‘Gibbs was an absolute genius,’ agreed Claude. ‘I read his monograph, “On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances”, with complete absorption. However, you can have no shame in overlooking him. I am told that his fellow countrymen did not appreciate him either. One American scientist who visited our laboratory in Paris told me that when Gibbs died-in 1903, I think-his American colleagues and students hardly noticed it. They considered him an eccentric old man. The majority of condolences came from scientists around the world, who had read him and understood his worth.’
Denise addressed Jacobsson. ‘Why did the Royal Academy of Science neglect him?’
‘He was too far ahead of his time, and no one here understood his abstractions,’ Jacobsson said simply. ‘As I told Mr. Craig yesterday, our judges are only too human. They make mistakes. Usually, though, they are right.’
‘Yes, usually they are right,’ said Denise. ‘Have any of your chemistry judges won the Nobel Prize?’
‘Professor The Svedberg was elected in 1926, most deservedly, and he has balloted on many awards. A remarkable man, Svedberg, a one-man faculty, library, student body, all condensed in a single brain. He spoke seven languages, read poetry in Latin, learned Spanish in two months before taking a trip to South America. We have had our share of geniuses. The annual balloting is in good hands.’
‘How do your judges determine if a certain candidate should be honoured in chemistry or physics?’ inquired Claude. ‘To my mind, there is often considerable overlapping.’
‘You have touched upon one of our major problems,’ agreed Jacobsson. ‘When such a decision has to be made, the chemistry and physics committees of the Academy of Science exchange their views and make an arbitrary judgment. I would guess that such a decision might have been made in 1944, when Dr. Otto Hahn was a candidate for discovering nuclear fission, which affected physicists everywhere and led to the atom bomb. But Hahn’s experiments were actually in chemistry, and so he received the chemistry award. I suspect that our chemistry judges are happiest when there is no overlapping, and they can vote for candidates whose findings are unquestionably in the chemical realm. Many such clear-cut decisions come to mind at once-Sir William Ramsay’s discovery of helium, Henri Moissan’s isolation of fluorine and adoption of the electric furnace and his production of artificial diamonds. Actually, in the case of Moissan, a majority of the Academy had favoured the Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev, for inventing the periodic system-but one minority judge impressed the others with Moissan’s versatility, and those artificial diamonds carried the day. Other clear-cut decisions? Richard Willstätter’s work, and later Hans Fischer’s, on chlorophyll, and, in 1960, Willard F. Libby’s atom time clock, which could tell the age of fossils fifty thousand years old, dating even the hair of an Egyptian mummy. Those are the chemistry awards our judges like the most.’
‘And you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Denise, ‘what do you like the most?’
Jacobsson was startled, and then he smiled. ‘I concur with the majority. I am only an innocent bystander.’ He considered this a moment, and recollected his Notes, and then he added, ‘As a matter of fact, the 1957 medical award-which was a case of overlapping and might very well have been the chemistry award, instead-that one gave me a good deal of satisfaction, because it was deserving, and, as one advanced in years, I had profited by it. I am sure you know of Dr. Daniel Bovet’s discoveries. He was a Swiss who became an Italian citizen. For a while, I believe, he worked at your Institute in Paris.’
Denise nodded. ‘Yes, shortly before our time.’
‘Bovet made three thousand experiments in four years. As a result, he produced the sulphurs, and the great anti-allergy drugs-anti-histamines, and synthetic curare to be used as a muscle relaxant in surgery, and so on. In your Paris, Bovet fell in love with the daughter of a former Premier of Italy-her name was Filomena Nitti-and he told the press, “I proposed immediately. It was a lightning chemical reaction.” After that, they worked together like the Curies, and Joliot-Curies, and yourselves. I think it is wonderful, a man and wife, to have so major a common interest.’
Claude squirmed, and Denise glared at him, and the last was not lost on Count Jacobsson. Claude fished for his silver cigarette case, and Jacobsson, while mystified, sensed the ferment in the room.
Instinctively, Jacobsson wanted this couple to be happier, to be drawn closer together. He wanted to inform them of how happy Marie Curie, the first woman to win the prize, had been to share it with her husband, and how sad she had been, when she arrived in Stockholm for her second prize, to come without him, for Pierre Curie had been killed in an accident in 1906. Jacobsson wanted to tell them how well another husband-wife team, Drs. Gerty and Carl Cori, who had won the medical prize for isolating enzymes, had got on together and were a family. But somehow, Jacobsson felt that this might not be the time for such examples. Yet there was his job and the dignity of the awards, and he must think of something to give the Marceaus subtle warning. Then he thought of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who had shared the $41,000 prize in 1935, and with them he thought that he might make his point.
‘Indeed, you are in a select circle,’ Jacobsson told the Marceaus. ‘You are only the fourth husband-and-wife pair in our history to win the prize. We are sentimental about such awards, and the winners, with one exception, have made us proud.’
‘One exception?’ said Denise carefully.
‘I am thinking of your countrymen, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who won the chemistry award for their discoveries in radioactive elements.’
‘What of them?’ asked Denise.
‘They earned the award for artificial radium, and they received it here in Stockholm, and we would give it to them again. But their subsequent history, after the prize, was-in some respects-unfortunate.’
‘They were a devoted couple,’ said Denise sharply, with an eye on her husband.
‘Oh, yes, yes, nothing like that,’ said Jacobsson hastily. ‘Indeed, they were heroes of the Second World War. Frédéric Joliot-Curie stole the world’s greatest supply of heavy water-then important in atomic research-from under the noses of the Nazis in Norway. He got it safely to England. And in France, despite the Gestapo, he organized eighteen underground laboratories to make incendiary bottles for the maquis. I have no doubt you know all that.’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Denise.
‘It was their activity after the war that most Swedes deplored,’ said Jacobsson. ‘Frédéric joined the French Communist Party. And Irène Joliot-Curie told an American visitor that the United States was uncivilized, and that the working-men should overthrow the government. I remember more that she said, for I have recorded all in my Notes. She told the American, “You are deliberately fomenting war. You are imperialists, and you want war. You will attack the U.S.S.R., but it will conquer you through the power of its idea.” I tell you, this caused much headshaking in the Swedish Academy of Science.’
‘Unfortunate,’ said Claude. ‘However, surely you judge by the scientific achievement of your laureates, not by their personal activities.’
‘True,’ said Jacobsson. And then, he added slowly, ‘Still, our laureates are so much looked up to, so widely respected, that when they commit scandals, we are unhappy-extremely unhappy.’
The shaft, motivated by instinct and not information, hit its targets, Jacobsson was certain. For Denise regarded her husband coldly, and Claude avoided her gaze and lifted his heavy-set frame from the sofa.
‘I am eager to see the room where the chemistry awards are voted,’ announced Claude.
Jacobsson rose. ‘I had better explain that the room you will see is not exactly where the balloting takes place. In this room, the Committee for Chemistry often holds the preliminary meetings that lead to the recommendation of the ultimate winner. The actual final balloting, ever since 1913, takes place in the session hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science building, located at Frescati just beyond central Stockholm.’