Nobel

Australians Win Nobel Prize in Medicine

AP - 2 hours, 16 minutes ago
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for showing that bacterial infection, not stress, was to blame for painful ulcers in the stomach and intestine. The 1982 discovery transformed peptic ulcer disease from a chronic, frequently disabling condition to one that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and other medicines, the Nobel Prize committee said.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/Nobel_Prize

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AP - Mon Oct 3, 8:59 AM ET

Australian professor Barry J. Marshall uses a balloon to explain the bacterium helicobacter pylori during his visit to Japan, in this 2002 photo. Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that bacteria, not stress, was the main cause of painful ulcers of the stomach and intestine. The 1982 discovery transformed peptic ulcer disease from a chronic, frequently disabling condition to one that can be cured by a short course of antibiotics, the Nobel Prize committee said. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

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Nobel Prize History

History of the world's most famous prizes

by Beth Rowen




Winning a Nobel Prize is a life-changing honor. Whether the laureate is an internationally known figure (such as Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Peace Prize) or a scientist plucked from obscurity (like Richard R. Ernst, who won the 1991 prize in chemistry for refinements in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy), the award brings with it worldwide recognition that highlights one's life work and provides the funds to continue and further the mission. For academics and institutions, a Nobel Prize is used to attract the best and the brightest minds, whether students or scholars.



Physiology or Medicine
Australians Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren won "for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease." (See also: Past winners in Physiology or Medicine.)

Physics
Will be annouced on October 4.
Chemistry
Will be annouced on October 5.
Literature
Announcement date has not been set.
Peace
Will be annouced on October 7.
Economics
Will be annouced on October 10.


Industrialist With a Conscience


Alfred B. Nobel (1833–1896), the Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite, left $9 million in his will to establish the Nobel Prizes, which are awarded annually, without regard to nationality, in six areas (peace, literature, physics,chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economic science) "to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
At first glance, it seems odd that the inventor of a powerful explosive would endow a group of awards that includes a peace prize. But Nobel was an industrialist with a conscience. He is credited with creating a controllable combustible that made blasting rock and the construction of canals and tunnels a relatively safe process. Nobel also contributed to the inventions of synthetic rubber, artificial silk, and synthetic leather. He held more than 350 patents. His interests were not limited to science. In fact, he was a lover of English literature and poetry and wrote several novels and poems. At his death, he left a library of more than 1,500 books, from fiction to philosophy.


Family Members Contest Last Wishes


Family members were shocked when they learned that Nobel had dictated that his fortune be used to establish the Nobel Prizes. They contested his will, but his final wishes were executed and the first awards were distributed in 1901, on the fifth anniversary of his death. The prize in economics, however, was established in 1968 by Riksbank, the Swedish bank, in honor of its 300th anniversary. Stockholm's Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences administers the award in physics and chemistry, the Royal Caroline Medical Institute awards the prize in physiology or medicine, and the Swedish Academy oversees the prize in literature. The Norwegian Storting, or parliament, awards the peace prize.

http://www.factmonster.com/spot/99nobel1.html

2 Americans and German Win Nobel Prize in Physics


By KENNETH CHANG
Published: October 4, 2005

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes a scientist who worked out a theory of quantum optics - describing the behavior of light using quantum mechanics - and two scientists who used that knowledge to develop a powerful laser technique for identifying atoms and molecules.









The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the Nobel Prizes, announced today that half of the prize and half of $1.3 million prize money will go to Roy J. Glauber, a professor of physics at Harvard.

John L. Hall, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Theodor W. Hänsch, a physicist at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and a professor of physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, share the other half of this year's prize.

One of the central baffling properties of quantum mechanics is that light sometimes acts like waves, almost like ocean waves, while other times, it appears to consist of discrete particles known as photons.

While physicists had established the existence of photons and developed theories to describe the collisions of one or a few photons with electrons, they did not have a good quantum mechanical understanding of the collective behavior of many, many photons. For that, classical optics of the 19th century continued to be the best description.

"It occurred to me around the early 60's that that was not going to be true in the long run," Dr. Glauber said today at a news conference, "and one had better develop the quantum theory to the fullest extent mathematically possible."

Dr. Glauber published his scientific paper in 1963, which helped explain the differences between the diffuse light of a light bulb versus the intense beam of a laser, which was invented about the same time. Dr. Glauber's theory is also fundamental to using light in schemes for developing quantum computers and quantum cryptography.

"It was Glauber's theory which was the basis for all of that," said Daniel Kleppner, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You didn't need Glauber's theory to invent the laser, but you needed Glauber's theory to understand its properties."

Decades later, Dr. Hall and Dr. Hänsch built upon Dr. Glauber's work, developing a technique that uses short pulses of laser light to precisely determine color, measuring the frequency to an accuracy of 15 digits. Measuring colors emitted or absorbed by atoms and molecules can tell the composition of materials and the technique could lead to more accurate clocks.

The precise control of light beams could even provide better entertainment.

"Eventually, we may be able to enjoy three-dimensional holographic movies," Dr. Hänsch told The Associated Press.

Dr. Kleppner said: "This work has opened a new frontier in optics and optical technology whose final implications we cannot yet guess. That sounds like hyperbole, but I think it's true."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/science/04cnd-nobel.html

Israeli, American Win Nobel for Economics


By MATT MOORE, AP Business Writer
4 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Israeli and U.S. citizen Robert J. Aumann and American Thomas C. Schelling won the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work on game theories that help explain economic conflicts, including trade and price wars.

The pair won the prize "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

"Why do some groups of individuals, organizations and countries succeed in promoting cooperation while others suffer from conflict?" the academy said.

Aumann, 75, and Schelling, 84, have helped to "explain economic conflicts such as price wars and trade wars, as well as why some communities are more successful than others in managing common-pool resources," the academy said in its citation.

It said the approach helped explain rationale behind institutions ranging from merchant guilds and organized crime to wage negotiations and international trade agreements.

Schelling is a professor at the University of Maryland's department of economics and a professor emeritus at Harvard.

He "showed that a party can strengthen its position by overtly worsening its own options, that the capability to retaliate can be more useful than the ability to resist an attack, and that uncertain retaliation is more credible and more efficient than certain retaliation," the academy said. "These insights have proven to be of great relevance for conflict resolution and efforts to avoid war."

Aumann, a professor at the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was cited for his work in looking how real-world situations can affect the theory.

"In many real-world situations, cooperation may be easier to sustain in a long-term relationship than in a single encounter. Analyses of short-run games are, thus, often too restrictive," the academy said. "Robert Aumann was the first to conduct a full-fledged formal analysis of so-called infinitely repeated games. His research identified exactly what outcomes can be upheld over time in long-run relations.

Aumann was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but holds U.S. and Israeli citizenship. He is not the first Israeli to win the economics prize. In 2002, Daniel Kahneman, who also has U.S. and Israeli citizenship, shared the award.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051010/ap_on_bi_ge/sweden_nobel_economics

On the Net:

http://www.nobelprize.org

Pinter Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - British playwright Harold Pinter, who juxtaposed the brutal and the banal in such works as "The Caretaker" and "The Birthday Party" and made an art form out of spare language and unbearable silence, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday.

Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said. The chilling, understated style of his work even inspired an adjective all his own: Pinteresque.

"I feel quite overwhelmed," Pinter, 75, said outside his London home. "I had absolutely no idea."

He said he was "speechless" when told he had won, but added: "I have to stop being speechless when I get to Stockholm."

Starting with his breakthrough play, "The Caretaker," Pinter codified a style in the 1950s and '60s of verbal evasion and violence, menace both spoken and not. His influence has been felt throughout British literature, and across the ocean in the work of American playwrights Sam Shepard and David Mamet.

"Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the academy said.

His other works include "The Room" and "The Dumb Waiter."

One of the most influential British playwrights of his generation, Pinter in recent years he has turned his acerbic eye on the United States and the war in Iraq.

He has been an outspoken critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and vehemently opposed Britain's involvement in the war. He told the BBC in an interview in February that that he would continue writing poems but was taking a break from plays.

"My energies are going in different directions, certainly into poetry," he said.

In 2003, Pinter published a volume of anti-war poetry about the Iraq conflict, and in 2004 he joined a group of celebrity campaigners calling for Blair to be impeached.

"I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand," he said.

Pinter has also written screenplays, including "The French Lieutenant's Woman" in 1981 from the John Fowles novel, as well as "The Accident," "The Servant" and "The Go-Between."

Pinter is the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul won it in 2001.

The son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was born in London on Oct. 10, 1930. Pinter has said his encounters with anti-Semitism in his youth influenced him in becoming a dramatist. The wartime bombing of London also affected him deeply, the academy said.

The academy's announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism's most important holiday.

Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield.

His characters' internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in order to try to survive.

Usually enclosed in one room, they organize their lives as a sort of grim game and their actions often contradict their words. Gradually, the layers are peeled back to reveal the characters' nakedness.

Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl said Pinter was overwhelmed when told he had won the prize.

"He did not say many words, in fact he was very happy," he said.

Last year's winner was Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek. Her selection drew such ire that a member of the academy publicly blasted his colleagues for picking her. Knut Ahnlund, 82, who has not played an active role in the academy since 1996, resigned Tuesday after he wrote in a signed newspaper article that picking Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.

The academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to advance the Swedish language and its literature, has handed out the literature prize since 1901. To date 102 men and women have received the prize, including France's Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined the 1964 prize.

___

On the Net:

http://www.svenskaakademien.se

http://www.nobelprize.org


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051013/ap_on_en_ot/nobel_literature

AP - Thu Oct 13,10:12 AM ET
Harold Pinter waves goodbye at the front door of his London home, Thursday, Oct.13, 2005. British playwright and poet Harold Pinter, whose juxtaposition of the brutal and the banal resulted in an adjective that bears his name, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The Swedish Academy, awarding the prize, said he was an author 'who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms.' (AP Photo/ Max Nash)

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2 Americans, Frenchman Awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry
By VOA News
05 October 2005




Americans Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock and France's Yves Chauvin have won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The award was announced Wednesday, morning at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The trio was cited for their work that led the way in the manufacturing of better drugs and environmentally-friendly plastics.

Mr. Chauvin began work in 1971 in the field of metathesis, which studies how molecules are broken down and then rearranged. Mr. Schrock and Mr. Grubbs later developed more efficient and stable catalysts to reproduce the reaction.

All three men will share the $1.3 million cash award, which they will receive during a formal ceremony on December 10.

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-05-voa4.cfm

IAEA, ElBaradei Win Nobel Peace Prize

By Tom Rivers
London
07 October 2005




The 2005 Nobel peace prize has been awarded jointly to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the agency's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says he first learned of the award when he watched the announcement live on television.

"And then I heard, in Norwegian, "the International Atomic Energy Agency" and my name - in Norwegian (it) is still the same - and I was just on my feet with my wife, hugging and kissing and full of joy and full of pride," he said.

The Nobel Committee bestowed the award jointly to Mr. ElBaradei and his agency for their work in curbing nuclear arms. For the 63-year-old Egyptian lawyer and former diplomat, who has led the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency for eight years, it is an incredible honor.

"I am very humbled and extremely honored by this recognition of the work of the IAEA," Mr. ElBaradei said. " I think the prize recognizes the Number One danger we are facing today, and that is the threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continuing existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, and the prospect of nuclear terrorism."

Mohamed ElBaradei says the award represents the importance of the multi-lateral approach his U.N. agency takes in resolving the challenges today, and those in the future.

"The award basically sends a very strong message (of) 'keep doing what you are doing," he said. "Be impartial, act with integrity, speak truth to power,' and that is what I will continue to do. But the advantage of having this recognition today (is) that it will strengthen my resolve. It will strengthen the integrity of the agency. The fact that there is overwhelming public support for our work definitely will hopefully help me to resolve some of the major outstanding issues that we are facing today, including North Korea, including Iran, dissemination of (the) fuel cycle, nuclear disarmament issues. So, it is a responsibility, but it is also a shot in the arm (momentum), as the president of the Noble Committee told me over the phone, that they want to give the agency, and me, a shot in the arm and more forward, and we will do that."

Mr. ElBardei will formally receive the peace prize at a ceremony in Oslo in December.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-07-voa4.cfm