Nobel Prize Week: Latest News, History, Social Media

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The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to___

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sourced by Jason Sanders

The Nobel Prize, an achievement recognizing award for the cream-of-the-crop luminaries, is being handed out all throughout this week -- October 5 to 12. This year marks the 114th anniversary of the Nobel Prize establishment. The Prize is given out in six disciplines: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology & Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economics.

So far, only two Prizes have been awarded -- for Physiology & Medicine and Physics.

The recipients of the Physiology & Medicine Prize were: Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. The Prize was awarded for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

The recipients of the Physics Prize were: Charles K. Kao, Willarad S. Boyle and George E. Smith. Their work on the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication and the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit used in digital photography earned them the highest honour.

Controversies this year:

--all three recipients of the Physiology & Medicine Prize were dubbed American, but, in fact, Elizabeth Blackburn is from Australia. That makes her the first Australian woman to win the Nobel Prize. There also has been some controversy surrounding Blackburn's involvement in bioethics studies -- she supported human embryonic stem cell research at the time when it was banned by Bush Administration. She was subsequently fired from the Council on Bioethics
--some in the scientific community believed that the Russian scientist Aleksey Olovnikov should have shared the Prize in Physiology & Medicine with the three recipients. Olovnikov was known for having first predicted the importance of telomeres
--Physics Prize recipient Charles Kao hails from China, but UK newspaper Telegraph claimed that a 'British' scientist won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics because Kao lived and worked in Briton since the 1960s
--scientists are calling for Prizes to be given out in more categories, like public health, genetics, and environmental science
--the Norwegian Nobel Committee has received 205 nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, of which 33 are organizations. This is the higest number of nominations ever
--there are rumours the President of the United States Barack Obama might receive the Peace Prize, in the same category -- another high profile contender -- late singer Michael Jackson. There has been an online petition organized to nominate Jackson for the Peace Prize posthumously.


Social Media

This year, the Nobel Prize selection committee is using social media to attract more attention from Internet users. The committee has its own Twitter profile (1,720 followers) and a Facebook page (almost 3,000 members). The Nobel Prize website is also a lot more interactive with live web casts and telephone interviews; it even lets users ask this year's recipients a question.


2009 Predictions

CHEMISTRY: Michael Gratzel (Switzerland), Jacqueline Barton (USA), Bernd Giese (Switzerland)

LITERATURE: Margaret Atwood (Canada), Salman Rushdie (UK/ India), Milan Kundera (Czech Republic), Joyce Carol Oates (USA), Philip Roth (USA), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

PEACE: Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe), Ingrid Betancourt (France/Colombia), Thich Quang Do (Vietnam) and various U.N. organisations

ECONOMICS: Ernst Fehr (Switzerland), Matthew Rabn (USA), William Nordhaus (USA), John Taylor (USA)


The 2008 recipients:

Physics -- Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa (Japan), and Yoichiro Nambu (US)
Economics -- Paul Krugman (USA)
Peace -- Martti Ahtisaairi (Finland)
Literature -- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France)

Physiology & Medicine -- Harald zur Hausen (Germany), Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (France), Luc Montagnier (France)

The award schedule:

Wednesday, October 7 -- CHEMISTRY
Thursday, October 8 --    LITERATURE
Friday, October 9 --         PEACE
Monday, October 12 --    ECONOMICS