Feats Of Inspiration and Originality Involving superconductors, molecules and gene theory

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

For the Peace Prize winner, President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, it was a week of stirred political passions and fresh opportunity. Meanwhile, the scientists named by the Nobel Committee to receive the 1987 prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine basked in the traditional praise of colleagues around the globe.

The Nobel Prizes were initially established to honor work done during the previous twelve months. That has rarely happened in the 86 years that the Nobel Committee has made the awards, which currently include a stipend of $340,000. Indeed, recognition of even the most significant scientific discoveries can take decades. But the research that earned this year's Physics Prize was such an obvious breakthrough that the academy acted with remarkable haste. Karl Alex Muller, 60, of Switzerland and Johannes Georg Bednorz, 37, a West German, became laureates less than two years after their discovery of high-temperature superconductivity and just a year after their findings were first published.

The chemistry award went to two Americans, Charles J. Pedersen, 83, now retired from Du Pont, and Donald J. Cram, 68, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and French Chemist Jean-Marie Lehn, 48. The three were cited for their work, dating back as far as the 1960s, in creating artificial molecules that can mimic the behavior of hormones and other organic substances. The lone winner in medicine was Susumu Tonegawa, 48, a Japanese-born molecular biologist at M.I.T. His contribution: showing how a handful of genes in a small number of immune cells turn out a staggering variety of antibodies to protect the body against disease.

In one dramatic development, Bednorz and Muller revived a slow-moving area of modern physics and turned it into a white-hot field of research. Superconductivity is the phenomenon in which a conducting material loses its normal resistance to the passage of electricity; since virtually no energy is lost, any electric device becomes far more efficient when built with superconductors. The catch is that superconductivity usually occurs only near 0 K (Kelvin), or -460 degrees F, which means the materials must be cooled by expensive, hard-to-handle liquid helium, thus sharply limiting practical applications.

The two scientists, working at the IBM labs near Zurich, discovered a new ceramic that raised the temperature to 35 K. Since then, other researchers have used similar materials to achieve superconductivity at even higher temperatures. Indeed, Paul C.W. Chu of the University of Houston and colleagues reached 98 K, or -283 degrees F, an achievement some physicists think should have earned Chu a share of the prize. That level of cooling can be achieved with more readily available liquid nitrogen. Suddenly, a wide range of applications seems economically feasible: trains that ride on a cushion of magnetism; smaller, faster supercomputers; more powerful medical imaging machines; and 100%-efficient power lines. The superfast train, notes Bednorz, "is a real dream of mine."

Muller was inspired to the discovery while walking in a monastery garden during a 1983 conference in Erice, Sicily. Although most existing superconductors were metals, theorists had suggested that ceramics, which usually act as insulators at room temperature, might also work because of their molecular structure. Stirred by a lecture on the subject, Muller started thinking about specific kinds of ceramics that might do the job. Says Bednorz: "As outsiders in the superconductor area, we could afford to tackle unconventional ideas." Was the award a surprise? "Based on the interest our work aroused, one could have expected it," says Muller, "but when it is reality, it seems unreal."

It seemed downright preposterous to Donald O. Cram of Altadena, Calif., when he got a phone call notifying him that he had just won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Reason: Cram is in the rug-shampooing business. The Swedish Academy of Sciences had rung up the wrong man. Quipped UCLA Chemist Donald J. Cram after hearing about the mix-up: "There is some chemistry involved in carpet cleaning." Cram, Pedersen and Lehn, working independently, shared the award for their work in "host-guest" chemistry. "The basis of our work," explains Lehn, "is the way molecules are able to recognize each other." In nature, molecules that work together have complementary shapes, like a lock and a key, and only the right key will fit to initiate a given reaction. In essence, the trio managed to create synthetic molecular keys that fit the locks as well. Those new molecules have been used experimentally to partially detoxify rats contaminated with lead or radioactive strontium.

M.I.T.'s Tonegawa might never have received his Nobel Prize if it were not for U.S. immigration laws. After his visa expired in 1971, Tonegawa, who had recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego, was forced to leave the U.S. He ended up at Switzerland's Basel Institute for Immunology, where he managed to solve a puzzle that had baffled biologists for a century.

Tonegawa proved that cells accomplish the Herculean task of making antibodies to order by reshuffling parts of the genes that govern the production of antibodies, the cellular building blocks of the immune system. He likens the process to rearranging the boxcars on a freight train. "The dogma was that the order of the genes in any one person is immutable," he says. "The freight train never shifts its cars around." In spite of prevailing theory, Tonegawa found that the "cars" did indeed rearrange themselves in a multitude of different configurations to make the antibodies that fight off diseases. His work has led to discoveries of how some cancers form and could help in understanding such immune disorders as AIDS or rheumatoid arthritis. To appreciate why the immune system goes wrong, notes Tonegawa, researchers must first understand what happens when it is going right.

With reporting by Margaret Studer/Zurich, with other bureaus