Nobel Trivia

In 1932, James Chadwick, one of Rutherford’s protégés, discovered the neutron – which the Joliot –Curies in France has actually found first but not recognized. Rutherford was vehement. “I want Jimmy to have it – unshared!” But should the Joliots just be ignored? Rutherford, with all his shrewdness and confidence, roared back: “That boy? Let me tell you. Joliot’s so brilliant that before this year is out, he’ll discover something so new and remarkable that you’ll be able to give him a prize for that!”. Which happened precisely as Rutherford predicted.

James Frank, shared the Nobel prize in 1926 and was a professor in Gottingen. In exile from Hitler, he spent 1935 working with Bohr in Copenhagen on a Rockefeller grant. Even a Nobel Prize Winner could feel inhibited:
“I made some experiments. And when I told Bohr about it, then he said immediately what might be wrong, what might be right. And it was so quick that after a time I felt that I am unable to think at all… Bohr’s genius was so superior. And one cannot help that one would get so strong inferiority complexes in the presence of such a genius that one becomes sterile. You see?”