Oil well pumps in Midway-Sunset Oil Field. (Corbis-Bettmann)

Lars Onsager was a Norwegian-American chemist and physicist who received the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes."

Onsager was born on November 27, 1903, to Ingrid and Erling Onsager. The family lived in Oslo (then Kristiania), Norway, where his father was a barrister. He grew up with two younger brothers, Per and Knut. Onsager's mathematical acumen was apparent early. At the age of fifteen he discovered for himself how to solve cubic equations. His school performance enabled him to skip one year at school, and at the age of sixteen he was ready for university studies. He entered the Norwegian Institute of Technology at Trondheim, where he graduated in 1925 with a chemical engineering degree.

As a freshman in Trondheim, he had...