The Nobel Prize Winners – who are they and what have they won for?
As we await the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, we have made a guide to the Nobel Prize winners already announced.
Physiology or medicine:
Who: Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
Won for: Oshumi’s discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content. He discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components. His discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaption to starvation or response to infection.
Yoshinori Ohsumi
Chemistry:
(3 winners)
Who: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, University of Strasbourg, France, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA and Bernard L. Feringa, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Won for: “The design and synthesis of molecular machines.” The three men have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who awarded them with the prize, said they have “miniaturised machines and taken chemistry to a new dimension.”
Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa
Physics:
(3 winners)
Who: J. Michael Kosterlitz, Brown Providence, RI, USA, David J. Thouless, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA, who shares the prize with F. Duncan M. Haldane, Princeton University, NJ, USA
Won for: “Theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, they have opened the door to an unknown world where matter can assume strange states, and many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics.
F. Duncan M. Haldane, Duncan J. Thouless and J. Michael Kosterlitz
