<img alt=“Nobel.PNG” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/Nobel.PNG” width=“238” height=“239” align=“right” border=0 hspace="10px">With less than two weeks to go until the Nobel Prize winners are announced, the soothsayers at Thomson Reuters have rubbed their crystal balls and come up with a shortlist of favourites.

The contenders, as predicted by Thomson Reuters’ citation analyst David Pendlebury, are based on the number of citations and high-impact papers published in Nobel-worthy fields of study. Since 2002, 15 ‘citation’ Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, seven of which were tapped in the same year as their triumph, including last year’s chemistry champ, Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego.

This year’s frontrunners for physiology or medicine include the codiscoverers of telomeres, the repetitive DNA add-ons at the ends of chromosomes that have been linked to ageing and cancer as they shrink, the researchers who worked out cellular membrane trafficking, and the Japanese researcher who showed that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could track oxygen flow, making real-time brain scans and functional MRI possible.

The 2009 Lasker prize winners — John Gurdon of the University of Cambridge, UK, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan — did not make the cut. Although their work on stem cell reprogramming was “an important discovery”, said Pendlebury, it was still too hot off the shelf. “Usually, the Nobel prizes simmer a little longer,” he said. (Times Higher Education)

The chemistry candidates count the Swiss man who gave his name to the dye-sensitized solar cells known as Gratzel cells, the pioneers behind electron charge transfer in DNA, and the researcher who discovered how to make a chemical ‘right-handed’ or ‘left-handed’.

Physics probables include the discovers of Aharonov-Bohm Effect and the related Berry Phase, which dictate how electromagnetics violate classical descriptions of physics, the scientists behind quantum optics and quantum computing, and the trio who predicted and discovered negative refraction.

Rounding out the nominal Nobelists-to-be are two environmental economists who study the impact of climate change, two behavioural economists who focus on people’s decision making and a group of monetary policy masterminds.

All the scientists’ names can be found in the Thomson Reuters press release.

ISI Web of Knowledge doesn’t list citation indices for non-fiction authors, so Thomson Reuters didn’t rank the luminaries of literature, but the bookies at Ladbrokes are touting the Israeli novelist Amos Oz at 4:1 to take home the 10 million Swedish Krona (US$1.45 million) prize. (Guardian)