he was awarded the Nobel prize

1) (a reward for good work etc: He was awarded a lot of prizes at school.) premie, pris, utmerkelse

2) (something won in a competition etc: I've won first prize!; ( also adjective) a prize (= having won, or worthy of, a prize) bull.) pris, premie

bytte

gevinst

premie

rov

trofé

subst. \/praɪz\/

1) pris

• he was awarded the Nobel prize

2) premie

3) belønning, lønn

4) (lotteri)gevinst

5) ( litterært) gode, skatt

6) ( overført) klenodium, skatt

the first prize den høyeste gevinsten

the prizes of life livets goder, alt det er verd å strebe etter i livet

subst. \/praɪz\/

(historisk, sjøfart) prise, beslaglagt fartøy

make a prize of ta som prise, beslaglegge

verb \/praɪz\/

vurdere (høyt), skatte (høyt), sette pris på

verb \/praɪz\/

se ➢ prise

verb \/praɪz\/

oppbringe, ta som prise, beslaglegge

adj. \/praɪz\/

1) pris-

• prize competition

2) prisbelønnet, premiert, premie-

• prize cattle

3) ( hverdagslig) som fortjener premie

4) ( hverdagslig) prima, glimrende, storartet

a) tb

◊ Premio nobel Nobel Prize

b) ( ganador) Nobel prizewinner

[nǝʊ'bel]

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology, Weapons and armour

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The son of a barber-surgeon who deserted his family to serve in the Swedish army, Nobel showed little interest in academic pursuits as a child and was sent to sea at the age of 16, but jumped ship in Egypt and was eventually employed as an architect by the pasha. Returning to Sweden, he won a scholarship to the Stockholm School of Architecture, where he studied from 1821 to 1825 and was awarded a number of prizes. His interest then leaned towards mechanical matters and he transferred to the Stockholm School of Engineering. Designs for linen-finishing machines won him a prize there, and he also patented a means of transforming rotary into reciprocating movement. He then entered the real-estate business and was successful until a fire in 1833 destroyed his house and everything he owned. By this time he had married and had two sons, with a third, Alfred (of Nobel Prize fame; see Alfred Nobel), on the way. Moving to more modest quarters on the outskirts of Stockholm, Immanuel resumed his inventions, concentrating largely on India rubber, which he applied to surgical instruments and military equipment, including a rubber knapsack.

It was talk of plans to construct a canal at Suez that first excited his interest in explosives. He saw them as a means of making mining more efficient and began to experiment in his backyard. However, this made him unpopular with his neighbours, and the city authorities ordered him to cease his investigations. By this time he was deeply in debt and in 1837 moved to Finland, leaving his family in Stockholm. He hoped to interest the Russians in land and sea mines and, after some four years, succeeded in obtaining financial backing from the Ministry of War, enabling him to set up a foundry and arms factory in St Petersburg and to bring his family over. By 1850 he was clear of debt in Sweden and had begun to acquire a high reputation as an inventor and industrialist. His invention of the horned contact mine was to be the basic pattern of the sea mine for almost the next 100 years, but he also created and manufactured a central-heating system based on hot-water pipes. His three sons, Ludwig, Robert and Alfred, had now joined him in his business, but even so the outbreak of war with Britain and France in the Crimea placed severe pressures on him. The Russians looked to him to convert their navy from sail to steam, even though he had no experience in naval propulsion, but the aftermath of the Crimean War brought financial ruin once more to Immanuel. Amongst the reforms brought in by Tsar Alexander II was a reliance on imports to equip the armed forces, so all domestic arms contracts were abruptly cancelled, including those being undertaken by Nobel. Unable to raise money from the banks, Immanuel was forced to declare himself bankrupt and leave Russia for his native Sweden. Nobel then reverted to his study of explosives, particularly of how to adapt the then highly unstable nitroglycerine, which had first been developed by Ascanio Sobrero in 1847, for blasting and mining. Nobel believed that this could be done by mixing it with gunpowder, but could not establish the right proportions. His son Alfred pursued the matter semi-independently and eventually evolved the principle of the primary charge (and through it created the blasting cap), having taken out a patent for a nitroglycerine product in his own name; the eventual result of this was called dynamite. Father and son eventually fell out over Alfred's independent line, but worse was to follow. In September 1864 Immanuel's youngest son, Oscar, then studying chemistry at Uppsala University, was killed in an explosion in Alfred's laboratory: Immanuel suffered a stroke, but this only temporarily incapacitated him, and he continued to put forward new ideas. These included making timber a more flexible material through gluing crossed veneers under pressure and bending waste timber under steam, a concept which eventually came to fruition in the form of plywood.

In 1868 Immanuel and Alfred were jointly awarded the prestigious Letterstedt Prize for their work on explosives, but Alfred never for-gave his father for retaining the medal without offering it to him.

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1) (a reward for good work etc: He was awarded a lot of prizes at school.) premio

2) (something won in a competition etc: I've won first prize!; (also adjective) a prize (= having won, or worthy of, a prize) bull.) premio

prize n premio

tr[praɪz]

noun

1 (gen) premio

adjective

1 (having won a prize) premiado,-a; (excellent) de primera, selecto,-a

2 familiar (complete, utter) de remate, perfecto,-a

\

to win first prize (gen) ganar el primer premio 2 (in lottery) tocarle el gordo

prize day (día nombre masculino de la) entrega de premios

prize money premio (en metálico)

tr[praɪz]

transitive verb

1 SMALLAMERICAN ENGLISH/SMALL→ link=prise prise{

tr[praɪz]

transitive verb

1 apreciar, valorar

prize ['praɪz] vt, prized ; prizing : valorar, apreciar

prize adj

1) : premiado

a prize stallion: un semental premiado

2) outstanding: de primera, excepcional

prize n

1) award: premio m

third prize: el tercer premio

2) : joya f, tesoro m

he's a real prize: es un tesoro

• de primera clase adj.

• premiado, -a adj.

• botín s.m.

• galardón s.m.

• premio s.m.

• presa s.f.

• apreciar v.

• estimar v.

• tallar v.

• tasar v.

a) ( award) premio m

b) ( in lottery)

adjective (before n) <bull/essay> premiado

1) ( value) valorar (mucho), tener* en gran estima

2) BrE prise

1. N

1) (in competition, lottery) premio m

2) (Sport) (=trophy) trofeo m ; (=money) premio m

3) (fig) premio m, galardón m frm

4) (Naut) presa f

2. ADJ

1) (=outstanding) de primera, de primera clase

2) (=prizewinning) [entry, rose] galardonado, premiado; (fig) digno de premio

VT apreciar mucho, estimar mucho

[praɪz]

* * *

a) ( award) premio m

b) ( in lottery)

adjective (before n) <bull/essay> premiado

1) ( value) valorar (mucho), tener* en gran estima

2) BrE prise

1 პრიზი, ჯილდო, პრემია

2 დიდად დაფასება (დააფასებს)

   The earliest known examples of literary writing in the Portuguese language is a collection of songbooks ( cancioneiros) that date from the 12th century, written by anonymous court troubadours, aristocrats, and clerics with poetic and musical talent. In the 13th and 14th centuries, ballads ( romanceiros) became popular at court. One of these written after the battle of Aljubarrota is considered to be the Portuguese equivalent of the English Arthurian legend. Literary prose in Portuguese began in the 14th century, with the compilation of chronicles ( chrónicos) written by Fernão Lopes de Castenhada who was commissioned by King Duarte (1430-38) to write a history of the House of Aviz.

   During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese chroniclers turned their attention to the discoveries and the Portuguese overseas empire. The Portuguese discoveries in India and Asia were chronicled by João de Barros, whose writing appeared posthumously under the pen name of Diogo Do Couto; Fernão Lopes de Castenhade wrote a 10-volume chronicle of the Portuguese in India. The most famous chronicle from this period was the Peregrinação (Pilgrimage), a largely true adventure story and history of Portugal that was as popular among 17th-century readers in Iberia as was Miguel de Cer-vantes's Don Quixote. Portugal's most celebrated work of national literature, The Lusiads ( Os Lusíadas), written by Luís de Camões chronicled Vasco da Gama's voyage to India (1497-99) within the context of the history of Portugal.

   During the period when Portugal was under Spanish domination (1580-1640), the preferred language of literary expression was Castilian Spanish. The greatest writer of this period was Francisco Manuel de Melo, who wrote in Castilian and Portuguese. His most famous work is an eyewitness account of the 1640 Catalan revolt against Castile, Historia de los Movimientos y Separación de Cata-luna (1645), which allowed the Portuguese monarchy to regain its independence that same year.

   Little of note was written during the 17th century with the exception of Letters of a Portuguese Nun, an enormously popular work in the French language thought to have been written by Sister Mariana Alcoforado to a French officer Noel Bouton, Marquise de Chamilly.

   Modern Portuguese writing began in the early 19th century with the appearance of the prose-fiction of João Baptista de Almeida Garrett and the historian-novelist Alexandre Herculano. The last half of the 19th century was dominated by the Generation of 1870, which believed that Portugal was, due to the monarchy and the Catholic Church, a European backwater. Writers such as José Maria Eça de Queirós dissected the social decadence of their day and called for reform and national renewal. The most famous Portuguese poet of the 20th century is, without doubt, Fernando Pessoa, who wrote poetry and essays in English and Portuguese under various names. António Ferro (1895-1956) published best-selling accounts of the right-wing dictatorships in Italy and Spain that endeared him to Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, who made him the Estado Novo's secretary of national propaganda.

   The various responses of the Portuguese people to the colonial African wars (1961-75) were chronicled by António Lobo Antunes. In 1998, the noted Portuguese novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer, José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer in the Portuguese language of whatever nationality to be so honored. His most famous novels translated into English include: Baltazar and Blimunda (1987), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1991), and The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1996).

    See also Castelo Branco, Camilo; Garrett, João Baptista de Almeida; Queiros, José Maria Eça de; Pinto, Fernão Mendes; Theater.

1 premio: to win an award, vincere un premio; He's the winner of several international awards, ha vinto diversi premi internazionali; the Enterpreneur of the Year Award, il Premio «Imprenditore dell'anno»; award ceremony, cerimonia della premiazione; award winner, premiato (sost.); award-winning, premiato (agg.)

2 onorificenza; riconoscimento; medaglia: (mil.) award for valour, medaglia al valore

3 [u] conferimento; assegnazione; aggiudicazione: the award of the Nobel Prize, il conferimento del premio Nobel; award of prizes, assegnazione dei premi; premiazione; the award of a contract, l'aggiudicazione di un appalto

4 borsa di studio

5 (leg.) (somma aggiudicata come) risarcimento

6 (leg.) lodo arbitrale; giudizio arbitrale

● (ass.) award of damages, liquidazione del danno □ (Austral.) award wage, salario minimo.

1 assegnare; conferire; dare; concedere: to award prizes, assegnare premi; premiare; He was awarded the Nobel prize, gli è stato conferito il premio Nobel; to award sb. a study grant, assegnare a q. una borsa di studio; (mil.) to be awarded the Military Cross, ricevere la croce di guerra

2 (leg.) aggiudicare; assegnare: Part of the estate was awarded to the widow, parte della proprietà è stata assegnata alla vedova; to award a contract, aggiudicare un appalto; to award a pay rise, dare un aumento di stipendio; to award custody of a child to the mother, assegnare la custodia del figlio alla madre; He was awarded damages, ottenne il risarcimento del danno subìto

3 ( sport) concedere, convalidare ( un gol, ecc.); concedere, comminare, decretare ( una punizione, un rigore)

n. [u]

1 assegnazione; conferimento

2 (leg.) aggiudicazione; assegnazione

3 ( sport) concessione, convalida ( di un gol, ecc.).

SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Telecommunications

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After early ambitions to become a professional cricketer, Appleton went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied under J.J.Thompson and Ernest Rutherford. His academic career interrupted by the First World War, he served as a captain in the Royal Engineers, carrying out investigations into the propagation and fading of radio signals. After the war he joined the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, as a demonstrator in 1920, and in 1924 he moved to King's College, London, as Wheatstone Professor of Physics.

In the following decade he contributed to developments in valve oscillators (in particular, the "squegging" oscillator, which formed the basis of the first hard-valve time-base) and gained international recognition for research into electromagnetic-wave propagation. His most important contribution was to confirm the existence of a conducting ionospheric layer in the upper atmosphere capable of reflecting radio waves, which had been predicted almost simultaneously by Heaviside and Kennelly in 1902. This he did by persuading the BBC in 1924 to vary the frequency of their Bournemouth transmitter, and he then measured the signal received at Cambridge. By comparing the direct and reflected rays and the daily variation he was able to deduce that the Kennelly- Heaviside (the so-called E-layer) was at a height of about 60 miles (97 km) above the earth and that there was a further layer (the Appleton or F-layer) at about 150 miles (240 km), the latter being an efficient reflector of the shorter radio waves that penetrated the lower layers. During the period 1927–32 and aided by Hartree, he established a magneto-ionic theory to explain the existence of the ionosphere. He was instrumental in obtaining agreement for international co-operation for ionospheric and other measurements in the form of the Second Polar Year (1932–3) and, much later, the International Geophysical Year (1957–8). For all this work, which made it possible to forecast the optimum frequencies for long-distance short-wave communication as a function of the location of transmitter and receiver and of the time of day and year, in 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

He returned to Cambridge as Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1939, and with M.F. Barnett he investigated the possible use of radio waves for radio-location of aircraft. In 1939 he became Secretary of the Government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, a post he held for ten years. During the Second World War he contributed to the development of both radar and the atomic bomb, and subsequently served on government committees concerned with the use of atomic energy (which led to the establishment of Harwell) and with scientific staff.

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   Pioneer physician and neurosurgeon, sometime republican political figure, and minister during the First Republic, and Portugal's only Nobel Prize winner until 1998 (when the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to José Saramago). Trained as a doctor at Coimbra University's medical school, Egas Moniz was named a professor in 1902. In 1911, after having studied at several clinics in France, he was transferred to the Chair of Neurology at the University of Lisbon.

   In 1903, he began his involvement in politics when he was elected a deputy to the monarchy's parliament. During the early and middle phases of the First Republic, Egas Moniz became one of the more important moderate republican personalities in the Constituent Assembly, a leading member of José Almeida's Evolutionist Party, a founder of the Centrist Party, and a staunch supporter of presidentialism and President Sidônio Pais. In a sense a prophet without honor during some of the more difficult phases of the turbulent republic, Egas Moniz was Portugal's minister to Spain in 1917-18, then minister of foreign affairs. During 1919, he headed Portugal's delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. Exhausted and disillusioned with politics and government service by mid-1919, he devoted the remainder of his active life to medical practice and neurological research and writing.

   In 1927, after intensive experimentation, Egas Moniz performed the first cerebral angiography on a patient; this X-ray provided vital information on the brain in terms of blood circulation within it, the most significant finding in half a century. In 1935, he pioneered a new type of brain operation. His great contributions to medicine and to neurosurgery were finally recognized in 1949, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the uses of leucotomy in certain psychoses. His two fascinating memoirs ( Confidencias de um Investigador Científico, 1949, and A Nossa Casa, 1950) are among the more significant and prescient of Portuguese memorial works in modern times. A tenacious collector of plastic arts, his collection is housed in the Egas Moniz House-Museum at Avança (near Aveiro), northern Portugal, and other memorabilia related to this outstanding scientist are located in the Egas Moniz Museum, Lisbon.

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Gabor became interested in physics at an early age. Called up for military service in 1918, he was soon released when the First World War came to an end. He then began a mechanical engineering course at the Budapest Technical University, but a further order to register for military service prompted him to flee in 1920 to Germany, where he completed his studies at Berlin Technical University. He was awarded a Diploma in Engineering in 1924 and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 1927. He then went on to work in the physics laboratory of Siemens \& Halske. He returned to Hungary in 1933 and developed a new kind of fluorescent lamp called the plasma lamp. Failing to find a market for this device, Gabor made the decision to abandon his homeland and emigrate to England. There he joined British Thompson-Houston (BTH) in 1934 and married a colleague from the company in 1936. Gabor was also unsuccessful in his attempts to develop the plasma lamp in England, and by 1937 he had begun to work in the field of electron optics. His work was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939, although as he was not yet a British subject he was barred from making any significant contribution to the British war effort. It was only when the war was near its end that he was able to return to electron optics and begin the work that led to the invention of holography. The theory was developed during 1947 and 1948; Gabor went on to demonstrate that the theories worked, although it was not until the invention of the laser in 1960 that the full potential of his invention could be appreciated. He coined the term "hologram" from the Greek holos, meaning complete, and gram, meaning written. The three-dimensional images have since found many applications in various fields, including map making, medical imaging, computing, information technology, art and advertising. Gabor left BTH to become an associate professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1949, a position he held until his retirement in 1967. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on holography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Electricity, Ports and shipping

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Nils Gustav Dalen is probably best known as the inventor of the solid-fuel Aga Cooker. He was confined at home for some time in the 1920s, having been blinded as the result of an accident, and found the time to consider the need for an efficient, clean, attractive-looking cooker that would be economical in fuel consumption. The resultant cooking range of 1924 was based on sound scientific principles, was simple to manage and needed a minimum of attention.

The first Aga contained a cast-iron firebox enclosed in an insulated jacket of kieselguhr. The firebox was connected to cast-iron hotplates and ovens, all designed so that the heat was conducted to the various parts at precisely the correct temperatures for all types of cooking: simmering, boiling, roasting, baking and grilling. The hotplate heat was maintained at the desired temperature by way of insulated hinged covers that were lifted only when the hotplate was in use. The Aga was made in Sweden and was introduced into Britain in 1929. It was noted for being costly to purchase but inexpensive to run as no energy was wasted.

Dalen is also known for his invention of the "sun valve", a device which, as required, automatically lighted or extinguished light beacons and buoys; this invention brought him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1912.

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology, Photography, film and optics

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Expelled from school and so unable to attend university, Röntgen studied engineering at Zurich Polytechnic. After graduation he obtained a post as assistant to the distinguished German physicist Kundt and eventually secured an appointment at the University of Würzburg in Bavaria. He was successively Professor of Physics at the universities of Strasbourg (1876), Giessen (1879), Würzburg (1888) and Munich (1900–20), but he died in abject poverty. At various times he studied piezo-electricity; heat absorption by and the specific heat of gases; heat conduction in crystals; elasticity; and the capillary action of fluids. In 1895, whilst experimenting with the Crookes tube, a partially evacuated tube invented some seven years earlier, he observed that when a high voltage was applied across the tube, a nearby piece of barium platinocyanide produced light. He theorized that when the so-called cathode rays produced by the tube (electrons, as we now know) struck the glass wall, some unknown radiation occurred that was able to penetrate light materials and affect photographic plates. These he called X-rays (they also became known as Röntgen rays), but he believed (erroneously) that they bore no relation to light rays. For this important discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, but, sadly, he died in abject poverty during the hyperinflation of the 1920s.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Weapons and armour

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Fermi was one of the most versatile of twentieth-century physicists, one of the few to excel in both theory and experiment. His greatest theoretical achievements lay in the field of statistics and his theory of beta decay. His statistics, parallel to but independent of Dirac, were the key to the modern theory of metals and the statistical modds of the atomic nucleus. On the experimental side, his most notable discoveries were artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment and the realization of a controlled nuclear chain reaction, in the world's first nuclear reactor.

Fermi received a conventional education with a chemical bias, but reached proficiency in mathematics and physics largely through his own reading. He studied at Pisa University, where he taught himself modern physics and then travelled to extend his knowledge, spending time with Max Born at Göttingen. On his return to Italy, he secured posts in Florence and, in 1927, in Rome, where he obtained the first Italian Chair in Theoretical Physics, a subject in which Italy had so far lagged behind. He helped to bring about a rebirth of physics in Italy and devoted himself to the application of statistics to his model of the atom. For this work, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938, but in December of that year, finding the Fascist regime uncongenial, he transferred to the USA and Columbia University. The news that nuclear fission had been achieved broke shortly before the Second World War erupted and it stimulated Fermi to consider this a way of generating secondary nuclear emission and the initiation of chain reactions. His experiments in this direction led first to the discovery of slow neutrons.

Fermi's work assumed a more practical aspect when he was invited to join the Manhattan Project for the construction of the first atomic bomb. His small-scale work at Columbia became large-scale at Chicago University. This culminated on 2 December 1942 when the first controlled nuclear reaction took place at Stagg Field, Chicago, an historic event indeed. Later, Fermi spent most of the period from September 1944 to early 1945 at Los Alamos, New Mexico, taking part in the preparations for the first test explosion of the atomic bomb on 16 July 1945. President Truman invited Fermi to serve on his Committee to advise him on the use of the bomb. Then Chicago University established an Institute for Nuclear Studies and offered Fermi a professorship, which he took up early in 1946, spending the rest of his relatively short life there.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Electronics and information technology

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Born the son of a professor of anatomy, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. He then worked for three years as a geophysicist at the Gulf Research Laboratories before taking a PhD in mathematical physics at Princeton, where he was a graduate student. For some time he held appointments at the University of Minnesota and at Harvard, and during the Second World War he joined the US Naval Ordnance Laboratory. In 1945 he joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories to head a new department to work on solid-state devices. While there, he and W.H. Brattain in 1948 published a paper that introduced the transistor. For this he, Brattain and Shockley won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956. In 1951 he moved to the University of Illinois as Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering. There he worked on superconductivity, a phenomenon described in 1911 by Kamerling-Onnes. Bardeen worked with L.N. Cooper and J.A.Schrieffer, and in 1972 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for the "BCS Theory", which suggested that, under certain circumstances at very low temperatures, electrons can form bound pairs.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.

The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.

His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.

With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Domagk's studies in medicine were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and his service in the Army, delaying his qualification at Kiel until 1921. For a short while he worked at the University of Greifswald, but in 1925 he was appointed Reader in Pathology at the University of Munster, where he remained as Extraordinary Professor of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy (1928) and Professor (1958).

In 1924 he published a paper on the role of the reticulo-endothelial system against infection. This led to his appointment as Director of Research by IG Farbenindustrie in their laboratory for experimental pathology and bacteriology. The planned programme of research into potential antibacterial chemotherapeutic drugs led, via the discovery of the dye Prontosil rubrum by his colleagues, to his reporting in 1936 the clinical antistreptococcal effects of the sulphonamide drugs. These results were confirmed in other countries, but owing to problems with the Nazi authorities he was unable to receive until 1947 the Nobel Prize that he was awarded in 1939.

Domagk turned his interest to the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, and in 1946 he was able to report the therapeutic activity of the thiosemicarbazones, which, although too toxic for general use, in their turn led to the discovery of the potent and effective isoniazid. In his later years he moved into the field of cancer chemotherapy, but interestingly he wrote, "One should not have too great expectations of the future of cytostatic agents." His only daughter was one of the first patients to have a severe streptococcal infection successfully treated with Prontosil rubrum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Born of American parents in China, he was brought up on a cattle-ranch and graduated from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, in 1924. He then went to the University of Minnesota, where he obtained a PhD in 1929. The same year he joined the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories as a research physicist and there, during the First World War, he worked on the magnetic detection of submarines. For his work on the invention and development of the transistor, he was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with John Bardeen and William Shockley. He retired in 1967. His interests have been concentrated on the properties of semiconductors such as germanium and silicon.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Bosch spent a year as a metalworker before studying chemistry at Leipzig University, obtaining his doctorate in 1898. The following year, he entered Badische Soda-, Anilin Fabrik (BASF), the leading German manufacturer of dyestuflfs. Between 1902 and 1907 he spent much time investigating processes for nitrogen fixation. In 1908 Fritz Haber told BASF of his laboratory-scale synthesis of ammonia from its constituent elements, and in the following year Bosch was assigned to developing it to the industrial scale. Leading a large team of chemists and engineers, Bosch designed the massive pressure converter and other features of the process and was the first to use the water gas shift reaction to produce the large quantities of hydrogen that were required. By 1913 Bosch had completed the largest chemical engineering plant at BASF's works at Oppau, and soon it was producing 36,000 tons of ammonium sulphate a year. Bosch enlarged the Oppau plant and went on to construct a larger plant at Leuna.

In 1914 Bosch was appointed a Director of BASF. At the end of the First World War he became Technical Adviser to the German delegation at the peace conference. During the 1920s BASF returned to its position of pre-eminence in high-pressure technology, thanks largely to Bosch's leadership. Although increasingly absorbed in administrative matters, Bosch was able to support the synthesis of methane and the hydrogenation of coal tar and lignite to make petrol. In 1925 BASF merged with other companies to form the giant IG Farbenindustrie AG, of which Bosch became Chairman of the Managing Board. His achievements received international recognition in 1931 when he was awarded, with F. Bergius, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for high-pressure synthesis.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics

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When Arthur L.Schawlow was 3 years old his family moved to Canada: it was in Toronto that he received his education, graduating from the University of Toronto with a BA in physics in 1941. He was awarded an MA in 1942, taught classes for military personnel at the University until 1944 and worked for a year on radar equipment. He returned to the University of Toronto in 1945 to carry out research on optical spectroscopy and received his PhD in 1949. From 1949 to 1951 he held a postgraduate fellowship at Columbia University, where he worked with Charles H. Townes on microwave spectroscopy. From 1951 to 1961 he was a research physicist at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, working mainly on superconductivity, but he maintained his association with Townes, who had pioneered the maser (an acronym of microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). In a paper published in Physical Review in December 1958, Townes and Schawlow suggested the possibility of a development into optical frequencies or an optical maser, later known as a laser (an acronym of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). In 1960 the first such device was made by Theodore H. Maiman. In 1960 Schawlow returned to Columbia University as a visiting professor and in the following year was appointed Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he continued his researches in laser spectroscopy. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

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