The 1985 Nobel Chemistry Prize to Jerome Karle and Herbert A. Hauptman and the Physics Prize to Klaus von Klitzing Contrast Delayed Versus "Instant" Recognition

In last year’s examination of the 1984 Nobel laureates in physics and chemistw, 1 I noted that Carlo Rubbia, Harvard University and the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland, and Simon van der Meer, also of CERN, received the physics prize barely two years after they identified the W and Z subatomic particles. This is one of the shortest intervals between discovery and recognition in Nobel history. By contrast, the 1984 winner in chemistry, R. Bruce Merrifield, Rockefeller University, New York, did the bulk of his prizewinning work in peptide synthesis in the 1960s. A similar disparity is evident in the 1985 physics and chemistry prizes, which we’ll be examining this week as we complete our discussion of last year’s Nobel laureates, The physics prize was awarded for work done in the early 1980s. The chemistry prize, however, honored work that first appeared in the 1950s—work that found little recognition and acceptance when it was published.