The Nobel Prize

​​"Her story is so well known to the people of South America that, passed on from country to country, it has become almost a legend."

So began the presentation speech of Gabriela Mistral's Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. It continued:

"In a small village in the Elquis valley, several decades ago, was born a future schoolteacher named Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga. Godoy was her father’s name, Alcayaga her mother’s; both were of Basque origin. Her father, who had been a schoolteacher, improvised verses with ease. His talent seems to have been mixed with the anxiety and the instability common to poets. He left his family when his daughter, for whom he had made a small garden, was still a child. Her beautiful mother, who was to live a long time, has said that sometimes she discovered her lonely little daughter engaged in intimate conversations with the birds and the flowers of the garden. According to one version of the legend, she was expelled from school. Apparently she was considered too stupid for teaching hours to be wasted on her. Yet she taught herself by her own methods, educating herself to the extent that she became a teacher in the small village school of Cantera. There her destiny was fulfilled at the age of twenty, when a passionate love arose between her and a railroad employee.

We know little of their story. We know only that he betrayed her. One day in November, 1909, he fatally shot himself in the head. The young girl was seized with boundless despair. Like Job, she lifted her cry to the Heaven that had allowed this. From the lost valley in the barren, scorched mountains of Chile a voice arose, and far around men heard it. A banal tragedy of everyday life lost its private character and entered into universal literature. Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga became Gabriela Mistral."

​​Vitamin K is a compound that is crucial for blood clotting.

Nobel Laureate Edward Doisy, was the first person to produce it in a pure form. By studying different analogues he established the distinction between vitamin K1 (shown) which was isolated from alfalfa, and vitamin K2, isolated from fish meal. His work became especially important in treating bleeding among small children.

​​"One cannot plan for the unexpected. Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world."

Aaron Klug was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy. During the 1960s, Klug combined methods from x-ray crystallography with electron microscopy in order to study complex structures of DNA and proteins in organisms such as various viruses and in chromatin, which forms the chromosomes inside cell nuclei. He was first introduced to the investigating the structure of viruses by Rosalind Franklin: "From then on my fate was sealed," he said.

​​Linus Pauling is the only person to have been awarded two undivided Nobel Prizes.

Did you know that Pauling discovered the structure of the alpha-helix molecule when he folded a piece of paper? What's more - Pauling was a champion of peace and took a stand against nuclear weapons.
In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Eight years later he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1962 for his opposition to nuclear weapons.

​​Can you see what the image depicts?

Communication between the cells in your body are managed by substances called hormones. Each cell has a small receiver known as a receptor, which is able to receive hormones. In the 1980s, Brian Kobilka successfully identified the gene that regulates the formation of the receptor for the hormone adrenaline. He and Robert Lefkowitz also discovered that the receptor was similar to receptors located in the eye that capture light. It was later discovered that there is an entire family of receptors that look and act in similar ways - "G-protein-coupled receptors". Approximately half of all medications used today make use of this kind of receptor.
The image depicts a three-dimensional model of the beta 2 adrenergic receptor-Gs protein complex etched in a glass cube. The glass cube was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum from 2012 Chemistry Laureate Brian Kobilka when he visited Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize.

​​2020 Medicine Laureate Harvey Alter’s methodical investigations had defined a new, distinct form of chronic viral hepatitis, illness that became known as “non-A, non-B” hepatitis. The next step was to identify the novel virus.

All the traditional techniques for virus hunting were put to use but, in spite of this, the virus eluded isolation for over a decade. 2020 Medicine Laureate Michael Houghton (pictured), working for the pharmaceutical firm Chiron, undertook the arduous work needed to isolate the genetic sequence of the virus. Houghton and his co-workers created a collection of DNA fragments from nucleic acids found in the blood of an infected chimpanzee. The majority of these fragments came from the genome of the chimpanzee itself, but the researchers predicted that some would be derived from the unknown virus. On the assumption that antibodies against the virus would be present in blood taken from hepatitis patients, the investigators used patient sera to identify cloned viral DNA fragments encoding viral proteins. Following a comprehensive search, one positive clone was found. Further work showed that this clone was derived from a novel RNA virus belonging to the Flavivirus family and it was named Hepatitis C virus. The presence of antibodies in chronic hepatitis patients strongly implicated this virus as the missing agent.
Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charlie Rice shared the 2020 Medicine Prize "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus".

​​"I have always believed that human civilization is the fruit of the effort of both women and men. So, when women are treated unjustly and are deprived of their natural right in this process, all social deficiencies and cultural illnesses will be unfolded, and in the end the whole community, men and women, will suffer. The solution to women’s issues can only be achieved in a free and democratic society in which human energy is liberated, the energy of both women and men together. Our civilization is called human civilization and is not attributed only to men or women."

Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace and women's rights.

​​"The most important qualities of being a teacher I think surely is the enthusiasm for what you are trying to teach. And perhaps it's equally important - you should pay attention to the student."

Jim Peebles, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019, on teaching.

​​”Today, we are truly a global family. What happens in one part of the world may affect us all.”

- 15-year-old Lhamo Dondrub was officially named the 14th Dalai Lama on November 17 in 1950. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain their liberty.

​​Toshihide Maskawa first began using this slide rule as a high school student. At the age of 17, he used it just after the launch of the first ever satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, to calculate the trajectories of satellites and rockets.

Maskawa later delved deeper into the mathematics of quantum physics. In 1973, he obtained his first programmable calculator and his slide rule was allowed to retire. His interest in physics, however, endured and he was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
His old slide rule now lives at the @NobelPrizeMuseum.

​​Even as a child growing up in Hawaii, Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna had a strong urge to know things. One day, her father placed the book 'The Double Helix' on her bed. This detective-style story about how the structure of the DNA molecule was solved was like nothing she had read in her school textbooks. She was captivated by the scientific process and realised that science is more than just facts.

However, when she started to solve scientific mysteries, her attention was not on DNA, but on its molecular sibling: RNA. This would eventually lead her to the discovery of a tool that can be used to change the DNA of organisms with extremely high precision and, last year, to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Credit: Photo by UC Berkeley/Keegan Houser

​​Today's quote from Physics Laureate Albert Einstein.

Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

​​The discovery of insulin is one of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine - and one of the most debated Nobel Prizes.

It is January, 1922, Toronto, Canada. 14-year-old Leonard Thompson is the first person with diabetes to receive insulin. The test is a success: Leonard, who before the insulin shots was near death, rapidly regains his strength and appetite.
The news of the successful test treatment rapidly spread, and in 1923, Frederick Banting and John Macleod share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin.
However, Banting was furious with the choice of recipients. He felt that that the prize should have been shared between him and his assistant – medical student Charles Best – not between him and the senior diabetes researcher Macleod.
To credit Best, Banting shared his cash award with him. Macleod, in turn, shared his cash award with biochemist Bertram Collip who had joined the team during the testing phase.