Canadian Nobel Winners

1957 Peace Laureate: Lester Bowles Pearson Lester B. Pearson was born in Toronto on April 23rd 1897. Lester Pearson went to the University of Toronto in 1913. He was too young to enlist in the Army when Canada went to war in Europe but volunteered to serve with a hospital unit. He then joined the Royal Flying Corps but after his plane crashed he was brought back to Canada. He went to the University of Oxford and studied History and played Hockey and Lacrosse. He played on the British Hockey Team in the 1922 Olympics. He joined the staff of the History Department at the University of Toronto in 1924 until he was offered a job as first secretary in the Canadian Department of External Affairs in 1928. He participated in many international conferences such as Hague Conference on Codification of International Law (1930), the Geneva World Disarmament Conference (1933-1934) and in sessions of the League of Nations (1935). He was High Commissioner for Canada in London between 1935 and 1941 after which he became assistant under-secretary of state for External Affairs at Ottawa. In 1941 he became minister-counselor at the Canadian Legation in Washington and became ambassador in 1945. He helped in the establishment of the UNRRA in '43, the FAO in '44, and went to the San Francisco Conference on the establishment of the United Nations in 1945. He signed the NATO treaty in 1949 and headed the Canadian delegation to NATO until 1957 and the Canadian Delegation to the UN from 1946 to 1956. Pearson proposed that the United Nations Emergency Force would police the Middle East during the Suez Crisis to stop the conflict. This brought him the Nobel Peace Prize. Pearson became Prime Minister of Canada when the Liberals won the federal election of 1963 and was Prime Minister until 1968. He died in 1972.

1971 Chemistry Laureate: Dr. Gerhard Herzberg for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic stucture and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals Dr. Gerhard Herzberg was born in Hamburg in Germany, December 25th 1904. He left Germany as a refugee in 1935 and became a guest professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He became Professor of Physics until 1945. From 1945 and 1948 he taught at the University of Chicago. He Returned to Canada and became Director of the Division of Physics at the National Research Council until 1969. Herzberg made his important contribution in

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