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[Edisi Sains Am]
That time of the year yet again (page 3) - NOBEL PRIZE WINNER 2013
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Press Release
4 October 2011
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011
with one half to
Saul Perlmutter
The Supernova Cosmology Project
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California,
Berkeley, CA, USA
and the other half jointly to
Brian P. Schmidt
The High-z Supernova Search Team
Australian National University,
Weston Creek, Australia
and
Adam G. Riess
The High-z Supernova Search Team
Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute,
Baltimore, MD, USA
"for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae"
Written in the stars
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..." *
What will be the final destiny of the Universe? Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year's Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.
In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role.
The research teams raced to map the Universe by locating the most distant supernovae. More sophisticated telescopes on the ground and in space, as well as more powerful computers and new digital imaging sensors (CCD, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009), opened the possibility in the 1990s to add more pieces to the cosmological puzzle.
The teams used a particular kind of supernova, called type Ia supernova. It is an explosion of an old compact star that is as heavy as the Sun but as small as the Earth. A single such supernova can emit as much light as a whole galaxy. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected - this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.
For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.
The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma - perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again. |
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Saul Perlmutter, U.S. citizen. Born 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, IL, USA. Ph.D. 1986 from University of California, Berkeley, USA. Head of the Supernova Cosmology Project, Professor of Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/perlmutter.html
Brian P. Schmidt, U.S. and Australian citizen. Born 1967 in Missoula, MT, USA. Ph.D. 1993 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Head of the High-z Supernova Search Team, Distinguished Professor, Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia.
msowww.anu.edu.au/~brian/
Adam G. Riess, U.S. citizen. Born 1969 in Washington, DC, USA. Ph.D. 1996 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
www.stsci.edu/~ariess/
Prize amount: SEK 10 million, with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half to be shared equally between Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess.
Contact persons: Erik Huss, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, mobile +46 70 673 96 50, erik.huss@kva.se
Annika Moberg, Editor, Phone +46 8 673 95 22, Mobile +46 70 673 96 90, annika.moberg@kva.se
* Robert Frost, Fire and Ice, 1920
Nobel Prize® är is a registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organization whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.
TO CITE THIS PAGE:
MLA style: "The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics - Press Release". Nobelprize.org. 4 Oct 2011 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/press.html |
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for physics - this is the year for astrophysicists |
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CHEMISTRY ....interesting ..sorry jet lag laa... lambat updated
Press Release
5 October 2011
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to
Dan Shechtman
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
"for the discovery of quasicrystals"
A remarkable mosaic of atoms
In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.
On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman's electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.
Shechtman's image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.
Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular - they follow mathematical rules - but they never repeat themselves.
When scientists describe Shechtman's quasicrystals, they use a concept that comes from mathematics and art: the golden ratio. This number had already caught the interest of mathematicians in Ancient Greece, as it often appeared in geometry. In quasicrystals, for instance, the ratio of various distances between atoms is related to the golden mean.
Following Shechtman's discovery, scientists have produced other kinds of quasicrystals in the lab and discovered naturally occurring quasicrystals in mineral samples from a Russian river. A Swedish company has also found quasicrystals in a certain form of steel, where the crystals reinforce the material like armor. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.
Read more about this year's prize
Information for the Public
Pdf 3 MB
Scientific Background
Pdf 1,3 MB
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Links and Further Reading
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Reply 64# mbhcsf
menarik ....mozaic pattern of atoms
cepheid mesti heppy sbb glgn astrophysicist berjaya meraih nobel prize in physics |
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Reply mbhcsf
menarik....mozaic pattern of atoms
cepheid mesti heppy sbb glgn a ...
dauswq Post at 8-10-2011 15:45 
yups...astrophysics ni antara bidang yg lubuk nobel prize laa kan... |
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eh i lupa update
sapa nobel pprize winner in 2012 ?
i am sooo busy lupa update.... ya allah ... isk isk isk |
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chemistry
Robert J. Lefkowitz
Born: 1943, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
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chemistry - biochem actually
Brian K. Kobilka
Born: 1955, Little Falls, MN, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
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in Physics
David J. Wineland
Born: 1944, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Prize motivation: "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
Serge Haroche
Born: 1944, Casablanca, Morocco
Affiliation at the time of the award: Collège de France, Paris, France, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
Prize motivation: "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
TO CITE THIS PAGE:
MLA style: "Serge Haroche - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. 24 Feb 2013 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... s/2012/haroche.html
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in Medicine
Sir John B. Gurdon
Born: 1933, Dippenhall, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
Shinya Yamanaka
Born: 1962, Osaka, Japan
Affiliation at the time of the award: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
okay ni asas kepada stem cells technology ....
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Higgs boson scientists win Nobel prize in physics  Francois Englert and Peter Higgs at the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson at Cern in 2012
Two scientists have won the Nobel prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson. Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, shared the prize.
In the 1960s they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.
The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, in Switzerland.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote"I am overwhelmed to receive this award”
Peter Higgs Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Edinburgh
"This year's prize is about something small that makes all the difference," said Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The official citation read: "For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider".
Francois Englert said he was "very happy" to win the award.
"At first I thought I didn't have it [the prize] because I didn't see the announcement," he told the Nobel committee, after their news conference was delayed by more than an hour.
The BBC's David Shukman explains exactly what the Higgs boson is
Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, said: "I am overwhelmed to receive this award and thank the Royal Swedish Academy.
"I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle and to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support.
"I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."
Cern director general Rolf Heuer said he was "thrilled" that this year's prize had gone to particle physics.
"The discovery of the Higgs boson at Cern last year, which validates the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world," he said.
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THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNER IN CHEMISTRY
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Press Release
9 October 2013
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2013 to
Martin Karplus
Université de Strasbourg, France and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Michael Levitt
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
and
Arieh Warshel
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
“for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems”
The computer – your Virgil in the world of atoms
Chemists used to create models of molecules using plastic balls and sticks. Today, the modelling is carried out in computers. In the 1970s, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel laid the foundation for the powerful programs that are used to understand and predict chemical processes. Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today.
Chemical reactions occur at lightning speed. In a fraction of a millisecond, electrons jump from one atomic to the other. Classical chemistry has a hard time keeping up; it is virtually impossible to experimentally map every little step in a chemical process. Aided by the methods now awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, scientists let computers unveil chemical processes, such as a catalyst’s purification of exhaust fumes or the photo­synthesis in green leaves.
The work of Karplus, Levitt and Warshel is ground-breaking in that they managed to make Newton’s classical physics work side-by-side with the fundamentally different quantum physics. Previously, chemists had to choose to use either or. The strength of classical physics was that calculations were simple and could be used to model really large molecules. Its weakness, it offered no way to simulate chemical reactions. For that purpose, chemists instead had to use quantum physics. But such calculations required enormous computing power and could therefore only be carried out for small molecules.
This year’s Nobel Laureates in chemistry took the best from both worlds and devised methods that use both classical and quantum physics. For instance, in simulations of how a drug couples to its target protein in the body, the computer performs quantum theoretical calculations on those atoms in the target protein that interact with the drug. The rest of the large protein is simulated using less demanding classical physics.
Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube. Simulations are so realistic that they predict the outcome of traditional experiments.
Read more about this year's prize
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Martin Karplus, U.S. and Austrian citizen. Born 1930 in Vienna, Austria. Ph.D. 1953 from California Institute of Technology, CA, USA. Professeur Conventionné, Université de Strasbourg, France and Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
http://chemistry.harvard.edu/people/martin-karplus
http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/biop/start
Michael Levitt, U.S., British and Israeli citizen. Born 1947 in Pretoria, South Africa. Ph.D. 1971 from University of Cambridge, UK. Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor in Cancer Research, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Michael_Levitt
Arieh Warshel, U.S. and Israeli citizen. Born 1940 in Kibbutz Sde-Nahum, Israel. Ph.D. 1969 from Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Distinguished Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
http://chem.usc.edu/faculty/Warshel.html
The Prize amount: SEK 8 million, to be shared equally between the Laureates.
Contact: Perina Stjernlöf, Press Officer/Editor, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, perina.stjernlof@kva.se
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organization whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplins.
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MLA style: "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 - Press Release". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... tes/2013/press.html> |
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Press Release
2013-10-07
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award
The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jointly to
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman
and Thomas C. Südhof
for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic,
a major transport system in our cells
Summary
The 2013 Nobel Prize honours three scientists who have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system. Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules. For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles. The three Nobel Laureates have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell.
Randy Schekman discovered a set of genes that were required for vesicle traffic. James Rothman unravelled protein machinery that allows vesicles to fuse with their targets to permit transfer of cargo. Thomas Südhof revealed how signals instruct vesicles to release their cargo with precision.
Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Südhof have revealed the exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo. Disturbances in this system have deleterious effects and contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders.
How cargo is transported in the cell
In a large and busy port, systems are required to ensure that the correct cargo is shipped to the correct destination at the right time. The cell, with its different compartments called organelles, faces a similar problem: cells produce molecules such as hormones, neurotransmitters, cytokines and enzymes that have to be delivered to other places inside the cell, or exported out of the cell, at exactly the right moment. Timing and location are everything. Miniature bubble-like vesicles, surrounded by membranes, shuttle the cargo between organelles or fuse with the outer membrane of the cell and release their cargo to the outside. This is of major importance, as it triggers nerve activation in the case of transmitter substances, or controls metabolism in the case of hormones. How do these vesicles know where and when to deliver their cargo?
Traffic congestion reveals genetic controllers
Randy Schekman was fascinated by how the cell organizes its transport system and in the 1970s decided to study its genetic basis by using yeast as a model system. In a genetic screen, he identified yeast cells with defective transport machinery, giving rise to a situation resembling a poorly planned public transport system. Vesicles piled up in certain parts of the cell. He found that the cause of this congestion was genetic and went on to identify the mutated genes. Schekman identified three classes of genes that control different facets of the cell´s transport system, thereby providing new insights into the tightly regulated machinery that mediates vesicle transport in the cell.
Docking with precision
James Rothman was also intrigued by the nature of the cell´s transport system. When studying vesicle transport in mammalian cells in the 1980s and 1990s, Rothman discovered that a protein complex enables vesicles to dock and fuse with their target membranes. In the fusion process, proteins on the vesicles and target membranes bind to each other like the two sides of a zipper. The fact that there are many such proteins and that they bind only in specific combinations ensures that cargo is delivered to a precise location. The same principle operates inside the cell and when a vesicle binds to the cell´s outer membrane to release its contents.
It turned out that some of the genes Schekman had discovered in yeast coded for proteins corresponding to those Rothman identified in mammals, revealing an ancient evolutionary origin of the transport system. Collectively, they mapped critical components of the cell´s transport machinery.
Timing is everything
Thomas Südhof was interested in how nerve cells communicate with one another in the brain. The signalling molecules, neurotransmitters, are released from vesicles that fuse with the outer membrane of nerve cells by using the machinery discovered by Rothman and Schekman. But these vesicles are only allowed to release their contents when the nerve cell signals to its neighbours. How is this release controlled in such a precise manner? Calcium ions were known to be involved in this process and in the 1990s, Südhof searched for calcium sensitive proteins in nerve cells. He identified molecular machinery that responds to an influx of calcium ions and directs neighbour proteins rapidly to bind vesicles to the outer membrane of the nerve cell. The zipper opens up and signal substances are released. Südhof´s discovery explained how temporal precision is achieved and how vesicles´ contents can be released on command.
Vesicle transport gives insight into disease processes
The three Nobel Laureates have discovered a fundamental process in cell physiology. These discoveries have had a major impact on our understanding of how cargo is delivered with timing and precision within and outside the cell. Vesicle transport and fusion operate, with the same general principles, in organisms as different as yeast and man. The system is critical for a variety of physiological processes in which vesicle fusion must be controlled, ranging from signalling in the brain to release of hormones and immune cytokines. Defective vesicle transport occurs in a variety of diseases including a number of neurological and immunological disorders, as well as in diabetes. Without this wonderfully precise organization, the cell would lapse into chaos.
James E. Rothman was born 1950 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA. He received his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1976, was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and moved in 1978 to Stanford University in California, where he started his research on the vesicles of the cell. Rothman has also worked at Princeton University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute and Columbia University. In 2008, he joined the faculty of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, where he is currently Professor and Chairman in the Department of Cell Biology.
Randy W. Schekman was born 1948 in St Paul, Minnesota, USA, studied at the University of California in Los Angeles and at Stanford University, where he obtained his PhD in 1974 under the supervision of Arthur Kornberg (Nobel Prize 1959) and in the same department that Rothman joined a few years later. In 1976, Schekman joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is currently Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell biology. Schekman is also an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Thomas C. Südhof was born in 1955 in Göttingen, Germany. He studied at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, where he received an MD in 1982 and a Doctorate in neurochemistry the same year. In 1983, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow with Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein (who shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). Südhof became an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1991 and was appointed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University in 2008.
Key publications:
Novick P, Schekman R: Secretion and cell-surface growth are blocked in a temperature-sensitive mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1979; 76:1858-1862.
Balch WE, Dunphy WG, Braell WA, Rothman JE: Reconstitution of the transport of protein between successive compartments of the Golgi measured by the coupled incorporation of N-acetylglucosamine. Cell 1984; 39:405-416.
Kaiser CA, Schekman R: Distinct sets of SEC genes govern transport vesicle formation and fusion early in the secretory pathway. Cell 1990; 61:723-733.
Perin MS, Fried VA, Mignery GA, Jahn R, Südhof TC: Phospholipid binding by a synaptic vesicle protein homologous to the regulatory region of protein kinase C. Nature 1990; 345:260-263.
Sollner T, Whiteheart W, Brunner M, Erdjument-Bromage H, Geromanos S, Tempst P, Rothman JE: SNAP receptor implicated in vesicle targeting and fusion. Nature 1993;
362:318-324.
Hata Y, Slaughter CA, Südhof TC: Synaptic vesicle fusion complex contains unc-18 homologue bound to syntaxin. Nature 1993; 366:347-351.
Image illustrating the 2013 Medicine PrizeImage (pdf 197 Kb)
The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.
Nobel Prize® is the registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation
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MLA style: "The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Press Release". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... tes/2013/press.html |
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the part I love about reading the transcript of their telephone interview was this kind of 'bits' - how they as a scientist view things ....see?
[AS] Together you are credited with taking the field of vesicle trafficking from a descriptive to a mechanistic level. And the citation describes, it uses the word machinery to describe vesicle traffic. Is that how you think of it, when you think of the cell, moving molecules around in vesicles? Do you think of it as a machine?
[JR] That is a perceptive question. That is exactly how I think about it, machinery. And the reason is that one of the major lessons in all of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular medicine is that when proteins operate at the sub-cellular level they behave in certain way, as if they were mechanical machinery. It's absolutely fascinating. When you ... when we study chemistry, the rules of chemistry, electrons and so on, they operate at an even smaller level of atoms and molecules. But when you get to the sort of level of the nanoscale, you find that these objects start behaving as if they were mechanical. Exactly how I think about it, and always have.
[AS] It's a beautiful picture.
[JR] My orientation originally was in physics. I was trained as a physicist as a young man. And what so attracted me about molecular biology is the opportunity to find the simplicity through that very simple concept … guided me. Funny you should ask that on the outset. It's very perceptive of you.
[AS] Thank you, and in a week or two's time, when things have quietened down, I hope we can have a longer conversation where we can dig into this more. But one question, what gave you the courage to embark on this idea in the first place? Because the initial experiments, it wasn't clear they'd work at all.
[JR] No I don't know, you probably have the benefit of the press release?
[AS] Uh-huh.
[JR] Which I do not. So I don't quite know how the committee has written the story. But yes, in the earlier years when I started this project, at Stanford University, everybody told me it was nuts to go and try to reproduce the complexities, the mysterious complexities that occur in a whole cell, in a cell free extract. And ... my courage came from three sources I would say. The first, in all seriousness, was youth. Because there's a certain arrogance in youth, I don't if I'd have had the courage to do that today. The second was the fact that, you could in those days, in the United States you could do adventurous things with very little, no more preliminary data, and you can still get support from the NIH to do it. And so in today's environment I doubt very much I would have had the freedom or the opportunity to truly pursue this. And the third, frankly, was that I was inspired by a man named Arthur Kornberg. And Arthur Kornberg is a name that should come up in your interviews because Randy Schekman was Arthur's PhD student.
[AS] Indeed, yes.
[JR] And Arthur as you know, unfortunately died a few years ago, was one of the great biochemists of the century, of the 20th century. And he was the reason why I was Stanford in the first place, why I left medical school, and the opportunity to be in his department and have the lab next door. And the reason why Arthur was such an inspiration, is that in his own time he had conquered an unbreakable barrier for enzymology, as he called it, which was the synthesis of DNA, so I frankly got a lot of courage, encouragement from being in that environment and watching what Arthur and the others could do. And that's ... my answer to your question.
[AS] It's a beautifully succinct answer, thank you very much indeed. Well as I say, I will schedule a longer interview with you in the coming week, but for now, I just should let you get on with what will be an extraordinary day (laughs).
[JR] Good luck with your interviews with the other Laureates today, and I'll look forward to speaking with you at greater length on another occasion.
[AS] Thank you very much indeed. Pleasure to speak with you, and once again congratulations.
[JR] Thank you so much.
[AS] Thanks. Bye bye
Listen to the Interview
7 min
To cite this page
MLA style: "Transcript of the telephone interview with James Rothman following the announcement of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 7 October 2013.". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... -telephone.html> .
Last edited by mbhcsf on 31-10-2013 07:31 PM
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Press Release
8 October 2013
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2013 to
François Englert
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
and
Peter W. Higgs
University of Edinburgh, UK
“for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”
Here, at last!
François Englert and Peter W. Higgs are jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 for the theory of how particles acquire mass. In 1964, they proposed the theory independently of each other (Englert together with his now deceased colleague Robert Brout). In 2012, their ideas were confirmed by the discovery of a so called Higgs particle at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva in Switzerland..
The awarded theory is a central part of the Standard Model of particle physics that describes how the world is constructed. According to the Standard Model, everything, from flowers and people to stars and planets, consists of just a few building blocks: matter particles. These particles are governed by forces mediated by force particles that make sure everything works as it should.
The entire Standard Model also rests on the existence of a special kind of particle: the Higgs particle. This particle originates from an invisible field that fills up all space. Even when the universe seems empty this field is there. Without it, we would not exist, because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass. The theory proposed by Englert and Higgs describes this process.
On 4 July 2012, at the CERN laboratory for particle physics, the theory was confirmed by the discovery of a Higgs particle. CERN’s particle collider, LHC (Large Hadron Collider), is probably the largest and the most complex machine ever constructed by humans. Two research groups of some 3,000 scientists each, ATLAS and CMS, managed to extract the Higgs particle from billions of particle collisions in the LHC.
Even though it is a great achievement to have found the Higgs particle — the missing piece in the Standard Model puzzle — the Standard Model is not the final piece in the cosmic puzzle. One of the reasons for this is that the Standard Model treats certain particles, neutrinos, as being virtually massless, whereas recent studies show that they actually do have mass. Another reason is that the model only describes visible matter, which only accounts for one fifth of all matter in the cosmos. To find the mysterious dark matter is one of the objectives as scientists continue the chase of unknown particles at CERN.
Read more about this year's prize
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Image - puzzle (7,8 Mb)
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François Englert, Belgian citizen. Born 1932 in Etterbeek, Belgium. Ph.D. 1959 from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium. Professor Emeritus at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
www.ulb.ac.be/sciences/physth/people_FEnglert.html
Peter W. Higgs, UK citizen. Born 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Ph.D. 1954 from King’s College, University of London, UK. Professor emeritus at University of Edinburgh, UK.
www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/
Prize amount: SEK 8 million, to be shared equally between the Laureates.
Contact persons: Perina Stjernlöf, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, perina.stjernlof@kva.se
Annika Moberg, Editor, Phone +46 8 673 95 22, Mobile +46 70 325 32 18, annika.moberg@kva.se
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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organization whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.
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MLA style: "The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics - Press Release". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_ ... tes/2013/press.html> |
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Post time 8-10-2011 03:45 PM
