Briefs · Frontier Science
Four Prizes in Six Days, and Each One Rewarded a Different Kind of Patience
Stockholm’s Nobel week ended with four prizes in six days, and each one rewarded a different kind of patience.
Chemistry, on 7 October, went to Henri B. Kagan, 95, and Kenso Soai, 76, “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis” — the chemistry of handedness. Soai’s reaction can amplify a molecule’s chirality from almost nothing to more than 99.5% purity, the trick that lets drugmakers build one mirror image of a molecule and not the other.
Literature, on 8 October, went to the Canadian poet, essayist and classicist Anne Carson, 76, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”. She learned of it in Reykjavík, listening to the wind.
Peace, on 9 October, went to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, the South African jurist and former UN human rights chief, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law” — at a moment, the committee said, when international law is under attack.
Economics, on 12 October, went to Robert E. Hall, 83, of Stanford and Michael Woodford, 71, of Columbia, “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation” — the ground-up models central banks now use to steady economies.
Conclusion: four prizes, four kinds of patience — and one week in which the slow work, at last, got its applause.
Read the original at NobelPrize.org
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