GERMANY: Nobel Goettingen

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The little university town of Goettingen in Hanover is quiet, sleepy and very pleasant. There are drowsy promenades shaded by lime trees. There are old moss-carpeted ramparts. There are book shops and crooked cobbled streets.

But activity is no stranger to Goettingen. There were active times in the 18th century when the university was a centre of young stormy poets, and in the 19th when seven professors were expelled because they were too liberal.

Last week, in Goettingen there was again activity, rejoicing. Professor Adolph Windaus of the University was notified that he had won the 1928 Nobel prize for chemistry. Achievement: explanation of the nature of the provitamine, from which is derived Vitamine D, useful in curing rickets. Thus he became the second resident of Goettingen to be so honored. The other, Dr. Professor Richard Szigmondy, won the 1925 Nobel chemistry prize. The 1927 prize for chemistry was awarded to University of Munich's professor Heinrich Wieland.

The 1928 prize for literature went to Norwegian Novelist Mme. Sigrid Undset. Achievements: early, realistic novels about erotic shopgirls; and, later, masterpieces of medieval grandeur.

The 1927 prize, held over from last year, went to French Philosopher & Author Henri Bergson. Philosopher Bergson, bedridden, in Paris, remarked "I am greatly honored.'' Achievement: akinetic system of philosophy which rejects all generalizations except the concept that reality is neither more nor less than the incessant evolutions of thought-time.