Two men and a woman shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2022.
They are: Carolyn Bertozzi, Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal.
This is Sharpless’ second Nobel Prize in Chemistry as he also won it in 2001.
The prize in 2022 is for his work independently, with Morten Meldal in developing the so-called Click Chemistry where simple chemical building blocks can snap together quickly and be used to make complex molecules.
Carolyn Bertozzi developed Bio-orthogonal Chemistry which can work safely inside cells.
The complex molecules produced in reactions from Click Chemistry, with Carolyn Bertozzi’s work, can be parmaceuticals and used to fight a disease like cancerous cells by oncologists.
Their discovery also has wide applications in agriculture and technology.
Three men won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for their experimental work on entangled photons.
They are: French physicist Alain Aspect, American John Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger.
Photons are fundamental particles that carry electromagnetic force. They are the so-called quantum of electromagnetic radiation like light and all electromagnetic waves.
Entanglement, in Quantum Mechanics, is when two or more particles are linked even when they are far apart.
Such a phenomenon does not occur in Classical Physics but, is real.
It can be used, not directly, in information management but, by measuring a particle that is accessible, knowing that its entangled pair far away, has same characteristics.
This will be useful in quantum computing, encryption and other areas.
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine (Physiology) to Swedish geneticist, Svante Pääbo, for his work on the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.
The paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, dug-up and studied the DNA of extinct humans, human ancestors and Neanderthals, tens of thousands of years old, for an understanding of human evolution.
In 2010, he and his group published the first full sequence of broken Neanderthal genome, 40,000 years old.
His work showed that the early hominins intermingled among modern humans and had children before their extinction.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was won by the French writer, Annie Ernaux.
She was described as brave and writes on biography, women affairs and what others shy away from. In one of her books, she wrote on how she secured an illegal abortion as a young woman.
The Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to jailed Belarus rights activist, Ales Bialiatski, the Russian human rights group, Memorial and the Ukrainian organisation, Centre for Civil Liberties.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was won by Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their work on how banks can deal with financial crises and survive in bad times.
NOBEL PRIZES 2021: PHYSICS, MEDICINE, CHEMISTRY
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2021 has been awarded to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for their development of a precise new tool for molecular organocatalysis or molecular construction.
Catalysts are needed for reactions to take place in Chemistry but are not consumed in the process.
They are in the form of metals like Zinc or enzymes like Insulin.
Metals used as catalysts many times become pollutants at the end of the production process.
However, List and MacMillan developed a third type of catalyst referred to as Asymmetric Organocatalysis for building small organic molecules.
It is environmentally friendly and cheaper.
In building new molecules, mirror images form, like Glucose-D and Glucose-L.
Usually only one form is needed. However, using organocatalysis, different asymmetric molecules can be produced, instead of just two mirror images of one macro-molecule and no metal pollutant is left behind.
Benjamin List is a Director in the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, Germany, while David MacMillan is a US-based researcher.
They worked independently in discovering this tool.
Nobel Prize in Physics 2021
Three scientists, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Paris, have won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in unraveling the complex nature of the Earth’s weather and climate.
Japan-born Syukuro Manabe, 90, senior meteorologist in Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, discovered how high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can increase temperatures at the surface of the Earth.
Klaus Hasselmann, 89, in Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, wrote a computer model linking weather and changing climate.
Giorgio Parisi, 73, Sapienza University, Rome, mathematically described the hidden rules that govern the random behaviour of solid materials.
The understanding of this disorder in metals can help in understanding the complexities in weather and climate change.
The three co-winners were announced on 5 October, 2021.
photo credit: indiatimes, wsj
Nobel Prize in Medicine 2021
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were on 4 October, 2021 declared winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering how receptors in the skin that sense touch, pain and temperature work.
This is considered a significant achievement because it could pave the way for new pain-killers.
Patapoutian, 54, born of Lebanese parents, is Professor at Scripps Research, La Jolla, California.
Working independently, he found the gene responsible for turning a mechanical force on the skin into an electric nerve signal.
Julius, 65, is Professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
He used hot peppers as a false sense of heat to study the skin’s response to changes in temperature.
He used pepper varieties high in Capsaicin, the molecule in pepper responsible for that spicy feeling.
The challenge is for researchers to develop drugs that arrest chronic pain without stopping body sensors from recognising heat and pain.
All Nobel Prize winners in the sciences for 2021 are male.
Investigative journalists, Maria Ressa from Philippines and Dmitry Muratov from Russia shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
On 11 October, 2021 David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens were announced as co-winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
photo credit: news24
