Nobel Prize

Norman Ramsey, 96, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics for his research into atomic energy levels that led to the creation of the atomic clock and MRI machines, died Friday at a nursing home in Wayland, Mass., his wife, Ellie, said Monday. Mr. Ramsey was an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard University. In his autobiography for the Nobel Prize - which he shared with Hans Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul - he wrote that he was inspired by failure in molecular beam magnetic resonance experiments in the late 1940s to invent a new technique of measuring the frequency of radiation from atoms using two electromagnetic fields.

H. Gobind Khorana, 89, who rose from a childhood of poverty in India to become a biochemist and share in a Nobel Prize for his role in deciphering the genetic code, died Wednesday in Concord, Mass. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Mr. Khorana was a professor emeritus. Mr. Khorana, who received his early schooling from his village teacher under a tree, advanced his education through scholarships and fellowships to become an authority on the chemical synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids, the large molecules in cells that carry genetic information.

Baruj Benacerraf, 90, a Venezuela-born immunologist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, died Tuesday of pneumonia at his Boston home. A physician-scientist, Mr. Benacerraf discovered that genetic factors played a central role in the function of the immune system. That finding led to a 1980 Nobel Prize for him and colleagues Jean Dausset of the University of Paris and George Snell of Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. He also led the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

A Russian-born billionaire who dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School has just made the Nobel Prize for Physics look like chump change. Yuri Milner, 50, has made big splashes before, investing hundreds of millions in the likes of Facebook and Groupon, gracing the cover of Forbes last year, and, this spring, spending $100 million for a single-family Silicon Valley home. Now, Milner, who was educated as a physicist before seeking his Wharton M.B.A. in the early '90s, has awarded $3 million each to nine physicists, including four at Princeton's Center for Advanced Study.

Herbert A. Hauptman, 94, a mathematician who shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry with the chemist Jerome Karle for developing revolutionary methods for determining the structure of molecules vital to life, died Sunday in Buffalo. Mr. Hauptman and Karle's work had far-reaching impact in the manufacture of drugs for a variety of ailments. Mr. Hauptman began collaborating with Karle after World War II. They turned their attention to X-ray crystallography, a means of deducing the three-dimensional structure of a molecule by analyzing how a crystal form of the molecule scatters a beam of X-rays aimed at it. The scattering pattern is recorded as points of light on X-ray film.

Renato Dulbecco, 97, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his seminal research on the interaction between tumors and cells, died Sunday in California. Dr. Dulbecco, an early proponent of sequencing genomes that led to the Human Genome Project, died in La Jolla, Italy's National Research Council - where Dr. Dulbecco worked on the genome project in the 1990s - said Monday. Dr. Dulbecco was a founding fellow of the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he was an emeritus president and distinguished professor.

Rita Levi-Montalcini, 103, a biologist who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home in Rome on Sunday. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, announcing, called it a great loss "for all of humanity. " He praised her as someone who represented "civic conscience, culture and the spirit of research. " Italy's so-called Lady of the Cells, who was Jewish and lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and the Nazi invasion, became one of her country's leading scientists and shared the Nobel medicine prize in 1986 with American biochemist Stanley Cohen.

NEW YORK - Ralph Steinman, a pioneer in understanding how cells fight disease, tried to help his own immune system thwart his pancreatic cancer. Steinman survived until Friday. Three days later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. The Nobel committee, unaware of his death, announced the award Monday in Stockholm. Steinman's employer, Rockefeller University in New York, learned of his death after the Nobel announcement. Steinman's wife, Claudia, said the family had planned to disclose his death Monday - only to discover an e-mail to his cellphone from the Nobel committee.

Nobel Prize Winner grew up here Saul Perlmutter won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics yesterday, but it wasn't until the California scientist who grew up in West Mount Airy was awakened by a telephone call from a reporter in Sweden that he learned of the distinction. " 'How do I feel about what?' " Perlmutter, 52, remembered asking the reporter before dawn from his Berkeley home. His wife looked online and told him it wasn't a hoax. "Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call," Perlmutter, a graduate of Germantown Friends School, told the Associated Press shortly after the announcement in Stockholm.