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 Nobel Prizes (2006)
Note to readers:
Come October every year, I develop angst and spend several sleepless nights in the first week. I would really like to sleep well and be awakened rudely by the sound of telephone ringing just that week only. Normally I do not like the telephone ringing in the dead of night. But the first week of October is an exception. I want the telephone to ring in the middle of the night when I am fast asleep and when I pick up the receiver I like the person at the other end to say, “I am calling from Sweden”. There is no other moment more precious than that for a scientist to drop dead. The call from Sweden in the middle of the night carries the good news of the award of the Nobel Prize. The 2006 Nobel prizes in Chemistry as well as Physiology or Medicine have been announced and, to my great disappointment, the committee did not consider me for either of those prizes. I still do not lose hope. Hope springs eternal, you see! I am counting on all of you to nominate me for the prize in the coming years! I am a gourmet cook too and on that basis I should get a Chemistry Nobel. Right? Have I been daydreaming all along? Alright, it is time to come back to the real world.
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| Nobel Prize Medal |
As of October 9, Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, and Economic Sciences for the year 2006 have been announced. The Literature Prize will be announced on October 12th and that for Peace on October 13th.This year each Nobel Prize carries a cash award of US $1.4 million in addition to the citation and a medal.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2006 was won by Roger D. Kornberg of Stanford University, California, “for his studies on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription”, the process by which the genetic code of DNA is converted into messenger RNA which is further processed to produce various proteins. Kornberg’s father Arthur Kornberg won the prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1959 for his work on DNA replication and thus joins an illustrious group of six father-son duo to have won the Nobel Prizes.
Transcription of DNA to RNA by RNA polymerase
The prize for Physics was won jointly by John C. Mather (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland) and George F. Smoot (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California) “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of cosmic microwave background radiation”. Smoot and Mather's findings revealed the ancient seeds of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects.
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| Transcription of DNA to RNA by RNA polymerase |
The prize for Physiology or Medicine went to Andrew Z. Fire (Stanford University, California) and Craig C. Mello (University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts) “for their discovery of RNA interference -- gene silencing by double-stranded RNA”. It is a ground-breaking discovery that strands of RNA can selectively silence genes thereby controlling the flow of genetic information. This discovery has tremendous impact on understanding cellular behaviour, regulation of gene expression, and defence against viral infections among others.
Edmund S. Phelps (Columbia University, New York) won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for research into the interplay between prices, unemployment and inflation expectations in the short-run and long-run timeframes. The Nobel Academy cited him “for his analysis of intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy”.
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was a Swedish scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and writer. He made his fortunes by inventing dynamite and making it available for industrial and military uses. His will stipulated that all his wealth (worth 4.2 million US dollars in 1895) should be invested and the proceeds from that should be used to award five annual prizes to individuals with outstanding achievements in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and for work to achieve peace. The five prizes have been awarded annually since 1901 except for the period 1939-1943 for peace awards and 1940-42 for the others due to the Second World War.
The responsibility for awarding the prizes rests with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the fields of physics, chemistry, and economics (which was started in the year 1968 from the funds contributed by the Royal Bank of Sweden in Nobel’s memory). For medicine the award is decided by Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The Swedish Academy decides the Literature prize and a Norwegian Parliament committee decides the peace prize award. The award ceremonies take place in the Stockholm Concert Hall on December 10 every year, the anniversary date of Nobel’s death. In Sweden the Swedish king confers the awards and the peace prize is awarded by the king of Norway in Oslo City Hall.
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| Stockholm Concert Hall |
The Swedish Academy solicits nominations for the awards from over 3,000 selected individuals in various countries who are university professors, scientists, parliament members, previous Nobel laureates, and other prominent people. The deadline for nominations is January 31 for each award year. Self-nominations are disallowed (one woman nominated herself for the prize in Chemistry based on the fact that she made 500 different fruit jams!!). Only living persons can be nominated. The nomination records are not made public. They are sealed for 50 years.
Two posthumous awards were made for two individuals who died between the nomination and selection timeframe. Dag Hammarskjöld (former UN Secretary General) was awarded the peace prize in 1961 and Erik Axel Karlfeldt was awarded the prize for literature in 1934. Since 1974 no posthumous awards have been made. Until 1968 more than 3 persons could share an award, although such a situation never arose. In 1968 the stipulation was made that no more than 3 persons can share an award.
Some Nobel
Facts:
As of October 9th, 2006, 764 individuals and 18 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Some laureates and organisations have been awarded more than once. Of the individuals 731 are men and 33 are women. The youngest Nobel Laureate was William Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 years old when he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his father, William Henry Bragg, in 1915. The oldest Nobel Laureate, Raymond Davis Jr., was 88 years old when he was awarded the prize in Physics in 2002.
Two Nobel awardees declined the prize!! Jean-Paul Sartre who was awarded the 1964 prize in literature declined it because he had consistently declined all official honours. Le Duc Tho who was awarded the 1973 peace prize (along with Henry Kissinger) declined it since there was no peace in Vietnam at the time of the award. Four awardees were forced by their country leadership to decline the awards. Adolf Hitler forbade Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk to receive the prize. They later accepted the medal and the diploma but not the prize amount. Boris Pasternak accepted the 1958 prize in Literature at first but the authorities in Soviet Union forced him to decline it.
Multiple prizes:
A few individuals received more than one prize, some in the same field and others in different fields. Linus Pauling is the only person to have been awarded two unshared prizes — the 1954 prize in Chemistry and the 1962 prize for Peace. John Bardeen received two prizes in Physics (1956 and 1972), Marie Curie (1903 for Physics, and 1911 for Chemistry), and Frederick Sanger (1958 and 1980 for Chemistry). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received the peace prize 3 times and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, received the peace prize twice.
Nobel Families:
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Marie Curie and husband Pierre
won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1903 |
Is there a Nobel gene? Does it run in the families? The Curie family was a very successful “Nobel Family”. Marie Curie was the first woman to become a Nobel Laureate when she shared the 1903 prize for Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and got the Chemistry solo prize in 1911. Her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot shared the Chemistry prize in 1935. The Austrian couple Carl Cori and Gerty Cori shared the 1947 prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Swedish couple Alva Myrdal (1982, Peace) and Gunnar Myrdal (Economics, 1974) also joined the Nobel family.
There have been six father-son Laureates: J, J. Thomson (1906, Physics) and George P. Thomson (1937, Physics), W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg (1915, Physics), Niels Bohr (1922, Physics) and Aage Bohr (1975, Physics), Manne Siegbahn (1924, Physics), and Kai M. Siegbahn (1981, Physics), Hans von Euler-Chelpin (1929, Chemistry), and Ulf von Euler (1970, Physiology or Medicine), and more recently Arthur Kornberg (1959, Physiology or Medicine), and Roger Kornberg (2006, Chemistry). Siblings, Jan Tinbergen (1969, Economics) and Nikolaas Tinbergen (1973, Medicine) are the only brothers-duo to win the prize separately. An uncle-nephew pair which won the prize in physics was from the India, C V Raman (1930), and S Chandrasekhar (1983)
There has never been any great venture or achievement without a controversy. The Nobel Prize is also not without some controversies. For example, when the Vietnam War was raging, the peace prize for 1973 was given to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The latter declined the award for the lack of character of the award. In 2002 the chemistry prize award ignored some seminal work done by two German scientists. Likewise the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics ignored the work of the Indian-American physicist, E C G Sudarshan but awarded it to Roy Glauber (along with two others) for similar work. While citation counts indicate that Glauber's 1963 papers are more widely referenced, it is clear that both made important contributions to the fields of quantum optics and coherence theory. Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times between 1937 and 1948 but never won it. According to an entry in Wikipedia, “it was likely the Authority would have given him the Prize in 1948, the year in which he was assassinated. The committee apparently considered a posthumous award but ultimately decided against it, instead choosing not to award the Nobel Peace Prize to anybody for that year”.
Despite such criticism, the Nobel Prize is still the one most sought after by scientists all over the world in the physical and life sciences as well as writers and those who work for peace. It is of interest to note that a total of six Nobel Laureates hail(ed) from India as of now. They are: Rabindranath Tagore (1913, Literature), C V Raman (1930, Physics), Hargobind Khorana (1968, Physiology or Medicine), Mother Teresa (1979, Peace), S Chandrasekhar (1983, Physics), and Amartya Sen (1998, Economics).
Sethuraman Subramanian
subramaniansethu@hotmail.com
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