Swedish Inventor Research Articles

1956 Nobel Prize in Physics

Three American physicists, John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley, were honored last month in Stockholm, where they were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for “their investigations on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect”. Each of the three winners of the prize received a gold medal, a diploma, and a share of the $38 633 award. Ceremonies to mark the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor of dynamite under whose will the Nobel fund was established, were held on December 10th by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences in the concert hall at Stockholm. The presentations were made by King Gustaf Adolph of Sweden before an assembly of some 2000 persons. It was the first time that three physicists received jointly a single Nobel Prize since 1903, when the physics award was shared by Henri Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie.

Potash Fertilisers From Felspars

THE dearth of potassium salts in this country owing to the war has caused renewed attention to be devoted to the possibilities of preparing soluble potassium salts from the large deposits of felspar which are found in certain parts of the country. The problem has occupied the attention of chemists intermittently for many years, but the processes devised in the past have proved commercially unsuccessful, owing largely to the failure to obtain, along with the potash salts, other saleable products which might share the cost of manufacture. This difficulty would appear to have been largely overcome in the process patented by Mr. J. Rhodin, a Swedish inventor, in which, along with the soluble potassium salts, a marketable white cement is obtained. The successful results obtained b this process with Swedish felspars have been brought to the notice of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and under the auspices of a subcommittee of the Fertilisers Committee of the Board further tests with British felspars from Roche, in Cornwall, and Loch Eriboll, in Sutherlandshire, have been carried out, the results of which are summarised in the February issue of the Journal of the Board of Agriculture.