October 11, 2019

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 the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel—have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Today, World Book looks at the first three prizes, in the scientific categories of physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

On Monday, October 7, 2019, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was given jointly to the scientists William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza for their work showing how cells adapt to the changing availability of oxygen. Kaelin, Ratcliffe, and Semenza identified the molecular machinery that allows cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. Their discoveries offer promising new strategies in the treatment of such diseases and maladies as anemia, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.

William G. Kaelin, Jr., was born in New York and is a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Peter J. Ratcliffe of the United Kingdom is the director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London and director of the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford. Gregg L. Semenza, also from New York, is a professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Tuesday, October 8, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to the Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and to the Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their work on explaining the evolution of the universe and for discovering distant exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system). Among other things, Peebles theorized how matter in the young universe swirled into galaxies. In 1995, Mayor and Queloz discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star elsewhere in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, enhancing the study of planetary systems beyond our own that could support life.

James Peebles is the Albert Einstein professor of science at Princeton University in New Jersey. Michel Mayor is an astrophysicist and professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Geneva. Didier Queloz is a professor of physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, and at the University of Geneva.

On Wednesday, October 9, the Nobel Foundation announced that John B. Goodenough of the United States, M. Stanley Whittingham of the United Kingdom, and Akira Yoshino of Japan would share the prize for chemistry for developing and refining rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The lightweight, rechargeable, and powerful batteries are used in everything from mobile phones to laptop computers and electric vehicles. They can also store great amounts of energy from solar and wind power, further enabling the possibility of a fossil fuel-free future.

At 97 years old, John B. Goodenough is the oldest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize. He is currently the Virginia H. Cockrell Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. M. Stanley Whittingham is a distinguished professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Akira Yoshino is an honorary fellow at Tokyo’s Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.

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.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

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.

October 7, 2013

American scientists James E. Rothman of Yale University and Randy W. Schekman of the University of California at Berkeley shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with German-born biologist Thomas Sudhof of Stanford University for  discoveries showing how insulin and other vital materials are transported and delivered to targets within and between cells of the body. This extremely precise transport system is essential for health.

Cells differ greatly in size and shape and in the jobs they do. But all cells have certain features, and each cell can be thought of as a tiny chemical factory. It has a control center that tells it what to do and when. It has power plants for generating the energy it needs to function, and it has machinery for making needed products or performing essential services. Within each cell, a transportation control system ensures that necessary substances are delivered to the right place at the right time and so prevents the cellular factory from breaking down.

Working separately, the three scientists investigated the networks of tiny cavities, called vesicles, that transport materials within and sometimes between individual cells of the body. Rothman studied the various proteins that enable vesicles to deliver such necessary substances as hormones or enzymes to the appropriate target within the cell. Schekman identified the genes that control the cellular transport system. Similar genes are found in all animals, from simple yeast to human beings. Sudhof studied how chemical signals from nerve cells instruct vesicles to release the substances they contain. Such signaling is necessary so that the thousands of complex reactions that take place in the body occur in a precise manner.

The three scientists’ research offers many practical medical applications. Disturbances in the cell’s internal transport system are thought to play a role in diabetes and various neurological and immune system disorders.

Additional World Book article:

• Nobel, Alfred Bernhard

October 8, 2012

Biologists John Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in the United Kingdom and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their experimental findings on how adult animal cells can be transformed into stem cells. A stem cell is a cell that has the ability to develop into any of the different cell types that make up the tissues and organs of the body. This development process is called differentiation. Stem cells have the ability to divide endlessly, producing more stem cells or other types of cells.

In experiments with frogs conducted in the 1960’s, Gurdon demonstrated that the genetic material from a single cell of an adult frog contained all the information necessary to create a whole frog. He took the genetic material from the intestines of an adult frog and placed it inside an unfertilized frog egg. The resulting cell began to divide and developed into a tadpole as if it were a stem cell. Working independently in Japan, Shinya Yamanaka used a different approach to turn adult cells into stem cells. He altered individual genes in mouse skin cells to transform the cells into stem cells. These stem cells later differentiated into several different kinds of cells.

Being able to transform adult cells into stem cells could eliminate the need for controversial therapies that rely on embryonic stem cells. Scientists first succeeded in isolating (separating) and growing stem cells from a human embryo (developing human) in a laboratory in 1998. Such stem cells are called embryonic stem cells. These cells can differentiate into nerve, liver, muscle, blood, and all other cells that make up an organism.

This discovery led to a debate over whether it is morally acceptable to use cells taken from human embryos for research. The embryos are destroyed in the process of isolating the stem cells. Some people consider embryos as human beings with legal rights and believe it is wrong to destroy them. Other people believe that the potential medical benefits of embryonic stem cells justify their use. Learning how to control the creation and differentiation of stem cells will help scientists develop new treatments for many diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and heart disease.

Additional World Book articles:

• Bone marrow transplant
• Genetic engineering
• Stem Cells: Seeds of Hope (a Special Report)
• Medicine (2007) (a Back in Time article)

American biologist Bruce A. Beutler shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Jules A. Hoffman of Luxembourg and Canadian-born scientist Ralph M. Steinman for their research on the immune system. Working individually, the three scientists made key discoveries that answered fundamental questions about how the body defends itself against infection. The discoveries paved the way for research that resulted in the development of new treatments for infections, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.

Beutler, a scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, shared one-half of the prize with Hoffman of the National Center of Scientific Research in Strasbourg, France. The two scientists made key discoveries on how the immune system first recognizes such infectious microbes as viruses and bacteria and activates the body’s defenses against them.

Steinman was awarded the other half of the prize for his discovery of dendritic cells, a type of white blood cell that helps adapt the immune system to react to different infectious agents. The fundamental research by these three scientists has led to the development of vaccines and drugs that treat disease by boosting the body’s natural defense systems.

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awards the prize for physiology or medicine, announced the prize on Oct. 3, 2011. At that time, the Assembly was unaware that Steinman had died on September 30. The Nobel Assembly has a long-established policy of not awarding prizes posthumously (after death). However, in this case, the Nobel Assembly issued a statement that the prize would be awarded to Steinman, since he had been alive when the Assembly had chosen to honor him.

Additional World Book articles:

• Disease (Immune Responses)
• Immunization
• Inoculation