About 60 chemistry professors, 35 directors of industrial research, chemical consultants, and members of miscellaneous institutions filled out the attendance. The presence of the East German chemists is one important scientific communication link still open between the two Germ any s.
The Laureates Speak.
TIME TO TALK- European and U.S. students found plenty of time to discuss chemistry with 17 Nobel laureates attending the Nobel Prize Winner's Conference
Nobel Laureates Gather at Lindau Resort town in southern Germany plays host to 17 Nobel prizewinners, U.S. and European students Sixteen U.S. chemistry students journeyed to Lindau this summer for the Nobel Prize Winner's Conference. The students, the first American students to attend the 11-year-old conference, were able to exchange ideas with 17 Nobel laureates and about 600 European students. During the four days of the conference, 11 Nobel laureates in chemistry discoursed on their favorite subjects. Two American winners—Dr. Peter Debye of Cornell University and Dr. Wendell Stanley of the University of California at Berkeley—were among them. Between the talks the students and professors found plenty of time to mingle with the laureates. The Lindau Conferences. The meetings in the resort area of Germany are designed to give students of chemistry, physics, and medicine an opportunity to meet the men of their disciplines who have won Nobel prizes. Each year, one of the three sciences is featured. This year it was chemistry. The series began in 1951. The County of Lindau, spurred by the feeling that German medical science had been cut off from the main stream of scientific thought for many years, invited all the living Nobel laureates in medicine to attend the meeting. The
Nobel winners presented papers on their work and talked with physicians, professors, and medical scientists. Six laureates made the trip. The meeting was a great success and the organizers decided to extend the idea to include chemistry and physics along with medicine on a rotating basis. The program has been gaining in popularity and usefulness ever since. The first students were invited in 1953. The conference is sponsored by the County of Lindau, with active support from Count Lennart Bernadotte of Luxembourg, who lives nearby on Lake Constance. Lindau, with help from various segments of German industry, finances the meeting itself. Scientific and governmental groups in other European countries provide funds for groups of their own students. Fourteen of the American students, most of them postdoctoral students studying in Europe, were provided transportation and living expenses by the National Science Foundation, acting on a proposal from the National Academy of Sciences. Two Americans hitchhiked from Cambridge, England. Most of the other students were West German, but France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Austria, and East Germany were also represented.
The 11
papers presented this year ranged from a biography of van't Hoff, who won the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry, through chemical discussions of alkaloids, viral nucleic acids (Dr. Stanley), and sugars of heart-active glycosides. Other subjects discussed included molecular separations by molecular sieve effects, chromatography, and critical opalescence (Dr. Debye). Or. Artturi I. Yirtancn, laureate from Finland, broke Lindau precedents by injecting some sociological results of science into his paper on "Chemistry and the Possibilities of Feeding the World's Population." Another high light of the conference was the discussion by Dr. Otto Halm of Gottingen, West Germany, of how he and his co-workers in the mid1930's missed for so long the fact that they were dealing with the fission process. Dr. Hahn, at 82 the dean of this year's speakers, was loudly applauded for his presentation. Next Year. In 1962, Lindau will be host to winners of Nobel prizes in physics. Attendance at the meetings has been increasing steadily, but Lindau's capacity to handle the group has clearly reached its limit. Student participation next year and in the future will probably be limited to this year's figure of about 600.
TIME TO PLAY. West Germany's Lindau proved a good host to its visitors JULY
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