Svante Arrhenius (Chemistry, 1903) put forward his theory of ionization while still a student at Upsala. "I came to my professor, Cleve, whom I admire very much, and I said: 'I have a new theory of electrical conductivity as a cause of chemical reactions.' He said: 'That is very interesting,' and then said 'Good-bye.' He explained to me later, when he had to pronounce the reason for my receiving the Nobel Prize for that work, that he knew very well that there are so many different theories formed, and that they are almost all certain to be wrong, for after a short time they disappear; and therefore, by using the statistical manner of forming his ideas, he concluded that my theory also would not exist very long."

Linus Pauling won two Nobel Prizes: Chemistry (1954) for work on the nature of the chemical bond, and Peace (1962). He said that the way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas. He conceded that most of the ideas would turn out to be stupid, but if you practice coming up with lots of ideas, some of them will turn out to be great ones.

Julius Axelrod shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Medicine. He said that the best thing that ever happened to him was that he couldn't get in to medical school. He turned to research and made key discoveries in the field of neurotransmission.

This collection of stories is maintained by Eric Walters. If you have comments or suggestions, send them!

Updated 14 July 2000