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Home , Adolf Butenandt, Johannes Stark, Marie Curie, Otto Wallach, Peter Debye, Stefan Hell

“Capital City of Nobel Laureates”

With a grand total of 46 awards, Göttingen can boast of more A solemn mo- winners of the prestigious than any other city in ment in the - according to the newspaper Die Welt, this makes it summer of the “capital city of Nobel laureates.” One of them, Maria Göp- 2019: In the pert-Mayer, obtained her here with , who “Nobel-Ron- later won the Nobel Prize in (1954). In 1930 she im- dell,” an open- migrated with her husband to the , and in 1963 she air structure became the second woman in the world to win the Nobel Prize in the Old City in Physics, the first being Marie . Another winner, Enrico Cemetery, Mayor Fermi (Physics, 1938), did research with Max Born for only a Rolf Georg Köh- few months during his studies here in 1923. Fourteen ler, together with were awarded the prize for the results of research conducted in Dr. Ruthild Os- Göttingen, nine of them before 1940: (, watitsch-Eigen, 1910), (Physics, 1919), Walther Hermann Nernst the widow of the (Chemistry, 1920), , (Physics, 1925), Richard Zsig- biophysical Manfred Eigen (Chemistry, 1967), unveils the mondy (Chemistry, 1925), (Physics, 1932), plaque honoring her husband, who had died the previous Febru- (Chemistry, 1936), Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus ary. In the background, the Göttingen heraldist and designer Hans (Chemistry, 1938) and (Chemistry, 1939). Otto Arnold, creator of the Rondell. Arnold is the deputy chairman of Especially during the 1920s and early 1930s, Göttingen was the Göttingen City Council. considered a stronghold of the natural . This period of success ended with the takeover of power by the National So- establishment of the Bundeswehr, a protest was lodged: the 1957 “Göttingen Manifesto,” cialists. Many Jewish scientists, including Max Born and James in which 18 declared their opposition to this Cold War lunacy, including Nobel Franck (page 104), gave up in the face of the brown-shirted hold- laureates Max Born, , Werner Heisenberg, and , ers of power and the members of the university community who who would receive his Nobel Prize in 1989. However, they did endorse the peaceful use of were integrated into the Nazi apparatus. Emigration, they de- nuclear energy. cided, was their only option. In 1967 another associated with Göttingen, Manfred Eigen (Chemistry), was Erwin Neher During the post-war years, other Nobel Prize winners – honored in . He was followed in 1991 by Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann (Physiol- Otto Hahn (Chemistry, 1944), (1918), Werner He- ogy or Medicine) and in 2014 by Stefan Hell, the fourth scientist at the Max Planck Institute isenberg and Max von Laue (Physics, 1914) - came to Göttingen, for Biophysical Chemistry to receive a Nobel Prize (page 55). where the was founded in 1948 (page 54). One year earlier, in 2013, the first “real Göttinger“ finally won the coveted award: Tho- But a great many top scientists, courted by the USA, chose to mas Südhof, born in Göttingen in 1955, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine cross the Atlantic. - for the results of research he had performed at Stanford University. Nuclear physicists who stayed in Germany learned from Nobel Prizes are wonderful. But over the almost 300-year history of the Georgia Augusta Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the latest. When German politi- University, many brilliant minds have been at work in Göttingen: countless natural scien- cians, with Federal Chancellor Adenauer and Defense Minister tists and humanities scholars who have also excelled as scholars and teachers and in this way Franz-Josef Strauß leading the way, planned to equip the Ger- contributed to the renown of the “City of ” (“Stadt die Wissen schafft”) - and who Bert Sakmann man armed forces with nuclear weapons only two years after the continue to do so to this day.

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SCIENCE 10 NOBEL ast.indd 2 15.07.2019 17:45:05