BY BARBARA PALMER

NOBEL LAUREATES -- ABOUT 40 OF THEM -- converge in the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion in the documentary exhibit, "To Benefit Mankind: Celebrating the Centennial of the Nobel Prize, 1901­2001." The display is based on Nobel Prize winners whose papers can be found in campus archives, including at the Hoover Institution archives, where the papers of numerous Nobel Peace Prize winners are held, and at the university and SLAC archives, which hold papers of many Stanford-affiliated Nobel laureates. It's intriguing to see how the "community of creativity overlaps the individual fields," said Hoover exhibits coordinator CISSIE DORE HILL, noting how many Nobel Prize-winning physicists were active in human rights issues. The exhibit offers glimpses into the lives of legendary figures: letters from pioneering social worker JANE ADDAMS (Nobel Peace Prize 1931) to DAVID STARR JORDAN, for instance, and the original typed manuscript with inked corrections of I, Rigoberto Menchu, the controversial memoir of the Guatemalan activist who was awarded the Peace Prize in 1992. There's also a 1974 lab book recording the data from Professor BURTON RICHTER's SLAC experiments that led to the discovery of a new elementary particle. On Nov. 31, the night shift records "a possibly significant bump" in data at 2:30 a.m. On the next page, a notation at 3:20 a.m. ­ as the data is confirmed ­ reads "Son of Glory!" The data became the basis for the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics, which Richter, the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences and former SLAC director, shares with SAMUEL C. C. TING of MIT. The exhibit will be on display through July 28. Find more information about Stanford Nobelists at The Nobel Prize: 100 Years of Honoring Achievement.

BIKING IS ONE OF THE EASIEST, MOST environmentally friendly ways to get around campus and a four-hour class offered this spring by former campus bicycle manager JOHN CICCARELLI can help you learn how to do it safely. Ciccarelli, who opened Bicycle Solutions, a Palo Alto consulting firm, in 1999 is teaching 10 sessions of a four-hour class called "Street Skills For Cyclists." The free classes are open to anyone who bikes in Palo Alto. Evening and weekend classes are scheduled from Feb. 9 to May 15 at the Cubberley Community Center and the Ventura Police Substation (formerly Ventura Elementary School) in Palo Alto. For more information and to register for a class, contact AMANDA JONES at the City of Palo Alto Transportation Division, 329-2568. More biking safety information is available on the Parking and Transportation website .

Write to Barbara Palmer at barbara.palmer@stanford.edu or mail code 2245 or call her at 724-6184.

Barbara Palmer