Herbert A. Hauptman has spent most of his adult life in and around the laboratory. In the early l950s, he and his fellow New Yorker and former classmate, Jerome Karle, developed a mathematical system, usually referred to as the "direct method," for the interpretation of data on atomic structure collected through X-ray crystallography. The system, however, did not come into general use until the l960s, and it was only in 1985 that Hauptman and Karle were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their accomplishment.

Herbert Aaron Hauptman was born in New York City on February 14, 1917, the son of Israel Hauptman, an Austrian immigrant who worked as a printer, and Leah (Rosenfeld) Hauptman. He grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Townsend Harris High School. At the City College of New York, he majored in mathematics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1937. Karle...