JEWISH CHEMISTS
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SHORT LIST
  • Sidney Altman
  • Adolph von Baeyer 4
  • Konrad Bloch
  • Ronald Breslow
  • Herbert C. Brown
  • Melvin Calvin
  • Heinrich Caro
  • Sir Ernst Chain
  • Gerty Cori 9
  • Carl Djerassi
  • Ernest Eliel
  • Gertrude Elion
  • Kasimir Fajans
  • Rosalind Franklin
  • Moses Gomberg
  • Fritz Haber
  • Herbert Hauptman
  • George de Hevesy
  • Roald Hoffmann
  • Jerome Karle
  • Izaak Kolthoff
  • Arthur Kornberg
  • Roger Kornberg
  • Sir Hans Krebs
  • Sir Harold Kroto 17
  • Raphael Levine
  • Fritz Lipmann
  • Rudolph Marcus
  • Herman Mark 18
  • Lise Meitner
  • Viktor Meyer
  • Otto Meyerhof
  • Henri Moissan 20
  • George Olah 22
  • Sir Max Perutz
  • John Polanyi 24
  • Michael Polanyi
  • Ilya Prigogine 25
  • Tadeus Reichstein
  • Stuart Rice
  • Gabor Somorjai 30
  • William Stein
  • Gilbert Stork 31
  • Max Tishler
  • Otto Wallach
  • Otto Warburg 34
  • Frank Westheimer
  • Richard Willstätter
  • Saul Winstein
  • Rosalyn Yalow
  • Ada Yonath
LONG LIST
  • Robert Abeles
  • Anatol Abragam
  • Berni Alder 1
  • Sidney Altman
  • Christian Anfinsen 2
  • Alfred Bader 3
  • Adolph von Baeyer 4
  • Allen Bard
  • Jacqueline Barton 5
  • Sidney Benson
  • Paul Berg
  • Robert Bergman
  • Ernst Bergmann
  • Max Bergmann
  • Bruce Berne
  • Richard Bernstein
  • R. Stephen Berry 6
  • Richard Bersohn
  • Jerome Berson
  • Solomon Berson
  • Jacob Bigeleisen
  • Fritz Blau
  • Felix Bloch
  • Herman Bloch
  • Konrad Bloch
  • Ronald Breslow
  • Leo Brewer
  • Herbert C. Brown
  • Paul Brumer
  • John Cahn
  • Melvin Calvin
  • Heinrich Caro
  • Nikodem Caro
  • Sir Ernst Chain
  • Erwin Chargaff 7
  • Aaron Ciechanover
  • Edwin Cohen
  • Morris Cohen
  • Stanley N. Cohen
  • Mildred Cohn
  • Gerty Cori 8
  • Stanley Cristol
  • Samuel Danishefsky
  • Norman Davidson
  • John Deutch
  • Carl Djerassi
  • Eduard Donath
  • Camille Dreyfus
  • Henry Dreyfus
  • Jack Dunitz
  • Saul Dushman
  • Gerald Edelman
  • Paul Ehrlich
  • Arthur Eichengrun
  • Kenneth Eisenthal
  • Ernest Eliel
  • Gertrude Elion
  • Gustav Embden
  • Lars Ernster 9
  • Kasimir Fajans
  • Isidor Fankuchen
  • Fritz Feigl
  • Alan Fersht
  • Edmond Fischer 10
  • Michael Fisher
  • Marshall Fixman
  • Adolph Frank
  • Rosalind Franklin
  • Herbert Freundlich
  • Josef Fried
  • Gerhart Friedlander
  • Casimir Funk 11
  • Robert Furchgott
  • Elena Gal'pern
  • Charles Gerhardt
  • Walter Gilbert
  • Alfred Gilman
  • Henry Gilman 12
  • Paul Glansdorff 13
  • Hans Goldschmidt
  • Victor Goldschmidt
  • Moses Gomberg
  • Fritz Haber
  • Norman Hackerman
  • Jack Halpern
  • Philip Handler
  • István Hargittai
  • Milton Harris 14
  • William Hassid
  • Herbert Hauptman
  • Felix Haurowitz
  • Alan Heeger 15
  • Michael Heidelberger
  • Sir Ian Heilbron 16
  • Heinz Heinemann
  • Walter Heitler
  • Avram Hershko
  • George de Hevesy
  • Sir Peter Hirsch
  • Joseph O. Hirschfelder
  • Ralph Hirshmann
  • Roald Hoffmann
  • Pierre Hohenberg
  • Walter Jacobs
  • Joshua Jortner
  • Henri Kagan
  • Martin Kamen
  • Jerome Karle
  • Martin Karplus
  • Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir
  • Aharon Katchalsky-Katzir
  • Morris Kharasch
  • Michael Klein
  • William Klemperer
  • Aaron Klug
  • Walter Kohn
  • Izaak Kolthoff
  • Arthur Kornberg
  • Sir Hans Kornberg
  • Roger Kornberg
  • Ronnie Kosloff
  • Sir Hans Krebs
  • Sir Harold Kroto 17
  • Albert Ladenburg
  • Ralph Landau
  • Karl Landsteiner
  • Robert Langer
  • Richard Lerner
  • Phoebus Levene
  • Veniamin Levich
  • Raphael Levine
  • Carl Liebermann
  • Fritz Lipmann
  • Stephen Lippard
  • Morris Loeb
  • Otto Loewi
  • Fritz London
  • Rudolph Marcus
  • Willy Marckwald
  • Herman Mark 18
  • Tobin Marks
  • Peter Mazur 19
  • Lise Meitner
  • Raphael Meldola
  • Viktor Meyer
  • Otto Meyerhof
  • Leonor Michaelis
  • Stanley L. Miller
  • Kurt Mislow
  • Henri Moissan 20
  • Salvador Moncada 21
  • Sir Alfred Mond
  • Ludwig Mond
  • Daniel Nathans
  • Carl Neuberg
  • Marshall Nirenberg
  • George Olah 22
  • Irwin Oppenheim
  • Milton Orchin
  • Leslie Orgel
  • Guy Ourisson 23
  • Friedrich Paneth
  • Sir Max Perutz
  • Alexander Pines
  • Herman Pines
  • John Polanyi 24
  • Michael Polanyi
  • Ilya Prigogine 25
  • B. S. Rabinovitch
  • Ralph Raphael
  • Tadeus Reichstein
  • Stuart Rice
  • Irwin Rose
  • John Ross 26
  • Michael Rossmann 27
  • Klaus Ruedenberg
  • Otto Sackur
  • Dan Shechtman
  • Harold Scheraga
  • Paul Scheuer
  • H. I. Schlesinger 28
  • Louis Schmerling 29
  • Rudolph Schoenheimer
  • Moshe Shapiro
  • Paul Sigler
  • Gabor Somorjai 30
  • Franz Sondheimer
  • William Stein
  • Gilbert Stork 31
  • Michael Szwarc
  • David Talmud
  • Max Tishler
  • Isador Traube
  • Moritz Traube
  • Barry Trost
  • Mikhail Usanovich 32
  • Sir John Vane 33
  • George Wald
  • Otto Wallach
  • Otto Warburg 34
  • Charles Weissmann
  • Chaim Weizmann
  • Frank Westheimer
  • Benjamin Widom
  • Richard Willstätter
  • Saul Winstein
  • Michael Woolfson
  • Rosalyn Yalow
  • Ada Yonath
  • Richard Zare
  • Anatol Zhabotinsky 35
NOTES

1. See pp. 19-20 of the interview at http://www.cemba.psu.edu/alder.pdf.

2. Convert to Judaism. See http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KK.
3. See interview in Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2003, pp. 153-154).  Bader's mother was non-Jewish, but he describes himself as a "convinced Jew."
4. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father.
5. See interview in Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2003, p. 159).
6. See interview in Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2000, p. 427).
7. See interview in Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2000, p. 19).
8. Gerty Cori appears on some Jewish lists, but not on others, and has been described as being only half-Jewish.  The most comprehensive biographical portrait of her is contained in Sharon McGrayne's Nobel Prize Women in Science (Birch Lane, New York, NY, 1993).  McGrayne's account is based on interviews with more than a dozen of Cori's close friends and associates, with the details of her religious background obtained from interviews with Professor Viktor Hamburger and Ann Cori.  According to McGrayne, Cori was Jewish, but converted to Roman Catholicism prior to her marriage to Carl Cori in order to lessen the objections of his family, which felt that marriage to a Jewish woman would doom his prospects for an academic career in Europe.  This is in close agreement with the note on Gerty Cori published by Joseph Larner in Biographical Memoirs, Volume 61 (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1992, p. 112).  Further confirmation can be found in the interview with Arthur Kornberg (1959) that appears in Candid Science II by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2002, p. 58).
9. See interview in Candid Science II: Conversations with Famous Biomedical Scientists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2002, p. 378).
10. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, according to a follow-up dipatch issued by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)  several days after publication of its October 14, 1992 story on that year's Nobel Prizes, written by Tom Tugend.  Fischer is a member of the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute.
11. Information elsewhere on the web contains the claim that Casimir Funk was not Jewish.  Among the many references which describe Funk as having been Jewish is Who's Who in World Jewry 1965: A Biographical Dictionary of Outstanding Jews, edited by Harry Schneiderman and I.J. Carmin Karpman (McKay, New York, 1965, p. 417).  This reference is particularly significant in this connection since all of the biographical profiles that it contains were based on data supplied by the profiled individuals themselves, and later approved by them. 
12. See p. 111 of http://www.nap.edu/books/0309055415/html/82.html.
13. See http://www.amyisrael.co.il/europe/belgium/#Jews in Belgium.
14.  See Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 5 (Keter, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 383).
15. See  http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/2000/heeger-autobio.html.
16.  See Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 5 (Keter, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 383).
17.  Jewish father, non-Jewish mother; see http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1996/kroto-autobio.html.
18. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.  See, e.g., the last paragraph of the section entitled "I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE"  at http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/hmark.html.
19. See Physics Today, March 2002, p. 89.
20. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father.
21. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; identifies as a Jew, according to interview in Candid Science II: Conversations with Famous Biomedical Scientists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2002, p. 567).
22. George Olah's autobiographical memoirs, A Life of Magic Chemistry  (Wiley Interscience, NY, 2001, p. 45), briefly  describes the last months of World War II in Hungary.  (It was during this period that the Nazis attempted to deport the Jewish population of Budapest.)  He states "I do not want to relive here in any detail some of my very difficult, even horrifying, experiences of this period, hiding out the last months of the war in Budapest.  Suffice it to say that my parents and I survived."  That statement is the closest he comes to identifying himself as being Jewish.  Nearly everything in the book is consistent with an upper middle class Hungarian Jewish background, with the exception of his attendance at the Gymnasium of the Piarist Fathers, a Roman Catholic teaching order.  (It should be noted, however, that many of the parochial schools in Budapest had significant Jewish enrollments.)  Further information has materialized as a result of the publication of an op-ed piece in the New York Times on the Holocaust in Hungary, written by Kati Marton ("A Town's Hidden Memory,"  21 July 2002).  This article resulted in a considerable amount of controversy and letters to the editor.  One such letter by J. L. Jankovich of San Jose, CA, which was sent to the Times, but apparently not published, could previously be found at:  http://hungaria.org/lists/lobby/admin/article.php?articleid=136.  Concerning the German military occupation that began in the spring of 1944, it states: "Yet for months thereafter our Jewish classmates could still attend our Catholic high school and, after the interruptions of the 1944-45 winter, graduated there.  (One of them, Mr. George Olah, now an American citizen, just received the Nobel prize a few years ago and went back to visit his old school with pride.)"  See also Our Lives: Encounters of a Scientist, by  István Hargittai (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, p. 77).
23. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, according to interview in Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2003, p. 239-241). 
24. Son of the Hungarian Jewish physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. See also Ismerjük''oket?: zsidó származású nevezetes magyarok arcképcsarnoka, by István Reményi Gyenes (Ex Libris, Budapest, 1997).
25. See the December 1980 issue of Quest, p. 86, in which Mary Lukas describes the Prigogine family's emigration from revolutionary Russia to Berlin, and finally to Brussels, where Prigogine found himself "an oddity, a little Jewish boy from somewhere in the East."  See also The Who's Who of Nobel Prize Winners 1901-1995, 3rd Ed.  by Bernard S. and June H. Schlessinger (Oryx Press, Phoenix, AZ, 1996, p. 33),  http://www.amyisrael.co.il/europe/belgium/#Jews in Belgium,  and http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/rje_p.htm.
26. See http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/february2/ross-22.html.
27. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father according to interview in Bitter Prerequisites: A Faculty for Survival from Nazi Terror, by William Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 2001, p. 48).  See also http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/010216.Nat.Ahlbrandt.book.html.
28. See The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography: Volume Two, edited by Jacob Rader Marcus and Judith M. Daniels (Carlson Publishing, Brooklyn, NY, 1994, p. 564).
29. See Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 5 (Keter, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 387).
30.   See story by Leslie Katz entitled "Chemist, Shoah survivor nets Wolf Prize" in The  Jewish News Weekly (formerly The JEWISH BULLETIN) of Northern California, 30 January, 1998: http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/7905/edition_id/150/format/html/displaystory.html.
31.  See interview in Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists, by Istvan Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2003, p. 117).
32. See http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/rje_u.htm.
33.  Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, according to an interview published in Candid Science II: Conversations with Famous Biomedical Scientists, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2002, p. 562).
34. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
35. See http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/rje_z.htm.


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