Arnold Koningstein is having dinner with one of his former students Friday and they will definitely be ordering champagne.
Dr. Koningstein, a retired professor of physical chemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa, will be in the German city of Aachen to meet Peter Gruenberg, one of the winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics.
Dr. Gruenberg, a German whose discoveries have allowed the electronics industry to use smaller and smaller disks, was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Koningstein's lab from 1969 to 1972.
“We did work with lasers and he was really into it,” Dr. Koningstein said Wednesday in an interview from the Netherlands, where he is vacationing.
They had arranged the dinner months ago, as a reunion between teacher and student. Now it will be even more celebratory. Dr. Koningstein said he likes to think that the work done in his lab – while not directly related to Nobel – may have encouraged Dr. Gruenberg to pursue the research that has led him to the most prestigious prize in science.
“The spark had to come from somewhere,” he said.
Dr. Gruenberg isn't the only 2007 Nobel winner with a strong connection to Canada.
Oliver Smithies, who shared this year's prize in medicine, landed his first job in 1953 at the Connaught Medical Laboratory at the University of Toronto. He stayed until 1960.
In an interview Wednesday from his lab at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Smithies said the work he did in Canada on embryonic stem cells in mice played a role in his Nobel win: “It was quite intrinsic.”
Dr. Smithies shared the $1.5-million (U.S.) prize with fellow American Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah and Sir Martin Evans of Cardiff University in Wales.
They were honoured for developing a now widely used technique that allows researchers to figure out what particular genes do in mice.
Dr. Smithies was associated with the University of Toronto at the same time as James Till and Ernest McCullough, the Canadians who discovered stem cells and defined their properties. They are seen as strong contenders for a Nobel.
Dr. Smithies said for years he heard rumours that he was going to win. The same rumours periodically circulate through the international scientific community about the Canadian duo, he said.
“I think it is quite possible they will win. Maybe they have to wait until they are 82,” he said.
Dr. McCullough is 81. In an interview last week, he said he would be extraordinarily surprised to win a Nobel. Dr. Till is 76, and in an interview he too said he wasn't expecting to become a laureate.
“Am I holding my breath? No.”
The last Canadian to win a Nobel Prize in science was Bert Brockhouse, who shared the prize in physics in 1994 for his work developing a technique to measure the atomic structure of matter.
For now, Canadians will have to join Dr. Koningstein in celebrating the victories of 2007 Nobel winners with strong ties to this country.
He is looking forward to the dinner, which will also include another German researcher, Gerhard Schaack, who had supervised Dr. Gruenberg's doctorate before they both came to Canada.
The money to hire them came from the National Research Council, where Gerhard Hertzberg, who won the 1971 Nobel in chemistry, was working.
Dr. Gruenberg met Dr. Hertzberg, he said, and worked closely with his assistant. “I think we published a paper, the three or four of us, together.”
He said Dr. Gruenberg is a jolly fellow, someone who likes to have fun in the lab as well as work hard. As a student, Dr. Gruenberg was supremely confident in his own abilities, Dr. Koningstein said, and that hasn't changed. Dr. Gruenberg told reporters earlier this week that he wasn't surprised to win the Nobel.
“Because I have received a lot of awards, I was often asked: ‘When will the big award come?' ” Dr. Gruenberg said.
