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Nobel prizes: 7 scientists, 1 poet, 3 women and 2 economists
Wednesday 5th October 2011
Medal for the Prize in Economics: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/about/medals/
Nobel prizes for physics, physiology or medicine and chemistry have been awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Physics and Medicine have three winners each. In chemistry, the laurels go to one fighter. The prize for literature goes to the poet Tomas Tranströmer, the Peace Prize is shared among three women in Liberia and Yemen while Economics goes to two graphics oriented economists, Thomas J Sargent and Christopher A Simms for their empirical research and macroeconomics.
The Nobel prize for physics was awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" with one half to (L2R) Saul Perlmutter, The Supernova Cosmology Project, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt The High-z Supernova Search Team
Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia and Adam G. Riess The High-z Supernova Search Team Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 was also divided, one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA, University of Texas and Jules A. Hoffmann (CNRS) in Strasbourg, France. "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity" and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity".
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 was awarded to Daniel
Shechtman,
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
"for the discovery of quasicrystals."
In quasicrystals, the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world are reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Daniel Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.
On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Daniel Shechtman's electron microscope.
In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.
Shechtman's image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that couldnot be repeated.
Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons.
His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.
Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level.
In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular - they follow mathematical rules - but never repeat themselves.
POET WINS LITERATURE AWARD
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 has been awarded to Tomas Transtromer "because, through his condensed, transluscent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
The last poet to win the Nobel Literature prize was Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 15, 1931, Tranströmer grew up with his mother, a primary school teacher, and his maternal grandfather, a ship’s pilot.
He attended high school during Sweden’s postwar boom years, and after his obligatory military service, he spent eight years traveling and studying a variety of subjects at the University of Stockholm.
In 1958, Tranströmer married Monica Blach and began working as a psychologist in Stockholm until, in 1960, he took a job as a psychologist in residence at an institution for juvenile delinquents near the city of Linköping.
"Transtromer is the person who stands head and shoulders above anyone else," said Neil Astley, founding editor at Transtromer's publishers Bloodaxe Books in Britain. Interest in Swedish writing has increased in recent years, even if that has mainly been in the crime fiction books of dead writer Stieg Larsson and his "Millennium" trilogy.
Thomas Tranströmer books: "The great Enigma," "The Half Finished Heaven" Selected Poems 1954-1986, The Sorrow Gondola, Windows and Stones, Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets, 1997 New Collected Poems, The Deleted World, For the Living & the Dead, Baltics, Citoyens, Night Vision, The Blue House. Sourced
WOMEN ARE THE PEACE WINNERS
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Africa’s first democratically elected female president. Since her inauguration in 2006, she has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women.
Leymah Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections. She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war.
In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the “Arab spring”, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.
It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.
TWO GRAPHICALLY ORIENTED ECONOMISTS
Sargent's price history
Thomas J Sargent is currently the holder of eleven honours and the Berkeley Professor of Economics and Business at New York University. He has lectured at the Universities of Minnesota, Chicago, Harvard and Stanford and researched in the National Bureau of Economic Research as well as advising the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Regimes, switching
Christopher A Simms is an econometrician and macroeconomist. Currently the Harold B. Helms Professor of Economics and Banking at Princeton University, he earned his PhD. in Economics in 1968 at Harvard University and held teaching positions at Harvard, University of Minnesota, Yale University and, since 1999, Princeton.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1989) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1988) was the president of the Econometric Society in 1995 will be President-Elect of the American Economic Association in 2011 and President of the American Economic Association in 2012.
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