| Nobel Awards in Science 2008 |
Compiled by Moumita Das
The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony traditionally held on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel`s death.
Nobel Prize in Physics
An American and two Japanese physicists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work exploring the hidden symmetries among elementary particles that are the deepest constituents of nature.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago`s Enrico Fermi Institute, received half of the 10 million krona prize (about USD 1.4 million) award by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Makoto Kobayashi, 64, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, each received a quarter of the prize.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Three Chemists Win Nobel Prize "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP"
Aequorea victoria, the jellyfish from which green fluorescent protein is derived. Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for taking the ability of the jellyfish to glow green and transforming it into a tool of molecular biology to watch the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.
One Japanese and two American scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for taking the ability of some jellyfish to glow green and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology to watch the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.
Osamu Shimomura, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and Boston University Medical School, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, shared the USD 1.4 million prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Nobel Prize in Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three European scientists who had discovered viruses behind two devastating illnesses,AIDS and cervical cancer.
Half of the award shared by two French virologists, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 61, and Luc A. Montagnier, 76, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Conspicuously omitted was Dr. Robert C. Gallo, an American virologist who vied with the French team in a long, often acrimonious dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V.
The other half of the USD 1.4 million award goes to a German physician-scientist, Dr. Harald zur Hausen, 72, for his discovery of H.P.V., or the human papilloma virus. Dr. zur Hausen of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg “went against current dogma” by postulating that the virus caused cervical cancer, said the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which selects the medical winners of the prize, formally called the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
His discovery led to the development of two vaccines against cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
Corruption allegation
Nobel Prize was caught up in controversy following allegation by a Swedish prosecutor.
Nobel Prize jurors who accepted all-expenses-paid trips to China to discuss the coveted awards are being investigated on suspicion of bribery, the prosecutor said.
Anti-corruption prosecutor Nils-Erik Schultz said he opened the probe to determine whether the trips in 2006 and 2008 were meant to influence the decisions of the Nobel committees.
The probe was prompted by a Swedish Radio report that said three jurors from the medicine, chemistry and physics committees were invited to China to explain the selection process and what it takes to win a Nobel Prize. Chinese authorities paid for their plane tickets, hotels and meals, the report said. The last time China claimed a science prize was in 1957, when two Chinese researchers won the physics award, according to the Nobel website.
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