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Linus Pauling, another chemistry Nobel prizewinner, responded to a letter from Onsager, saying: “Your work looks very interesting indeed to me, but it is too far over my head for me to appreciate it properly.”

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station may be advised to shield themselves in specific parts of the spacecraft to avoid a heightened dose of solar radiation, Onsager said.

Onsager conjectured that turbulence could slow non-viscous fluids only under particular conditions; in other cases, the fluids would keep flowing for ever, as might be expected.

In one of those terse revelations, Onsager announced in 1949 the surprising idea that turbulent fluids dissipate energy even in the absence of viscosity.

In some cases, researchers have made sense of what Onsager said only in hindsight.