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Karle, Jerome (291 words) |
 | Karle was a classmate of Hauptman's at City College in New York, from which they both graduated in 1937. |
| Their method was neglected for some years after its publication in 1949, but the efforts of Karle's chemist wife, Isabella, to point out its potential applications gradually induced crystallographers to begin using the method to determine the three-dimensional structure of thousands of small biological molecules, including those of many hormones, vitamins, and antibiotics. |
| Before Karle and Hauptman developed their method, it took two years to deduce the structure of a simple biological molecule; in the 1980s, using powerful computers to perform the complex calculations demanded by their method, the task took about two days. |
| Inventor of the Week: Archive (466 words) |
| Karle was quite a precocious child, whose love of science had, before her 23rd birthday, translated into a BS (1941), MS (1942) and PHD (1944) in physical chemistry from the University of Michigan. |
| Jerome Karle was using complex mathmatics to develop "direct methods" for analyzing the structure of crystals --- work that would later win him the Nobel Prize in chemistry (1985). |
| Isabella Karle's improved process vindicated her husband's direct method theory; drastically improved the speed and accuracy of chemical and biomedical analysis; and remains the basis of all advanced x-ray crystallography, including computerized programs, used around the world today. |
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