1910

Nobel Prize in Physics

Johannes Diderik van der Waals

The ideal gas law — pressure times volume equals a constant — works neatly on a blackboard and imperfectly in a laboratory. Van der Waals corrected it in 1873 by accounting for the fact that molecules have a finite size and attract each other weakly. His equation of state described how real gases behave as they are compressed and cooled toward liquefaction, and the forces he identified now bear his name in every chemistry textbook.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Otto Wallach

Wallach sorted out the chemistry of terpenes — the large family of compounds responsible for the scents of pine, citrus, camphor, and turpentine — by patiently working out their ring structures and relationships. The field had been a tangle of contradictory formulae before he arrived. His systematic approach gave the fragrance and pharmaceutical industries a foundation to build on.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Albrecht Kossel

Kossel spent years analysing the chemical constituents of the cell nucleus, identifying the five nucleotide bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil — that would later be recognised as the letters in the genetic code. He worked sixty years before anyone understood what they spelled, which is either frustrating or admirable depending on your view of patience.

Nobel Prize in Literature

Paul Heyse

Heyse was the most decorated German author of the nineteenth century — novels, plays, translations, and above all short stories, of which he wrote over a hundred and fifty. The Nobel committee recognised his long career and consummate artistry. He was 80. Tolstoy, who was also still alive, did not win.

Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

Permanent International Peace Bureau

The Permanent International Peace Bureau, based in Bern, served as the coordinating hub for peace societies across Europe and organised the international peace congresses that had been meeting annually since the 1840s. Giving the prize to an institution rather than an individual was a recognition that organised pacifism, whatever its ultimate success rate, required infrastructure.

Paul Ehrlich introduces Salvarsan, the first targeted chemotherapy drug

Paul Ehrlich · Sahachiro Hata

Ehrlich had been testing arsenic compounds against syphilis for years when his assistant Sahachiro Hata retested compound number 606 and found it worked. Arsphenamine — marketed as Salvarsan — was the first drug specifically designed to kill a pathogen without killing the host: Ehrlich called the principle a "magic bullet." Before it, syphilis was incurable and frequently fatal. After it, a course of injections could clear the infection entirely.

Thomas Hunt Morgan discovers sex-linked inheritance in Drosophila

Thomas Hunt Morgan

Morgan had been breeding fruit flies for years when a white-eyed male appeared in a population of red-eyed flies. When he crossed it back through generations, the white-eye trait behaved differently in males and females — it was linked to the X chromosome. This was the first demonstration that a specific gene occupies a specific chromosome, turning genetics from a statistical science into a physical one.

Halley's Comet returns as predicted by Newton's laws

Edmund Halley had predicted in 1705 that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were the same object, and that it would return around 1758. It did. Now, in 1910, it returned again, visible to the naked eye and passing within 22 million kilometres of Earth — close enough that Earth passed through its tail, to the considerable anxiety of those who had read that the tail contained cyanogen gas. No ill effects were reported. The comet, indifferent as always, continued on its 75-year circuit.