Otto Stern received the 1943 Nobel Prize in physics for his development of molecular beam methods and the use of these methods to determine a number of important physical constants, especially the magnetic moment of atoms and nuclei. The molecular beam--the introduction of a gas or vapor into a vacuum which results in the formation of a stream of atoms or molecules that is similar to a light beam--had been discovered by French physicist Louis Dunoyer. This molecular or atomic beam can be used to study the properties of the gas or vapor of which it is made.

Stern was born in Sohrau, Upper Silesia, Germany (later Zory, Poland), on February 17, 1888. He was the oldest of five children born to Oskar Stern and the former Eugenie Rosenthal. Both parents had come from prosperous grain merchants and flour millers and eagerly encouraged the intellectual development of their children. When Otto...