The Nobel Prize

2021-02-11 08:00:10 ​​Rabindranath Tagore was announced as the first non-European Literature Laureate On Nov 13, 1913.

Tagore was awarded the #NobelPrize "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West." Open / Comment

2021-02-10 18:00:14 ​​Is publication in a high impact-factor journal essential for a Nobel Prize?

Martin Chalfie analysed which journals Nobel Laureates had published their seminal work in, and came out with some surprising results.

Martin Chalfie was awarded the 2008 Chemistry Prize "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP." Open / Comment

2021-02-10 08:00:35 ​​The world's first neutrino observation in a hydrogen bubble chamber took place on this day, 13 November 1970.

Bubble chambers were invented by Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez and could be used to track high energy particles. The chamber was filled with superheated liquid, just above the normal boiling point. If a charged high-energy particle passed through, the liquid started to boil along its path, producing a trail of tiny bubbles which could be photographed. Open / Comment

2021-02-01 18:00:05 ​​When Frédéric Joliot and Irène Joliot-Curie bombarded a thin piece of aluminum with alpha particles (helium atom nuclei) in 1934, a new kind of radiation was discovered that left traces inside an apparatus known as a cloud chamber.

The pair discovered that the radiation from the aluminum continued even after the source of radiation was removed. This was because aluminum atoms had been converted into a radioactive isotope of phosphorus. That meant that, for the first time in history, a radioactive element had been created artificially.

The pair were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements." Open / Comment

2021-02-01 08:00:04 ​​Sir Arthur Lewis originally wanted to be an engineer but as a young man in Saint Lucia, a British colony, in the 1930s, he was not able to because of the colour of his skin.

Instead Lewis went onto study economics. He was particularly interested in the problems of developing countries. Lewis developed two economic models which mark out the causes of poverty among the population of the developing countries, as well as the factors determining the unsatisfactory pace of development. Besides this, he worked at the UN as well as co-founded the Caribbean Development Bank, an institution that aids Caribbean nations in financing social and economic programs.

In 1979 Lewis was awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences for pioneering research in this area. Open / Comment

2021-01-31 18:00:03 ​​When Har Gobind Khorana passed away on 9 November 2011, Nature's obituary stated: "That someone with such a humble background could rise to become an icon of molecular biology is a testament to his extraordinary drive, discipline and striving for excellence."

Khorana was born in Raipur, a little village in Punjab, which is now part of eastern Pakistan. The correct date of his birth is not known; that shown in documents is 9 January 1922. His father was a village agricultural taxation clerk in the British Indian system of government. Although poor, his father was dedicated to educating his children and they were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people.

Despite poor educational facilities, Khorana completed high school and went on to receive bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from University of the Punjab in Lahore. In 1945, Khorana moved to the University of Liverpool, UK, under a Government of India Fellowship where he obtained a PhD in 1948.

Khorana spent a postdoctoral year (1948-1949) at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, before he moved to Cambridge for two years. A job offer in 1952 from Dr. Gordon M. Shrum of British Columbia took him to Vancouver, where Khorana worked in the field of biologically interesting phosphate esters and nucleic acids.

In 1960 Khorana moved to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin. He became a naturalised citizen of the United States. From 1970, Khorana was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Khorana shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1968 with Robert Holley and Marshall Nirenberg "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis." Open / Comment