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Article: For kids: a different kind of gold medal.(THE HOME FORUM)(Nobel Prize awardees)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- October 21, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Nick Thomas Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Roald Hoffmann can still recall the morning of Oct. 19, 1981, when an announcement came over the radio: He had just won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. "I was fixing my bike in the garage," the professor said from his office at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "My first thought was I had better call my mother before the phone starts ringing!"
Dr. Hoffmann won the award for using a set of mathematical rules, called quantum mechanics, to explain the nature of chemical reactions.
For most people, topics such as quantum mechanics probably won't arouse as much interest as, say, the ...