Nobel Week, 2022

[Arneb]

Monday - Medicine and Physiology: To Svante Pääbo, of the Max-Plack-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie in Leipzig; "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominines and human evolution". Among other things, Pääbo's group was the first to sequence large parts of the Neanderthal Genome. He is viewed as the father of human paleogenomics.

And a solo Nobel it is to boot. Congratulations!

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Second generation laureate.
His father, Sune Bergström, won the same prize in 1982, a shared one though.

[Arneb]

Tuesday - Physics: In equal parts, to Alain Aspect (France), John F. Clausser (USA), and Anton Zeilinger (Austria), “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

I first read of Zeilinger, a true mad scientist teleporting photons between Canary Islands Fuerteventura and La Palma, dome thirty years ago, and I was in awe before this quirky, unassuming and, it seems, accessible man.

Beside the obvious engineering and commercial applications (quantum computing, safe information transfer, etc.), Zeilinger's work especially has deep implications for the foundations of quantum physics.

I love this choice! They'll yet beam us up, Scotty!

[Arneb]

Wednesday - Chemistry: In equal parts, to Carolyn A Bertozzi (USA), Morten Meldal (Denmark), and K. Barry Sharpless (USA), "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry". If that sounds arcane to you, it does to me, too. But apparently, it is about making chemical reactions fast, reliable and easy to plan, even (in the case of Dr. Bartuzzi) in living organisms.

[Arneb]

Thursday - Literature: To Annie Ernaux (France), "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. Never read the name, never read a single line of her work, so no comment from me on this one.

[Arneb]

Friday - Peace: To Als Bialitskiy (Belorussia), the Russian Foundation Memorial, and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. "They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy."

I personally know of Memorial only. They started to document Stalinist crimes and to educate the public about the GULag system - sarting in 1987, stil in the Soviet Union, but under the change in atmosphere that perestroyka brought about. That was a very noble and diffcult thing to do in a society that still viewed Stalin as a sort of flawed hero. Since Putin took power, they have been driven back inch by inch, from being declared an "Foreign Agent" (a moniker that every organisation receiving funding from abroad must accept, but just a synonym for "Western Spy" in everyday usage) to being actively persecuted, having their offices seized and destroyed, etc.

Call the choice predictable, it is no less appropriate for that.

[Richard A]

I agree. Sometimes, the fact that the choice is obvious doesn't mean it's not the right one - much the reverse. But I'm glad to hear they're sharing it with a Belarusian group. Those are some brave people also - unlike Russia, Belarus didn't even go through a phase where it at least attempted some kind of civil freedoms. I transited it briefly in 1993 - and the welcome at the border was no different to the one I got on my visit to the Soviet Union 11 years earlier.

[Arneb]

2nd Monday - Ecoomics: To Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dygvig, “for research on banks and financial crises”, which seems to be quite a practice-realated subject. Of course, we remember Bernanke being very closeoly involved with financial crises during his tenure as head of the Federal reserve, but I don't know about his scientific work. Mactep?

And that's it for the Nobel Prizes in 2022. A very interesting week.

[Мастер]

Phil is going to be insufferable now!

[Richard A]

I see Diamond & Dygvig cited enough as it is! lol