KARLE, JEROME

KARLE, JEROME (1918– ), U.S. physicist and Nobel Laureate. He was born in New York City and educated at Abraham Lincoln High School before graduating with a B.S. from City College, New York (1933), an M.A. in biology from Harvard (1938), and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Michigan. After working on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago (1944), he joined the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington (1946) as head of the Electron Diffraction Section (1946–68) and subsequently as chief scientist in the Laboratory for the Structure of Matter. He was also professor at the University of Maryland (1951–70). His research interests are crystallography and the structure of a broad range of macromolecules. Karle won the Nobel Prize in chemistry (1985) jointly with herbert hauptman for his contributions to determining the structure of complex molecules by mathematical analysis of crystallographic observations. His later work analyzed the application of quantum crystallography to analyzing organic molecules. He served as chairman of the National Research Council (1973–75) and president of the International Union of Crystallography (1981–84). He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He had a special interest in social issues of scientific research and ecological problems. He worked collaboratively with Isabella Lugoski, whom he married in 1942. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)