Science Nobel Prizes
October 5, 2018
Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who–in keeping with the vision of chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel–have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. On Monday, the foundation awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to scientists James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their research on immunotherapy that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. Allison and Honjo helped develop powerful new therapies to treat, and in some instances cure, certain types of cancer.
James P. Allison is with the department of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Tasuku Honjo is a professor in the department of immunology and genomic medicine at Kyoto University.
On Tuesday, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to three scientists: Arthur Ashkin (from the United States), Gérard Mourou (France), and Donna Strickland (Canada) for their groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. Ashkin invented “optical tweezers,” an instrument that uses lasers to manipulate such tiny objects as atoms, viruses, and living cells. Mourou and Strickland worked together to generate the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created. This technology has many useful applications and is the basis for LASIK eye surgery. The pair published an article on the laser research in 1985, when Mourou was teaching at the University of Rochester in New York and Strickland was a graduate student there.
Arthur Ashkin’s prize-winning work was conducted while he worked at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. At age 96, he is the oldest Nobel Prize recipient ever. Gérard Mourou is currently with the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. Donna Strickland is associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Strickland is just the third woman in 117 years to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Polish-born scientist Marie Curie shared the prize in 1903 for her research on radiation. In 1963, German-born scientist Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the prize for her research on atomic nuclei.
On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, the Nobel Foundation announced that Americans Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith would share the prize for chemistry with Sir Gregory Winter of the United Kingdom for using directed evolution to synthesize proteins. This process mimics natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution, in a laboratory to create novel proteins with useful properties.
Arnold is currently a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. She is the fifth woman to win the chemistry prize. Smith is a former professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Winter is affiliated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.