Nobel Prize Week--So Far

Three days, six Laureates:

Monday: John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka jointly won the prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent".  In other words, cell development isn't necessarily irreversible. Mature cells can return to a stem cell state and develop differently.  Explanation and some very promising medical uses here.

Tuesday: The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems". That's to say they developed ways to work with individual particles without damaging them.  (And this one has the best chance for a mention on The Big Bang Theory.) More information here.

Wednesday: The 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".  A giant step in understanding how our cells can sense and react to our environment.  Read more about it here.

It's been a big week for shared Nobel Prizes.  But next up is the Literature Prize.  Whoever gets it will almost certainly have it all to him/herself.  We'll see who it is tomorrow!

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011

If it's Wednesday, that means it's Chemistry. 

From the Nobel Foundation:

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Dan Shechtman "for the discovery of quasicrystals".

Quasicrystals.  And--they are?

Something so strange that when new Laureate Shechtman first saw the structure through an electron microscope, he drew three question marks and muttered to himself  "eyn chaya kazo" (Hebrew for "there can be no such creature"). 

In this YouTube video, Shechtman explains how his ten-fold symmetry discovery broke (and broke open) the laws of matter we'd assumed were universal.  Go ahead--he's a great explainer!  And you can forgive him for smiling as he talks about being ridiculed and expelled from a research group for talking about what he'd observed. 

More information about quasicrystals here.  And tantalizing connections between Shechtman's chemistry research and principles of art (including the Golden Ratio) here.

Nobel Prize Week--Chemistry

Carbon is Nobel's star this year.

Yesterday Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize for Physics for isolating graphene, a one-atom-thick carbon substance with unique properties.  Today the Nobel Prize for Chemistry goes to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis." 

Or, in simpler terms, "for developing new, more efficient ways of linking carbon atoms together to build the complex molecules that are improving our everyday lives."  (Thanks, Nobelprize.org!)

Read more about the Laureates here and their accomplishments here.   And stay tuned for Literature!