12 October 2011

Meet the Nobel Laureates 2011


The Nobel Prize for the year 2011 in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences was announced recently. Just a note on who those Nobel laureates are and their contributions in their respective fields that made them the winners.

Nobel for Physics: Nobel Prize for Physics for the year 2011 was shared by Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Reiss for their discovery that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. They made the discovery based on their studies on distant supernovae or the exploding stars.

Nobel for Chemistry: Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery of ‘quasicrystals’, a mosaic-like chemical structure that scientist earlier thought would not be possible. Contrary to what was earlier thought that atoms were packed in crystals in symmetrical patterns, Prof. Shechman showed that atoms in a crystal could be packed in a pattern that could not be repeated.

Nobel for Physiology or Medicine: Three scientists shared the Nobel for Physiology or Medicine for the year 2011 for their discoveries about the immune system that opened new avenues for the treatment and prevention of many infectious diseases as well as cancer. One half of the Nobel would be shared by Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffman for their discovery concerning the activation of innate immunity and the other half by Ralph M. Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cells and its role in adaptive immunity.

Nobel for Literature: Tomas Transtromer bagged the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature. According to the Nobel Committee the Swedish poet was awarded the Nobel because through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.

Nobel for Peace: The 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee bagged the coveted prize for organising women for ending the long war in Liberia and Tawakkul Karman for her leading part in the struggle for women’s right, democracy and peace in Yemen.

Nobel for Economic Science: Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims won the Nobel Prize for Economics for developing methods to answer questions regarding the causal relationship between economic policy and different macroeconomic variables such as GDP, inflation, employment and investment.

Source: Official website of the Nobel Prize and The Hindu newspaper

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