Jerome I Friedman

Scientists at U.S. institutions swept the Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics this year, and a California research center was a key player in pioneering research that led to the awarding of the physics prize to three experimenters. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Wednesday to three physicists who made major discoveries about the fundamental nature of matter while working 20 years ago at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park.

Scientists at U.S. institutions swept the Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics this year, and a California research center was a key player in pioneering research that led to the awarding of the physics prize to three experimenters. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Wednesday to three physicists who made major discoveries about the fundamental nature of matter while working 20 years ago at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park.

Two American physicists and a Canadian who first detected the universe's tiniest known particles--quarks--and an American chemist who re-creates natural substances in the lab were honored today with 1990's final Nobel Prizes. Jerome I. Friedman and Henry W. Kendall of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Canadian Richard E. Taylor of Stanford University will share the $700,000 Nobel Prize in physics.

A Soviet deputy foreign minister accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday on behalf of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who said in a message from Moscow that the world is still threatened by aggression and totalitarianism. Gorbachev, the first Communist head of state to win the prize, had hoped to attend the ceremony in Norway in person, but he said that problems at home--including a food shortage, a collapsing economy and breakaway republics--now require his attention "hour by hour."

Henry W. Kendall, Nobel Prize-winning nuclear and atomic physicist best known for his role as co-founder and longtime chairman of the 100,000-member Union of Concerned Scientists that champions environmental protection, has died. He was 72. Kendall died Monday during an underwater photography dive at Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Fla. An autopsy was planned to determine whether he died of a heart attack or accidental drowning.