieth century. He was the first person to receive two unshared Nobels in different fields. His prize in chemistry was awarded for work on chemical bonds and molecular structure, and in peace for his waniings on nuclear weapons. His opposition to nuclear testing resulted in withdrawal of his passport in the 1950s.

P
AVLOV,
I
VAN
(Russia, 1849-1946). Medicine, 1904. Born in central Russia, the son of a priest, Pavlov studied theology before switching to medicine. An expert anatomist and surgeon, a pioneer in the study of the circulatory and digestive systems, he is best remembered for the concept of the conditioned reflex. Pavlov was unique in escaping punishment for his open criticism of the Soviet government.

P
AZ,
O
CTAVIO
(Mexico, 1914-1998). Literature, 1990. Paz was a political commentator, essayist, poet, and novelist of great eloquence and erudition. He entered the diplomatic service in 1945 and was for six years ambassador to India, resigning to protest his government's massacre of student demonstrators at the 1968 Olympic Games.

P
EARSON,
L
ESTER
(Canada, 1897-1972). Peace, 1957. Pearson served as an officer in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, then became a history professor, and entered the Canadian foreign service in 1928. He was ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations, chairman of the North Adantic Treaty Organization, and president of the UN General Assembly in 1952-1953. He was prime minister of Canada in 1963-1968. He won the Nobel Prize for his work in negotiating a resolution of the Suez crisis of 1956.

P
ENZIAS,
A
RNO
(Germany, USA; born 1933). Physics, 1978. Penzias's family escaped from Germany in 1939. After graduating from City College, spending two years in the Army Signal Corps, and earning a doctorate at Columbia University, Penzias took a job in radio astronomy at Bell Laboratories, where he remained for thirty-four years. He shared the Nobel Prize for the detection of microwave background radiation, which supported the big bang theory of the origin of the universe.

P
ERES,
S
HIMON
(Poland, Israel; born 1923). Peace, 1994. In 1947, Peres joined the Haganah, led by David Ben-Gurion, who, when he became prime minister, appointed him head of the Israeli navy at the age of twenty-seven. As foreign minister, Peres shared the Nobel Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for their work toward agreement on the development of Palestinian self-rule. He became prime minister of Israel after the assassination of Rabin in 1995.

P
ERSE,
S
AINT
-J
OHN
(France, 1887-1975). Literature, 1960. Saint-John Perse was born on Saint-Leger-les-Feuilles, a tiny coral islet off Guadeloupe. He was a diplomat in France until 1940, when he escaped to the United States, where he worked at the Library of Congress and stayed until 1957. Not well known even in France, Perse's poetry is relatively difficult, and his oeuvre is limited by the destruction of his manuscripts during the Second World War.

P
ERUTZ,
M
AX
(Austria, Britain; 1914-2002). Chemistry, 1962. Perutz left Vienna for Cambridge in 1936. During World War II, he was interned as an enemy alien in Canada but released to work on secret scientific projects. With fellow laureate John Kendrew, he founded the Cambridge Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He was honored for his X-ray diffraction analysis of the structure of hemoglobin. A keen skier and mountaineer, Perutz also studied the crystal structure and flow mechanism of glaciers.

P
HELPS,
E
DMUND
(USA, born 1933). Economics, 2006. A graduate of Amherst and Yale, Phelps worked at RAND, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale, and is now professor of Economics at Columbia. He is known for his work on savings and on unemployment. He received the Nobel Prize "for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy," which "deepened understanding of the relation between short-run and long-run effects of economic policy."

P
HILLIPS,
W
ILLIAM
(USA, born 1948). Physics, 1997. Both of Phillips's parents were social workers. A scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, he shared the Nobel Prize for his development of a method to use laser light to trap atoms by chilling them to very low temperatures.

P
INTER,
H
AROLD
(Britain, born 1930). Literature, 2005. The son of a tailor in London's East End, Pinter published his first book of poems at twenty. As a pacifist, he was prosecuted for refusing to undergo military service. He trained and worked as an actor. The first of his many plays was produced in 1957. His work, which deals with themes of violence, family hatred, and obsessive jealousy, uses silence, understatement, and cryptic small talk to evoke a sense of nameless menace. He has also written a number of screenplays for major films. Since the 1970s, Pinter has been an outspoken advocate of human rights.

P
IRANDELLO,
L
UIGI
(Italy, 1867-1936). Literature, 1934. Born in Sicily, Pirandello wrote poetry, short stories, novels, criticism, and drama. His famous play,
Six Characters in Search of an Author,
opened in Paris in 1923; like much of his work, it deals with illusion and reality. Pirandello was deeply affected by financial misfortune and by his wife's insanity, for which she was eventually institutionalized. He joined Mussolini's Fascist Party, but it is uncertain whether this was a matter of conviction or of expediency.

P
IRE,
G
EORGES
(Belgium, 1910-1969). Peace, 1958. Pire entered the Dominican order at Huy, Belgium, at eighteen and earned his doctorate of theology in Rome. He received many decorations for his work with the Resistance in World War II. His family had been refugees in World War I, and in 1949, Pire began his work with refugees, founding "European villages" and organizing sponsorship. After winning the Nobel Prize, he founded the University of Peace in Huy.

P
LANCK,
M
AX
(Germany, 1858-1947). Physics, 1918. Planck chose physics over music, at which he excelled, and earned his doctorate at twenty-one. The founder of modern physics, he introduced quantum theory in 1900. Planck went direcdy to Hider to protest the dismissal of Jewish professors. His wife died after twenty-two years of marriage, he lost his two daughters in childbirth, and his elder son was killed in World War I. The execution of his younger son after the 1944 bomb plot against Hider was a blow from which he did not recover.

P
OLANYI,
J
OHN
(Germany, Britain, Canada; born 1929). Chemistry, 1986. Polanyi was born in Berlin, the son of the eminent Hungarian scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. He was educated in Britain and spent almost fifty years at the University of Toronto. A leading figure in the promotion of science in Canada, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for work on the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.

P
ORTER,
G
EORGE
(Britain, 1920-2002). Chemistry, 1967. The son of a Yorkshire Methodist minister, Porter first attended a "tin hut school." He served as a naval radar officer during World War II and took his doctorate at Cambridge. An advocate for science education, he made a successful film series,
The Laws of Disorder,
for television. In 1990, he was created Lord Porter of Luddenham for services to science. He shared the Nobel Prize for his development of flash photolysis to study chemical reactions lasting one billionth of a second.