Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
he head of the Noble Committee, Thomas Perlmann has announced the winners of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the year 2020. Three scientists (2 Americans and 1 British) share this year’s prize for their discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. The winners Harvey J Alter, Charles M Rice and Michael Houghton share the prize equally.
This years Nobel Prize 2020 comes with a Gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1,118,000).
About Winners
- Harvey J. Alter
- He is an American Medical Researcher and Virologist.
- He is the chief of the infectious disease section and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Charles M. Rice
- He is an American Medical Researcher and Virologist
- He is working as a professor of virology at the Rockefeller University in New York City.
- Michael Houghton
- He is Canadian scientist and Virologist
- He is working as a professor of virology at University of Alberta Chiron Corporation.
“Prior to their work, the discovery of Hepatitis A and B viruses had been critical steps forward, but the majority of blood-borne hepatitis cases remained unexplained. The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement.
According to the World Health Organisation, over 70 million cases and 4,00,000 deaths due to hepatitis are recorded worldwide each year. The disease is chronic and a major cause of liver inflammation and cancer.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2020 is the first of 6 prizes being announced through October 12. The other prizes are for outstanding work in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economics respectively.
Shortcut Trick to Remember the Nobel Prize 2020 Winners in Medicine
- Remember the line Michael Altered the Rice by adding Hepatitis C virus
- This sentence means, a guy named Michael has altered the Rice by adding some poisonous virus to it.
- Here
- Michael – Michael Houghton
- Altered – Harvey J. Alter
- Rice – Charles M. Rice
- They won the Nobel Prize for discovering Hepatitis C virus.
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the winners of 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. This year there are 3 awardees. One half of the Nobel Physics prize will be given to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” and the other half jointly given to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.”
These three laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole. Roger Penrose showed that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.
“The discoveries of this year’s laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole,” said David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna. They are getting this award “for the development of a method for genome editing.”
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.
Researchers need to modify genes in cells if they are to find out about life’s inner workings. This used to be time-consuming, difficult and sometimes impossible work. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, it is now possible to change the code of life over the course of a few weeks.
Since Charpentier and Doudna discovered the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors in 2012 their use has exploded. This tool has contributed to many important discoveries in basic research, and plant researchers have been able to develop crops that withstand mould, pests and drought. In medicine, clinical trials of new cancer therapies are underway, and the dream of being able to cure inherited diseases is about to come true.
These genetic scissors have taken the life sciences into a new epoch and, in many ways, are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.
Nobel Prize in Literature
American poet Louise Glück has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
She was born 1943 in New York and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Apart from her writing she is working as a professor of English at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
She made her debut in 1968 with ‘Firstborn’, and was soon acclaimed as one of the most prominent poets in American contemporary literature. She has received several prestigious awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize (1993) and the National Book Award (2014).
Louise Glück has published twelve collections of poetry and some volumes of essays on poetry. All are characterized by a striving for clarity. Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and siblings, is a thematic that has remained central with her. In her poems, the self listens for what is left of its dreams and delusions, and nobody can be harder than she in confronting the illusions of the self. But even if Glück would never deny the significance of the autobiographical background, she is not to be regarded as a confessional poet. Glück seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs, present in most of her works. The voices of Dido, Persephone and Eurydice – the abandoned, the punished, the betrayed – are masks for a self in transformation, as personal as it is universally valid.
With collections like ‘The Triumph of Achilles’ (1985) and ‘Ararat’ (1990) Glück found a growing audience in USA and abroad. In ‘Ararat’ three characteristics unite to subsequently recur in her writing: the topic of family life; austere intelligence; and a refined sense of composition that marks the book as a whole. Glück has also pointed out that in these poems she realized how to employ ordinary diction in her poetry. The deceptively natural tone is striking. We encounter almost brutally straightforward images of painful family relations. It is candid and uncompromising, with no trace of poetic ornament.
Louise Glück is not only engaged by the errancies and shifting conditions of life, she is also a poet of radical change and rebirth, where the leap forward is made from a deep sense of loss. In one of her most lauded collections, ‘The Wild Iris’ (1992), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, she describes the miraculous return of life after winter in the poem ‘Snowdrops’
Nobel Peace Prize
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the winner for this year’s Peace Prize at the Nobel Institute in Oslo. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP).
The organization has been honoured with this prestegious award “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict“.
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation addressing hunger and promoting food security. In 2019, the WFP provided assistance to close to 100 million people in 88 countries who are victims of acute food insecurity and hunger.
With this award announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.
Important points to Remember about World Food Programme :
- Parent Organization : United Nations General Assembly
- Formed on : 19th December 1961
- Headquarters : Rome, Italy
- Head of WFP : David Beasley
- Note : WFP provides food assistance to an average of 91.4 million people in 83 countries each
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the winners of Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the year 2020 (also known as Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.”
This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how auctions work. They have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies. Their discoveries have benefitted sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world.
People have always sold things to the highest bidder, or bought them from whoever makes the cheapest offer. Nowadays, objects worth astronomical sums of money change hands every day in auctions, not only household objects, art and antiquities, but also securities, minerals and energy. Public procurements can also be conducted as auctions.
Using auction theory, researchers try to understand the outcomes of different rules for bidding and final prices, the auction format. The analysis is difficult, because bidders behave strategically, based on the available information. They take into consideration both what they know themselves and what they believe other bidders to know.
“This year’s Laureates in Economic Sciences started out with fundamental theory and later used their results in practical applications, which have spread globally. Their discoveries are of great benefit to society,” says Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Prize Committee.