The Bochum-born chemist revolutionized the way scientists measure extremely fast chemical reactions. He also founded the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen.
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Manfred Eigen, a German Nobel Prize winning chemist, passed away at the age of 91 on Wednesday, the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen said on Thursday.
Eigen was best known for his work in measuring extremely fast chemical reactions, for which he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967 — R.G.W. Norrish and George Porter jointly shared the other half. In 1953, he introduced a high frequency sound wave that could determine chemical reaction rates in the micro- and nanosecond range.
"Perhaps more than anybody else, Manfred Eigen understood how to think out of the box and successfully pursue new scientific directions," Herbert Jäckle, the emeritus director of MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, said in a statement. "This ability distinguished him already at the beginning of his scientific career and runs as a common thread throughout his life."
Born in Bochum in 1927, Eigen studied chemistry and physics in Göttingen after World War II and received his doctorate at the age of 24. After winning the Otto Hahn Prize for Chemistry and Physics in 1962 and his 1967 chemistry Nobel, he founded the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen in 1971.
He also won the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstädter Prize in 1992 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Institute of Human Virology in the US in 2005.
Inspirational women in science
Many women have provided a rich source of inspiration for young scientists - both male and female - down the years. They've made remarkable discoveries, often despite ingrained sexism within their chosen field.
Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron. A gifted mathematician, she is said to have written instructions for the first computer program in the mid-1800s. She is considered the first person to realize that computers, still not a reality, had potential beyond mere calculation. Lovelace is known chiefly for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed "Analytical Engine."
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A giant in two fields
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Not only that, she was the first person to win one twice. Born in Warsaw in 1867, she became a naturalized French citizen. Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics - for research on radiation phenomena - with husband Pierre and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering radium and polonium.
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Unwinding the double helix
Rosalind Franklin never received a Nobel Prize, although many believe she should have. Biophysicist Franklin was an X-ray crystallographer whose practical work was heavily relied upon by James Watson and Francis Crick in their discovery of the DNA double helix, which won the Nobel prize for medicine. By the time the prize was awarded, Franklin had died of ovarian cancer.
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Insight into insulin
British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin was a contemporary of Franklin, and the two shared their expertise with one another. Hodgkin developed crystallography techniques to give an insight into the structures of biomolecules and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964, becoming the third woman to do so. Five years after winning, Hodgkin was the first person to decipher the structure of insulin.
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A cellular fountain of youth?
Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 2009 for her work on telomeres - the protective tips that lie at the end of our chromosomes. Blackburn co-discovered the enzyme telomerase, which allows telomeres to be replenished. Telomerase allows cells to go on dividing, so it appears to influence aging and could have implications in cancer research.
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Shedding light on chimp life
British primatologist Jane Goodall is considered the world's leading expert on chimpanzees and has spent decades studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She came up with names for many of the animals, drawing criticism from some who accused her of anthropomorphizing.
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'The lady of the cells'
Born in Italy in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini had her career cut short by Benito Mussolini's laws banning Jews from academia. Undeterred, she set up a lab in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. After the war, she worked in St. Louis, where she isolated Nerve Growth Factor from cancer tissues. She shared a 1986 Nobel Prize for that with colleague Stanley Cohen.
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Neutron stars and green men
In 1967, Northern Irish physicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a signal that pulsed at a regular rate. The signal, detected by radio telescope, was dubbed the "little green man." It turned out not to be alien communication, but a rapidly spinning neutron star - the first "pulsar" to be detected. In 1974, her supervisor jointly won a Nobel Prize for pulsar work. Bell Burnell was not a recipient.