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Put a scientific stamp on your letters

Let the world know you love science and the people who have contributed to our knowledge and technology.

I just returned from the post office, where I bought a sheet of 41-cent stamps honoring four American scientists, theoretical physicist John Bardeen, biochemist Gerty Cori, astronomer Edwin Hubble, and structural chemist Linus Pauling.

I don’t collect stamps, but I like to use them to make a statement when I mail cards and letters. In this case, I’m particularly pleased to see Bardeen’s honor. He is the only person ever to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field.

Bardeen shared the 1957 physics prize for the invention of the transistor and the 1972 prize as the B in the BCS theory of superconductivity.

I profiled him as scientist of the decade, 1951-1960 in my Physics: Decade by Decade in the Twentieth Century Science set from Facts On File (2007).


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