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A Century of Nobel Prize Recipients: Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 May 2004, 06:00 CDT

A Century of Nobel Prize Recipients: Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine. Ed. by Prank Leroy, Claude Ronneau, and Guy Demortier. New York: Dckker, 2003. 38Op. acid free $150 (ISBN 0-8247-0876-8).

This new reference work from Marcel Dekker is an English translation of three earlier French volumes published between 1997 and 1998. Each earlier volume covered one of the disciplines receiving Nobel Prizes. This work includes the recipients up to the year 2001. The content is the Nobel laureates for chemistry, physics, and medicine, a general table of laureates, bibliography, index by recipients' names, and a subject index. For each chronological section, brief summaries of approximately one hundred- to-three hundred words present the lives and careers of each winner. The emphasis is on presenting-in both print and illustration-the fundamental new discovery for which the award was given, and there are copious amounts of illustrations in color and black-and-white. Whenever possible, a drawing or photograph of the laureate, often in color, is included. This volume is advertised to be an "invaluable guide." It is, however, not a definitive description of each individual. Perhaps as a cultural curiosity, fathers of recipients often receive mention and mothers are almost never mentioned. The targeted audience is public libraries, undergraduates, and lay scientists.

There is no dearth of printed resources about the Nobel laureates. A quick glance at Amazon.com will find a few hundred books available on Nobel Prize recipients. There are yet many more monographs on Alfred Nobel, Nobel nominators, the Nobel lectures, and even Nobel commemorative stamps. Therefore, Dekker's addition to this large number of works is not necessarily unique or invaluable. There are plenty of other similar printed resources.

The Nobel Scientists: A Biographical Encyclopedia by George Thomas Kurian (Prometheus Books, 2002) offers a more concise and thorough overview of the Nobel Prize winners in the sciences from 1901 to 2000. It provides laureates' summary vitae, prizes, life work, publications, bibliographies, and has an index by individual country of origin. The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists by Roy Porter and Marilyn Ogilvie (Oxford Univ. Pr., 3d ed., 2000) lists 1,280 in-depth biographies and provides separate appendixes to the Nobel Prize recipients in chemistry, physics, physiology, or medicine. There are also selected bibliographies, chronologies, quotations, tables, historical overviews, a glossary of scientific terms, and some illustrations and photographs. The intended audience is the student or general reader.

For all categories of Nobel recipients, there is also the slightly dated Who's Who of Nobel Prize Winners 1901-1995, edited by Bernard S. Schlessinger (Oryx, 3d ed., 1996). This work provides essential biographical and professional information on every winner up to the year 1995. The userfriendly entries are arranged chronologically by discipline. Each entry includes the prize won, birth and death dates, parents (mothers included!), nationality, religion, education, spouse, children, career, other awards, selected publications, and commentary by the editors for granting the Nobel Prize. One more general work with supplements is the Nobel Prize Winners: An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary (Wilson, 1987; supplements 1987-1991, 1992-1996, 1997-2001). All the same general information can be found in this work as in the ones listed above.

It should be mentioned that there is also a plethora of printed works specifically devoted to just the individual category awards in, among others, chemistry, physics, and medicine. For example, the Nobel Foundation publishes a series titled CHEMISTRY: Nobel Lectures, Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates' Biographies (Elsevier, 1901-1921, 1922-1941, 1942-1962, 1963-1970; World Scientific, 1971-1980, 1981-1990, 1991-1995, 1996-2000). This work and others like it provide more detail about the Nobel laureates and their Nobel lectures than the more general works listed above.

Today there is an online resource that exceeds anything available in print. On the Web you will find available for free the Nobel Prize Internet Archive (Almaz Enterprises, 1995-) located at www.almaz.com/nobel. This site has it all. Here can be found all the Nobel Prize laureates from 1901 to date for all categories. The laureates for physics, chemistry, or medicine are easily isolated and listed chronologically. All the information found in the printed Elsevier and World Scientific Nobel publications is listed in PDE format. In addition, there are press releases, presentation speeches, abundant illustrations, the Nobel lectures, banquet speeches, symposia, interviews, articles, other resources such as invited authors' contributions, Nobel Prize-related experiments that can be tried by the reader, biographies, autobiographies, and even live links to contemporary Nobel researchers' Web sites. It is a phenomenal online resource. This free Web site has something to offer anyone, whether a sixth-grader, a lay scientist, or a graduate student.

As for Dekker's A Century of Nobel Prize Recipients: Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine, it is a guide or overview that is handsome and easily readable, and borders on being a nice coffee-table book. This reviewer recommends it for high schools, undergraduate collections, and the lay reader, but nothing beats the Nobel Prize Internet Archive Web site.-David M. Fagerstrom, Head, Science Library, University of Colorado, Boulder

David M. Fagerstrom, Head, Science Library, University of Colorado, Boulder

Copyright American Library Association Spring 2004

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