Gerhard Herzberg

Gerhard Herzberg fled Nazi Germany in 1935 to find refuge at the University of Saskatchewan before settling in Ottawa as director of the Division of Pure Physics at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). He turned the NRC into an international capital of spectroscopy and quantum molecular physics.

Herzberg determined the geometric and electronic structures of diatomic and polyatomic molecules, free radicals, and interstellar chemical species. For his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals, he received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.