Help us find and improve next week's Connection Finder profiles: Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists

Question

Next week, the featured example profiles in the Connection Finder will be Nobel Prize-winning scientists in honor of Alfred Nobel's birth on October 21st.

Here are a few ideas of what we're looking for and some we're getting started on:

• Niels Bohr
• Albert Einstein
• Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi

Can you help with these profiles, or expand their families? Adding relatives in any direction helps with connections. Every missing relative you add will make our connections to them closer.

Who else should we feature? Do they need a profile?

All profiles we feature need a good biography and a connection to the big tree. We also want each one to have an image, and the image needs to have proper source attribution explaining why it's in the public domain or why we have the right to display it.

We can't feature everyone mentioned (we only have room for eight per week), but if we don't feature a profile you work on, we may use it sometime in the future. And, of course, all contributions help improve our shared tree.

We'll make a final decision on which ones to feature early next week.

Please reply here with what you're working on so that we don't duplicate our efforts. Thank you!

Comments

You cannot do Nobel winners and NOT include the first ever Nobel in Physics: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen - has picture, is connected, bio could do with some expansion.

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Stephen Binkley was member of Nobel Prize winning team that discovered Vitamin K

Answer 1

As DNA is so important to us, then Frances Crick: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Crick-125

and Maurice Wilkins https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wilkins-5227

: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilkins

James Watson is still alive so can't be included...

Comments

Frederick Sanger, two times Nobel prizewinner. 

The first  for sequencing insulin (the basis of all modern analogue insulins.). The second for creating a method of sequencing DNA. This was the means used to first sequence the human genome.  https://labtestsonline.org/dna-sequencing

Alas poor Frederick has a lonely orphaned  profile, unconnected to anyone. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sanger-479

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Rosalind Elsie Franklin unfortunately had died before the others won the Nobel prize.

Answer 2

Marie Curie has a connected profile with a picture  :

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Skłodowska-2

Comments

Thank you, Joe, for selecting a woman...at long last! We've had a dearth of women these past several weeks and when we do, it's generally 1 woman to 7 men.

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Thanks Carol.  Rosalind Franklin should have won the Prize too, for her work on DNA but died before the team was awarded it.  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Franklin-2495

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The dearth of women is linked to the selected themes - no woman this week (Mars authors), one last week (there was only one possible woman to feature, since there is no other female dead US Supreme Court justice than Ruth Bader Ginsburg), one the previous week (Maria Reynolds for Hamilton!, a war-related theme). Women were featured among the thriller authors, TV detectives, and Romantic composers, but we can't expect any if the next themes (Dracula authors and military heroes) are maintained.

You can suggest other ideas for weekly themes here.

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Hi Joe,

Thanks again for selecting the first woman in this week's theme!

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Hi Isabelle,

I do understand; however, even with the Hamilton theme, there was one woman. Why couldn't Elizabeth Schuyler have been included for at least two women? She was a major character in the musical, which I saw in Chicago, and a major/leading character in Alexander Hamilton's life and promoter of his papers and contributions after his death.

She's even a Notable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Schuyler_Hamilton

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Instead of Dracula authors, how about expanding to 'Monster authors' so at least Mary Shelly can be included. She wrote Frankenstein! A woman! Wrote Frankenstein!. That's as much a monster as Dracula. I think it's how we phrase each weekly topic that can incorporate women and people of color.

Thanks!

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Carol, I guess that's because being Hamilton's wife, she's only 1 step for him, so including her as a connection anchor the same week as her husband would have been redundant? She is a notable, yes, and could even be featured as the main profile of the week in the future.

(Although to be honest Richard Wagner was featured the same week as his father-in-law Liszt).

The best thing to do is to look for women to be featured on Nov. 19, Dec. 2 and Dec. 9 (I think those are the current empty slots). Or suggest alternatives to the currently scheduled themes.

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To get back on topic, Marie Curie had a daughter who was also a Nobel prize winner (Chemistry), Irène Joliot-Curie. Her husband even took his wife's name!

Answer 3

Alexander Fleming is connected, with picture. Biography needs a bit of work. He got Nobel Prize for the finding of penicillin. 

Comments

Along with Ernst Boris Chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chain

and Howard Florey https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Florey-29

Answer 4

Here is a full list of Nobel laureates in Physics, all put together by J Ryan: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Nobel_Physicist_Connections

If you wish to feature a French one, we have Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, Louis de Broglie, and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes who are all connected. Most of them need bio work, I could work on one of them, but not all...

Answer 5

Here are a few that I worked on:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Northrop-345 John Howard Northrop
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sumner-2214 James B Sumner

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Woodward-7023

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McClintock-585 Barbara McClintock

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Beadle-601 George Beadle

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sperry-1276 Roger Sperry

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Urey-48 Harold Urey

Answer 6

Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan (as in "centimorgan"); probably relevant for Wikitree, I imagine.

Comments

The first Kentuckian to win a Nobel Prize!

Answer 7

Here are a few more women:

--Gerty Theresa Cori: discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen

--Maria Goeppert Meyer: discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure

--Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances

--Rosalyn Sussman Yalow: for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones

--Gertrude B. Elion: discoveries of important principles for drug treatment

Comments

These women all have profiles:

Gerty (Radnitz) Cori - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Radnitz-1

Maria (Goeppert) Mayer - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Goeppert-3

Dorothy (Crowfoot) Hodgkin - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Crowfoot-87

Rosalyn (Sussman) Yalow - Connected to parents, but parents have no connections - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sussman-74

Gertrude Elion - Connected to only to parents and 1 grandfather - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Elion-7

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Hi Paige,

Thanks for checking all the profiles. I surfed the web to find women for this week (women who were dead because I found one woman last week, but she is still alive and I was scolded). There are a number of other Nobel women scientists now, but they are still alive.

Anyway Thanks! Wouldn't it be great to have all women scientists?!

Answer 8

Hendrik Lorentz (Wikipedia) was at the basis of modern physics. He derived the equations for special relativity (Lorentz equations) and therefore made the stepping stone for Einstein's theories.

He's also important for bringing scientists from different countries together in the early 20th century. Back then most scientists published in either French, German or English, so exchange of ideas was often hampered by a language barrier.