The Impossible Takes Longer (38 page)

P
RIGOGINE,
I
LYA
(Russia, Belgium; 1917-2003). Chemistry, 1977. Pri-gogine's family left Russia after the revolution. His first specializations were classics and music. For many years, he held dual appointments at the Universities of Brussels and Texas. He received the Nobel Prize "for contributions to non-equinbrium thermodynamics." Much of his later work focused on "the arrow of time" in physics. He was created a Belgian viscount, and five international institutes bear his name.

Q
UASIMODO,
S
ALVATORE
(Italy, 1901-1968). Literature, 1959. Born in Sicily, Quasimodo trained and worked as an engineer for ten years before becoming a writer, editor, and professor of literature. During World War II, he was briefly imprisoned for his antifascist sympathies. He joined the Communists in 1945 but resigned when the party insisted he write political poems. He was honored "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our times."

R
ABIN,
Y
ITZHAK
(Israel, 1922-1995). Peace, 1994. Rabin rose from the ranks of the Haganah to be chief of staff of the Israeli army and ambassador to the United States. In 1992, he became the first native-born prime minister of Israel. Rabin shared the Nobel Prize with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat for their work toward agreement on Palestinian self-rule. Six years later, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli student who opposed his policies of giving up land for peace.

R
AMÓN Y
C
AJAL,
S
ANTIAGO
(Spain, 1852-1934). Medicine, 1906. Ca-jal's father had risen from poor barber-surgeon to professor of anatomy. Ramon rebelled against his father's desire to make him a doctor. He was a fine draftsman and photographer, and wanted to be an artist. His father apprenticed him to a barber, then to a cobbler; Cajal eventually entered the field of medicine. In 1874-1875, he served as an army doctor in Cuba, where he contracted malaria and TB. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the structure of the nervous system.

R
ICHET,
C
HARLES
(France, 1850-1935). Medicine, 1913. Richet was a professor of medicine, as were his father, son, and grandson. His wide interests included hypnosis, telepathy, aeronautics, playwriting, and pacifism. He received the Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis. His misanthropic book,
UHomme Stupide,
was published in 1919.

R
OBERTS,
R
ICHARD
(Britain, USA; born 1943). Medicine, 1993. Roberts grew up in England and took his Ph.D. at Sheffield University before emigrating to the United States, a classic case of the "brain drain" that cost Britain many of its most gifted people in the postwar years. He spent twenty years at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of split genes.

R
OLLAND,
R
OMAIN
(France, Switzerland; 1866-1944). Literature, 1915. Despite suffering from TB most of his life, Rolland became an excellent pianist, studied history at the Ecole Normale Superieure and in Rome, and earned a doctorate in musicology at the Sorbonne, where he became a professor. His magnum opus, the ten-volume
Jean Christophe,
completed in 1919, concerned the artist as lonely genius. A socialist and pacifist, Rolland spent World War I in Switzerland but was pro-French and anti-Nazi during World War II.

R
OOSEVELT,
T
HEODORE
(USA, 1858-1919). Peace, 1906. Roosevelt became governor of New York in 1898, the same year he led his regiment of Rough Riders to Cuba. In 1900, he became vice president, and with William McKinley's assassination in 1901 he became the twenty-sixth and youngest president of the United States. Although Roosevelet was honored for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, he was probably the most militaristic recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. A champion of the vigorous life, a liberal, and a populist, Roosevelt wrote twenty-nine books and over one thousand magazine articles.

R
UBBIA,
C
ARLO
(Italy, USA; born 1934). Physics, 1984. Rubbia studied physics at the universities of Pisa, Columbia, and Rome. He divided his time between Harvard and CERN (Centre Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire) in Geneva. He shared the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the discovery of three subatomic particles.

R
USSELL,
B
ERTRAND
(Britain, 1872-1970). Literature, 1950. Born into a liberal aristocratic family, Lord Russell became Britain's leading mathematician and philosopher. He was fired from his Cambridge fellowship and imprisoned for his opposition to World War I. He was an author of the Einstein-Russell manifesto against nuclear weapons in 1955 and was arrested in his eighties for joining antinuclear sit-ins in London. His bibliography numbers more than four thousand items; his most popular book was his 1945
History of Western Philosophy.
bel Prize for his studies of radioactivity. In 1913, he propounded the modern model of atomic structure. In 1919, he became director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where numerous atomic physicists trained.

R
UTHERFORD,
E
RNEST
(New Zealand, Britain; 1871-1937). Chemistry, 1908. The father of modern nuclear physics, widely regarded as the greatest experimental physicist of the twentieth century, Rutherford studied at Cambridge and taught at Manchester and McGill. He was awarded the No-
i

S
ACHS,
N
ELLY
(Germany, Sweden; 1891-1970). Literature, 1966. Sachs was rescued from the Holocaust by the efforts of friends who persuaded the aged Selma Lagerlof, with whom Sachs had corresponded for many years, to request from the king visas for Sachs and her mother. The Holocaust haunted Sachs for the rest of her life, and she became one of its leading poets. Her best-known book of poems is titled
0 the
Chimneys.

S
AKHAROV,
A
NDREI
(Russia, 1921-1989). Peace, 1975. Chief physicist on the Soviet hydrogen bomb project, Sakharov subsequendy moved into opposition to nuclear weapons and led the movement for civil rights, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize by Norway and internal exile by Moscow. As Sakharov was refused permission to go to Oslo, the prize was accepted by his wife. He was rehabilitated by Gorbachev in 1986 and awarded the Order of Lenin.

S
AMUELSON,
P
AUL
(USA, born 1915). Economics, 1970. After taking his B.A. at the University of Chicago, Samuelson spent the rest of his career at Harvard and MIT. He was an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and wrote a column for
Newsweek.
He received the Nobel Prize for his fundamental contributions to nearly all branches of economic theory. Gifted in expressing economic theory in mathematical terms and lucid prose, he wrote an influential textbook,
Economics: An Introductory
Analysis,
which sold millions of copies worldwide.

S
ARAMAGO,
J
OSE
(Portugal, born 1922). Literature, 1998. Born to a family of poor peasants, Saramago trained and worked as an auto mechanic. Frequendy persecuted in Portugal for his communist politics, he supported himself for long periods by translation. His earlier books were mainly poetry; after 1980 he wrote mosdy novels, the best known of which is
Blindness.

S
ARTRE,
J
EAN
-P
AUL
(France, 1905-1980). Literature, 1964. During World War II, Sartre served in the Meteorological Corps, was captured, escaped, and joined the Resistance. By 1945, he had become the leading voice of existentialism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his huge body of work in literature, drama, and philosophy; he rejected it, saying that he did not want to become an institution. His stubborn defense of Soviet communism eventually led to his intellectual isolation.