The Nobel Prize Announcements

The 2018 Nobel Prize Laureates are being announced this week, and there are many Americans among them. 

  • American laureate Frances H. Arnold wins the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - the first time an American woman has won it in the prize's 117-year history. Arnold is a Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. Image www.twitter.com/NobelPrize

  • The 2018 Nobel Prize Announcements
    Every year the Nobel Laureates are announced in October and formally awarded their prizes by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden on December 10 in Stockholm. The Nobel Prize amount for 2018 is 9 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) per full Nobel Prize. The ceremony is followed by a banquet at Stockholm Stadshuset (Stockholm City Hall).

  • American laureate Arthur Ashkin wins the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is affiliated with Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ. Image www.twitter.com/NobelPrize

  • The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2018
    James P. Allison from Alice, TX and Tasuku Honjo from Kyoto, Japan won “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.”

  • American laureate James P. Allison wins the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is an immunologist affiliated with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston, TX, and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco, CA. Image www.twitter.com/NobelPrize

  • The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018
    Arthur Ashkin, Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou share the prize “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.”
    Arthur Ashkin from New York, NY wins half the prize “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems,” and Gérard Mourou from France shares half the prize with Donna Strickland, a Canadian physicist who is the third female physics laureate ever (and first in 55 years), “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”

  • American laureate Paul M. Romer was born in Denver, CO and is now a professor at NYU Stern School of Business in New York.

  • The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018
    Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
    Frances H. Arnold, from Pittsburgh, PA - the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry - wins “for the directed evolution of enzymes,” and George P. Smith, from Norwalk, CT shares half the prize with Sir Gregory P. Winter, from Cambridge, England “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.”

  • American laureate William D. Nordhaus was born in Albuquerque, NM and is a professor of economics at Yale University in New Haven, CT.

  • The Nobel Prize in Literature is not being awarded this year.

  • Chemists and physicists rarely run in the family - a notable exception being Marie Curie (1867-1934), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, who passed on her career to daughter Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956), who passed it on to hers, and so on, making the Curie family one of France’s (and the world’s) greatest families of science.

  • The Nobel Peace Prize 2018
    Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege share the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”
    Nadia Murad is a survivor of war crimes by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq; she has shown uncommon courage in speaking on behalf of herself and other victims.
    Denis Mukwege, a physician, has devoted his life to defending victims of such war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is the foremost, most unifying symbol, both nationally and internationally, of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflicts. His basic principle is: “Justice is everyone’s business.”
    Both Murad and Mukwege have in their own ways helped give greater visibility to war-time sexual violence, so that the perpetrators can be held accountable for their actions.

  • A painting by Swedish artist Emil Österman depicting the founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel. Image from nobelprize.org

  • The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences
    The 2018 Riksbank Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel are William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer. They share the prize for designing methods to address some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth.
    Nordhaus, from Albuquerque, NM wins “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” and Romer, from Denver, CO wins “for integrating technological innovations into long-run acroeconomic analysis.”

  • More info on the prize and the Nobel Foundation, see www.nobelprize.org