Why
did the scientist only have a door knocker at his house?
So,
he could win the No-bell prize!
This
past week, the Nobel prizes have been awarded to those who have made major
advances in the realms of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Physiology,
Literature, and Peace. The award in economic sciences will be awarded on
Monday. For this post, I will be examining the work of the winners in Physics,
Chemistry, and Medicine/Physiology.
Alfred Nobel - the man
behind the awards
First,
I would like to take a look at the life of the man behind the awards - Alfred
Nobel. Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1833. From 1850 to 1852, he
worked in the laboratory of one T.
Jules Pelouze in Paris.
After
the Crimean War, Nobel was looking for something new to research and a new product
to sell. One of Nobel's Chemistry teachers, Nikolai N. Zinin, gave him the idea
to research nitroglycerin. Nobel did this and found uses for it as an
explosive. After his younger brother Emil
died in an explosion at a factory in Heleneborg in 1864, Nobel worked toward
making the explosive safer.
In
1867, after finding that a mixture of nitroglycerin and diatomaceous
earth was much safer, he obtained a patent for what he had dubbed "dynamite." From this invention,
Nobel became a very wealthy man and his (third) and final will
and testament left a large part of his fortune to the establishment of a
fund that would present awards to people making advancements in various fields
of science, literature, and toward peace. The people that Nobel left in charge
of this did not want to fulfill the request, and it was five years after his
death in 1896, that the first round of Nobel prizes were awarded.
2012
Nobel Prize in Physics
This years Nobel Prize in Physics went to
Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland for their research in Quantum systems. The press release
from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the award was " for ground-breaking experimental methods
that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems."
Haroche is a researcher at the Collège
de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and Wineland is a researcher
with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University
of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. The Nobel laureates essentially took the
opposite approach to the same research, quantum optics. Wineland worked toward
trapping electrically charged atoms and measuring/controlling them with photons
(light) and Haroche controlled/measured photons by sending atoms through a
trap. From this research, it is believed that a quantum computer
could be created and super accurate clocks could become a reality.
Read full
text from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - here
Read full
scientific text - here
2012
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
This
years Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to two American scientists - Robert J. Lefkowitz, from Howard
Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina,
and Brian K. Kobilka from Stanford University School of Medicine, in
California. The press
release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the award was "for studies of G-protein–coupled
receptors." What these Nobel laureates have done is essentially
explained how cells interpret signals from the brain, and this is through
receptors. The receptors they worked with and mapped out, the G-protein-coupled
receptors, deal with adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, light, flavor, and odor.
This also has potential application in the field of medicine because many
medications work through these receptors.
Article on
the Scientists from the New York Times - here
Read full
text from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - here
Read full
scientific text - here
2012
Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology
This years Nobel Prize in
Medicine/Physiology went to John B.
Gurdon of the United Kingdom and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in
Kyoto, Japan, "for the discovery
that mature cells can be reprogrammed
to become pluripotent" (or
the
capacity to differentiate into any mature cell type). John B. Gurdon, did
research in 1962 and found out that the specialization of cells is reversible.
He did this through experiments
done on frog egg cells and mature intestinal cells, which then developed into a
normal tadpole. Shinya Yamanaka did his research
in 2006, and was able to take mature mice cells and reprogram them to become
immature stem cells. From his research, it was found that mature cells could be
developed into any type of body cell needed.
Full list of Nobel Prize
winners - here
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