Karle, Jerome (1918– )

US chemist who, with colleague Herbert Hauptman, tested the range of available diffraction techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and the ‘heavy atom’ technique. The latter involved substituting an atom of a high molecular mass into the desired crystal structure, and from the change in the intensities of the diffraction patterns the phase structure of the crystalline substance could be deduced. To reduce the amount of time this took, the pair devised the ‘direct method’ – whereby phase structures could be inferred simply from the diffraction patterns. He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1985 for his development of methods of determining crystal structures.

Born in New York City, he was educated at the City College, New York, and at the University of Michigan. He was involved in the military's Manhattan Project in Chicago in the 1940s and spent most of his working life at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC.