Flashback

50 years ago

Giulio Natta prepared polypropylene using the catalysts discovered by Karl Ziegler. The pair won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963.

100 years ago

Publication of JJ Thomson's paper outlining the 'Plum Pudding' theory on the structure of an atom. Thomson suggested that atoms were positively charged particles, within which negatively charged particles were distributed, like plums in a pudding. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906.

125 years ago

Birth of Albert Einstein in Germany. Although best known for his work on relativity, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for 'his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect'.

Birth of Elmer Verner McCollum, the US biochemist credited as the greatest single contributor to the improvement of nutritional human health. McCollum was the first to use rats in nutritional experimentation and developed the letter system of naming vitamins. He discovered vitamin A in 1913, co-discovered vitamin D in 1921 and established a link between nutrition and disease.

Birth of Otto Hahn in Frankfurt. Hahn's most notable discovery was the fission of uranium and thorium in medium heavy atomic nuclei. His work on the fission of heavy nuclei led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944. However, Hahn could not attend the ceremony as, at the time, he was being held by the British over Germany's failed effort to develop an atomic bomb.