A Quick Intro To This Year’s Nobel Prize Winners in the Sciences

The Nobel Prize medal. Credit: robynmack96/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine

1. Harvey J. Alter (⅓)

2. Michael Houghton (⅓)

3. Charles M. Rice (⅓)

Citation: “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus” (scientific background)

Notable papers:

* Posttransfusion hepatitis after exclusion of commercial and hepatitis-B antigen-positive donors

* Isolation of a cDNA clone derived from a blood-borne non-A, non-B viral hepatitis genome

* An assay for circulating antibodies to a major etiologic virus of human non-A, non-B hepatitis

* Transmission of hepatitis C by intrahepatic inoculation with transcribed RNA

Nobel Prize for physics

1. Roger Penrose (½)

2. Reinhard Genzel (¼)

3. Andrea Ghez (¼)

Citation: (scientific background)

Penrose – “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”

Genzel and Ghez – “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy”

Ghez became the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics.

Notable papers:

* Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities

* “Golden Oldie”: Gravitational Collapse: The Role of General Relativity

* High Proper-Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

* Observations of stellar proper motions near the Galactic Centre

* Stellar proper motions in the central 0.1 pc of the Galaxy

Nobel Prize for chemistry

1. Jennifer Doudna (½)

2. Emmanuelle Charpentier (½)

Citation: “for the development of a method for genome editing” (scientific background)

The first time the Nobel Prize has been awarded to an all-women group of laureates.

Notable papers:

* CRISPR RNA maturation by trans-encoded small RNA and host factor RNase III

* A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity

* CRISPR–Cas9 Structures and Mechanisms