The Nobel Prize is an annual international award giving bodywhich honors and recognizes cultural, academic, and scientific advances. It is given by Swedish and Norwegian institutions. The person who started this award was Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel. In 1895, He stated it in his last will and testament five Nobel prizes namely in the field of Physics, Peace, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Chemistry. These prizes are considered to be the most prestigious awards in their respective fields. In 1968, the central bank of Sweden, known as the SverigesRiksbank, established the SverigesRiksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. While it is not technically a Nobel Prize, it has been informally called the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Since 1901 to 2018, the Nobel Prize has been awarded 590 times to 935 people and organizations. The award ceremonies take place every year in Stockholm, Sweden, except for the Peace Prize award ceremony which is held in Oslo, Norway. Each Nobel Prize winner is called a laureate, they receive a diploma, a gold medal, and a prize money which currently is in the amount of 1,110,000 US Dollars.
Well known Nobel Prize winners include Barrack Obama, Albert Einstein, Jimmy Carter, and Marie Curie to name a few. As science and technology continues to expand in our modern times, the great scientists of the 21st century have made some truly amazing scientific discoveries. Check out the recent awards in the areas of Physics, Chemistry and Physiology / Medicine.
2000
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Physics:
- Zhores I. Alferov – For his work on information and communication technology.
- Herbert Kroemer – For developing semiconductor heterostructures which is used in high-speed and opto-electronics.
- Jack S. Kilby – For his contribution in the invention of the integrated circuit.
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Chemistry:
- Hideki Shirakawa, Alan G. MacDiarmid, and Alan J. Heeger – Their recognition and establishment of conductive polymers.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Paul Greengard, Arvid Carlson and Eric R. Kandel – They discovered the signal transduction in the nervous system.
2001
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Physics:
- Carl E. Weimann, Eric A. Cornell, and Wolfgang Ketterle – They achieved the Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of akali atoms and they also conducted early fundamental studies about the properties of the condensates.
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Chemistry:
- RyojiNoyori and William S. Knowles – Because of their work about the chirally catalyzed hydrogenation reactions.
- Barry Sharpless – Work and studies onchirally catalyzed oxidation reactions.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Tim Hunt, Leland H. Hartwell, and Sir Paul M. Nurse – They discovered the key regulators of the cell cycle.
2002
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Physics:
- Riccardo Giacconi – His contributions in the field of astrophysics helped led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources.
- Masatoshi Koshiba and Raymond Davis Jr. – For their pioneering contributions in the field of astrophysics which helped for the detection of cosmic neutrinos.
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Chemistry:
- John B. Fen, and Koichi Tanaka – For developing soft desorption ionization methods which are used for spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules.
- Kurt Wuthrich – Because of his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy that helped determine the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Robert Horvitz, Sydney Brenner, and John E. Sulston – They discovered the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death.
2003
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Physics:
- Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Athony J. Legget, and Alexei A. Abrikosov – Contributions to the theory of superfluids and superconductors.
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Chemistry:
- Peter Agre – For his discoveries about channels in cell membranes and water channels.
- Roderick MacKinnon – Because of his studies about structural and mechanistic ion channels.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Sir Peter Mansfield and Paul C. Lauterbur – Because of their discoveries about magnetic resonance imaging.
2004
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Physics:
- David Politzer, David J. Gross, and Frank Wilczeck – Because of their asympototic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.
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Chemistry:
- Irwin Rose, Aaron Ciechanover, and Avram Hershko – Because of their discovery of ubiquitin-mediated degration.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Linda Buck and Richard Axel – For their discovery of the odorant receptors and their organization of the olfactory system.
development.
2005
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Physics:
- John L. Hall and Theodore W. Hansch – Because of their contributions to the development of the laser-based precision spectroscopy and the optical frequency technique.
- Roy J. Glauber – Because of his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence.
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Chemistry:
- Richard R. Schrock, Robert H. Grubbs, and Yves Chauvin – They developed the metathesis method in organic synthesis.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall – Because of their discovery of the bacteria called Helicobacter pylori and its part in peptic ulcer disease and gastritis.
2006
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Physics:
- George F. Smoot and John C. Mather – Because of their discovery of the blackbody form anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
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Chemistry:
- Roger D. Kornberg – Because of his studies about the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Craig C. Mello and Andrew Z. Fire – They discovered the RNA interference which is a gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.
2007
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Physics:
- Peter Grunberg and Albert Fert – Because of their recognition of the Giant Magnetoresistance.
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Chemistry:
- Gerhard Ertl – Because of his studies in the chemical processes on solid surfaces.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Sir Martin J. Evans, Oliver Smithies, and Mario R. Capecchi – Because of their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene alterations in mice with the use of embryonic stem cells.
2008
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Physics:
- YoichiroNambu – He discovered the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.
- ToshihideMaskawa and Makoto Kobayashi – They discovered the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of three families of quarks in nature.
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Chemistry:
- Roger Y. Tsien, Osamu Shiomura, and Martin Chalfie – They discovered and developed the green fluorescent protein or GFP.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier – Because of their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.
- Harald zurHausen–He discovered the human papilloma virus which causes cervical cancer.
2009
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Physics:
- Charles Kuen Kao – Because of his achievements in the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.
- George E. Smith and Willard S. Boyle – The invented an imaging semiconductor unit which is the CCD sensor.
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Chemistry:
- Ada E. Yonath, Venkatraman Rakakrishnan, and Thomas A. Steitz – Because of their studies regarding the structure and function of the ribosome.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Jack W. Szostak, and Carol W. Greider – They discovered how telomeres and enzyme telomerase protects the chromosomes.
2010
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Physics:
- Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim – Because of their groundbreaking experiments about the two-dimensional graphene.
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Chemistry:
- Akira Suzuki, Richard F. Heck, and Ei-icihNegishi – For palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Robert G. Edwards – Because of his development of the in vitro fertilization.
2011
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Physics:
- Adam G. Reiss, Saul Perlmutter, and Brian P. Schmidt – Because of their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe by their observations of distant supernovae.
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Chemistry:
- Dan Shechtman – For his discovery of quasicrystals.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Ralph M. Steinman – Because of his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.
- Jules A. Hoffman and Bruce A. Beutler – Because of their discoveries about the activation of innate immunity.
2012
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Physics:
- David J. Wineland and Serge Haroche- For their groundbreaking experimental methods which enables measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.
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Chemistry:
- Brian K. Kobilka and Robert J. Lefkowitz – Because of their studies about G-protein-coupled receptors.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Shinya Yamanaka and Sir John B. Gurdon – They discovered that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
2013
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Physics:
- Peter W. Hiss and Francois Englert – He made a theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.
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Chemistry:
- Micheal Levitt, Martin Karplus, and AriehWarshel – Because of their development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Randy W. Schekman, James E. Rothman, and Thomas C. Sudhof – Because of their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic which is a major transport system in our cells.
2014
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Physics:
- Shuji Nakamura, Isamu Akasaki, and Hiroshi Amano – They invented the efficient blue light-emitting diodes that enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.
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Chemistry:
- William E. Moerner, Eric Betzig, and Stefan W. Hell – They developed the super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- May-Britt Moser, John O’Keefe, and Edvard I. Moser – They discovered cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.
2015
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Physics:
- Arthur B. McDonald and TakaakiKajita – Because of their discovery of the neutrino oscillations that shoes that neutrinos have mass.
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Chemistry:
- Paul Modrich, Tomas Lindahl, and Aziz Sancar – Because of their studies about DNA repair.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Youyou Tu – Because of his discoveries about a novel therapy against Malaria.
- Satoshi Omura and William C. Campbell – Because of their discoveries about a novel therapy against infections that is caused by roundworm parasites.
2016
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Physics:
- Michael Kosterlitz, David J. Thouless, and F. Duncan M. Haldane – Because of their theoretical discoveries about the topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.
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Chemistry:
- Bernard L. Feringa, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, and Sir J. Fraser Stoddard – Because of their design and synthesis of molecular machines.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- YoshinoryOshumi – Because for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.
2017
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Physics:
- Kip S. Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Barry C. Barish – Because of their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and their observation of gravitional waves.
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Chemistry:
- Richard Henderson, Jacques Dubochet, and Joachim Frank – They developed cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- Michael W. Young, Jeffrey C. Hall, and Michael Rosbash – They discovered molecular mechanisms that controls the circadian rhythm.
2018
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Physics:
- Arthur Ashkin – For optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.
- Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou – They discovered a method for generating high-intensity and ultra-short optical pulses.
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Chemistry:
- Frances H. Arnolds – For the directed evolution of enzymes.
- Sir Gregory P. Winter and George P. Smith – For the phage display of peptides and antibodies.
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Physiology or Medicine:
- TasukuHonjo and James P. Allison – They discovered a cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.