Karle, Jerome (1918-2013), an American chemist, won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1985 for his work in X-ray crystallography, a technique for discovering the structure of a crystalline material by scattering X rays from it. He shared the prize with another American scientist, Herbert Hauptmans (see Hauptman, Herbert Aaron ). The X rays are strengthened or weakened according to the angle at which they are scattered and the positions of the atoms from which they are deflected. Scientists can determine the crystal structure by a mathematical analysis of the pattern of the X rays. Karle and Hauptman greatly improved the mathematical methods of analysis.
Jerome Karle was born on June 18, 1918, in New York City. He received a master’s degree from Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1938. He went to the University of Michigan, where he gained his Ph.D. After further research at Michigan, and with the Manhattan Project nuclear bomb program, he went to work with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. By this time, Karle’s interests had turned toward the problems of analyzing crystal structure. Hauptman, a physicist and mathematician, joined the laboratory. Together, the two scientists solved problems in the mathematical analysis of X-ray diffraction patterns, developing what were called “direct methods” for crystal structure analysis. This was the work that won Karle the Nobel Prize. Karle’s wife, Isabella, who was also a chemist, set up experimental facilities at the laboratory, and Karle applied the new methods in practice. Throughout the rest of his career, Karle continued his experimental and theoretical work in crystallography. From 1951 to 1970, Karle was a professor at the University of Maryland. He died on June 6, 2013.
