From my quick scan of the science blogosphere, it looks to me that so far, the winners of the Nobel prizes in the 3 science categories have been relatively non-controversial (unlike last year).
(The winners, in case you’ve been living under a rock these last few days:
Physics: Albert Fert of the University of Paris-South in France and Peter Grünberg of Jülich Research Centre in Germany for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance
Chemistry: Gerhard Ertl, the retired director of the Max Planck Society’s Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin, for work on surface chemistry
Medicine/Physiology: Mario Capecchi (U of Utah), Martin Evans (Cardiff U., UK) and Oliver Smithies (UNC Chapel Hill), for gene targeting in mice via embryonic stem cells)
Medicine/Physiology
Orac raves about the importance of the winners’ work and asks: “what took the Nobel prize committee so long” to recognize these 3?
Larry Moran of the U of Toronto also agrees
with the picks, but was surprised that an award specifically for stem cells wasn’t given out first before giving out an award for the use of them.
And Nick Anthis says that the increased use of animals in research is probably because of the increased use of knock-out/knock-in animals…a technology made possible by the awarded accomplishment.
Congrats to our own blogger, Willy Lensch, for correctly predicting this year’s winners. Too bad for Alex Palazzo, who had a long list of guesses, but didn’t quite hit the mark this year. Better luck next year, Alex!
Coincidentally, the winning photo of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography contest this year was one of a double transgenic mouse embryo.
*Physics*
Bloggers and reporters I’m sure have enjoyed themselves when writing about these winners. Their discovery led to the development of our ever-shrinking hard drives, and so many (including “Cliff Johnson”:https://asymptotia.com/2007/10/09/nobel-prize-for-giants/, physics prof from U of S. California) have seized on the opportunity credit these physicists for our beloved iPods.
“Dave Bacon”:https://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=1641 of the U of Washington is just happy that condensed matter physicists are getting some respect!
*Chemistry*
There’s also praise for the choice of the chemistry prize winner (see “here”:https://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/10/10/ertl_wins_down_with_witchcraft.php and “here”:https://www.scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2007/10/2007_nobel_prize_for_chemistry.php), although some are “questioning”:https://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2007/10/eyes_on_the_prize_1.html why “Gabor Somorjai”:https://chem.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/somorjai/somorjai.html, who shared a major chemistry prize with Ertl some years ago, didn’t also share the Nobel.
And congrats to Paul Bracher at Chembark for having Ertl on his “list”:https://blog.chembark.com/2007/10/09/the-2007-nobel-prize-in-chemistry-part-ii/ of potential winners.