lpetrich
Contributor
The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org
Physics: for working with very high-intensity laser light.
1/2 to Arthur Ashkin for inventing optical tweezers: focusing laser light on very tiny objects to manipulate them with the light's radiation pressure.
1/4 each to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for working out how to create very short and very intense laser pulses without destroying the laser apparatus: "chirped pulse amplification". One makes a pulse with a laser, spreads it out a bit, amplifies it with another laser, then squeezes it to make a supershort pulse. This is now a standard technique.
Chemistry: for doing directed evolution on enzymes, essentially creating lots of variations in genes for them, expressing those genes to make the enzymes themselves, and then doing artificial selection on them. It must be noted that humanity has been doing artificial selection since the beginning of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, but this is taking it to a new level.
1/2 to Frances H. Arnold for working on directed evolution.
1/4 each to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter, for working on "phage display", how to get bacteriophages to make some desired proteins in their coat proteins. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria.
Medicine and Physiology: for immunotherapy against cancer. Cancer cells often evade their hosts' immune systems by interfering with their hosts' responses to them. This prize is for working out how to interfere with that interference, letting those immune systems get to work on those cancer cells. A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer | Science | The Guardian is a nice article on that, including discussion of its downsides and difficulties.
1/2 each to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo
Peace: "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict." That's a tall order, but at least one can try to make it shameful, instead of having Joseph Stalin's attitude that his soldiers deserve to "have some fun".
1/2 each to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad
Literature has been postponed
Economics (memorial prize):
1/2 to William D. Nordhaus "for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis"
1/2 to Paul M. Romer "for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis."
Physics: for working with very high-intensity laser light.
1/2 to Arthur Ashkin for inventing optical tweezers: focusing laser light on very tiny objects to manipulate them with the light's radiation pressure.
1/4 each to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for working out how to create very short and very intense laser pulses without destroying the laser apparatus: "chirped pulse amplification". One makes a pulse with a laser, spreads it out a bit, amplifies it with another laser, then squeezes it to make a supershort pulse. This is now a standard technique.
Chemistry: for doing directed evolution on enzymes, essentially creating lots of variations in genes for them, expressing those genes to make the enzymes themselves, and then doing artificial selection on them. It must be noted that humanity has been doing artificial selection since the beginning of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, but this is taking it to a new level.
1/2 to Frances H. Arnold for working on directed evolution.
1/4 each to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter, for working on "phage display", how to get bacteriophages to make some desired proteins in their coat proteins. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria.
Medicine and Physiology: for immunotherapy against cancer. Cancer cells often evade their hosts' immune systems by interfering with their hosts' responses to them. This prize is for working out how to interfere with that interference, letting those immune systems get to work on those cancer cells. A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer | Science | The Guardian is a nice article on that, including discussion of its downsides and difficulties.
1/2 each to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo
Peace: "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict." That's a tall order, but at least one can try to make it shameful, instead of having Joseph Stalin's attitude that his soldiers deserve to "have some fun".
1/2 each to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad
Literature has been postponed
Economics (memorial prize):
1/2 to William D. Nordhaus "for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis"
1/2 to Paul M. Romer "for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis."