LARS ONSAGER - The National Academies Press

218 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
event he was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
his discovery of the reciprocal relations—which had failed to
secure him a Norwegian Ph.D. Other academies soon followed
suit, including the University of Cambridge. In 1970
the Battelle Symposium at Gstaad commemorated the 25th
anniversary of his first paper on the two-dimensional Ising
lattice (1944,1); and in 1972, on his retirement from Yale, his
colleagues presented him with a dedicatory volume to remind
him of his achievements and of the esteem in which
they held him.
CORAL GABLES (1972-1976)
On his retirement in 1972, Yale offered Onsager an office
as emeritus professor but denied him facilities for continuing
collaborative research with postdoctoral associates. Specifically,
the Provost's office cited a rule that prohibited an emeritus
professor from being a "principal investigator" on a research
proposal to a granting agency. Onsager resented the
blind application of the rule and appealed against the decision
but without success. By the time others in the University
discovered the situation and protested to President Kingman
Brewster, Jr., it was too late. Onsager had, in the meanwhile,
accepted an appointment as Distinguished University Professor
at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, and joined
the University's Center for Theoretical Studies directed by
Behram Kursunoglu, where his research was generously
funded by national agencies. The Onsagers kept their house
in New Haven for some time, however, with the hope of returning.
On his seventieth birthday, the Center for Theoretical
Studies arranged in his honor a conference in Miami entitled
"Quantum Statistical Mechanics in the Life Sciences." Lars
presented a paper on "Life in the Early Days," outlining some
of his ideas about the origin of life on earth, a subject which