Science: Plasmas, Magnets and Sugars

At his beach house in La Jolla, Calif., Hannes Alfvén returned to bed after he got the news. Inside his lab in Buenos Aires, Luis Leloir squirmed uncomfortably as his colleagues toasted him with test tubes and flasks filled with Old Smuggler Scotch. At a restaurant in France, Louis Néel barely bothered to interrupt his lunch. "There are only a few Nobel prizes," he explained, "yet there are many good physicists." The modesty of the 1970 Nobel laureates in physics and chemistry last week was becoming, but less than indicative of their achievements.

Alfvén,...

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