Marcus has made other seminal con­tributions, including development »of what is known as RRKM theory, an enormously successful statistical theory of unimolecular reactions. In developing this theory in the early 1950s, Marcus drew on ideas from the 1920s on unimo­lecular reactions—the theory of Rice, Ramsperger, and Kassel (who are the RRK of RRKM; Marcus is the M)—and

•combined them with transition-state the­ory. Marcus has continued to develop new applications of RRKM theory.

Of Marcus' achievements, John J. Hopfield, another Caltech colleague, comments that, "Marcus' work has had a profound and lasting influence on ex-

' perimentalists and theoreticians in many fields of chemical kinetics. He has a re­markable ability to interact easily and fluently with experimenters and with experiment, to take both the broadest overview and the detailed view of ex­perimentation—a rare gift."

The new Nobelists in physiology or medicine, Krebs and Fischer, discovered an important class of enzymes, called protein kinases, that control a wide range of cellular activities by catalyzing the phosphorylation of key cell proteins, thus changing them from inactive to ac­tive forms. For example, in the mid-1950s the two researchers found that the enzyme phosphorylase—which breaks down glycogen in muscles to release glu­cose for energy production—could be converted from an inactive to an active form by transfer of a phosphate group from adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to the enzyme. They also showed that this pro­cess is catalyzed by a protein kinase.

Reversible phosphorylation of pro­teins—that is, their enzymatically regulat­ed phosphorylation and dephosphoryla-tion—is now known to be a fundamental biochemical mechanism involved in a multitude of cellular functions. Other functions regulated by it include blood pressure, the inflammatory reaction, and brain signal transduction. According to the academy, it is now estimated that about 1% of genes in the genome encode protein kinases.

Edwin Krebs is not the same man who discovered the Krebs cycle (also called the tricarboxylic acid or citric acid cycle), a chain of reactions that plays a key role in metabolism. The Krebs cycle was proposed in 1937 by the late Sir Hans A. Krebs, a German-born British biochemist who shared a 1953 Nobel Prize for the accomplishment.

This year's physics winner, Charpak, invented the multiwire proportional chamber in 1968. "Largely due to his work," says the academy, "particle physicists have been able to focus their interest on very rare particle interac­tions, which often reveal the secrets of the inner parts of matter."

Rudy Baum, Stu Borman

Firm hit with biggest waste cleanup fine yet The U.S. has reached an $11.6 million settlement with Chemical Waste Man­agement (CWM) in connection with the Oak Brook, 111., company's cleanup of the Lackawanna Refuse Superfund site near Old Forge, Pa. The settlement is the largest ever obtained for environmental crimes prosecuted under Superfund, the 1980 hazardous waste cleanup law.

CWM pleaded guilty to six felony vi­olations for failing to report to the Envi­ronmental Protection Agency, as re­quired under the law, spills that oc­curred during the cleanup of the site. For this criminal activity, the U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pa., handed down fines, penalties, restitution, and associat­ed costs totaling nearly $7.4 million.

According to the Justice Department, CWM employees deliberately crushed barrels containing hazardous waste in order to clean up the site more quickly. Leaks from these damaged barrels con­taminated the site, but U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, James West, says there was no evi­dence that they harmed the public. But as he notes, "CWM is recognized as the industry leader in hazardous waste management and was hired to remedi­ate the site, not make the situation worse than it already was."

Under a civil cost recovery action, the company is also required to reimburse the U.S. and Pennsylvania $4 million for costs incurred by the government in re­sponding to releases of hazardous sub­stances from the Lackawanna landfill. The total cleanup bill amounts to about $28 million, which CWM shares with many other major corporations, and in­dividuals.

Company spokesman Bob Reincke stresses that court documents state that CWM cooperated fully with govern­ment investigations, and that CWM cleaned up and capped the site as stipu­

lated under its EPA contract. The docu­ments also state that CWM will not be suspended or debarred from obtaining federal government contracts in the fu­ture.

CWM is one of the largest waste man­agement companies in the U.S. and, ac­cording to its president and chief execu­tive officer, D. P. Payne, has "completed more than 6000 remediation projects since 1978. The Lackawanna matter rep­resents the only criminal charges that have ever been filed against the compa­ny." CWM had planned for the settle­ment and expects no additional financial effects from it.

Lois Ember

Quantum sues Kellogg over ethylene cracker Quantum Chemical, the largest U.S. polyethylene producer, has charged M. W. Kellogg, a major and venerable de­sign and construction firm, with fraud and negligence in the design and con­struction of Quantum's recently com­pleted 1.5 billion-lb-per-year ethylene cracker in La Porte, Tex. Quantum is seeking a total of $600 million in dam­ages.

A Kellogg spokesman says Quan­tum's charges are completely without merit, adding, "We've abided fully and completely by the contract."

The La Porte facility is the first world­scale, grass-roots ethylene cracker built in the U.S. since 1983. In a suit filed ear­lier this month in Harris County Court, Texas, Quantum contends that Kellogg promised to build a unit that was "state-of-the-art, [using] proven equipment and designs," but that Kellogg instead provided a $500 million plant that has "failed to produce ethylene at a cost that makes the plant's operations commer­cially viable and has caused Quantum to lose many millions of dollars."

Quantum claims Kellogg fraudulently induced it to retain the construction firm to engineer and design the plant, and further that Kellogg's engineers were guilty of "professional malpractice." The charges draw on vexing problems that Quantum says have haunted the plant since startup in April. They include ex­cessive carbon buildups in process com­ponents, requiring frequent decokiftg and thus preventing the plant from op­erating at its rated capacity; and boiler

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