Nobel Prize in Chemistry Is Awarded to 3 Evolutionary Scientists

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/science/chemistry-nobel-prize.html

by pg_bot • 8 years ago

103 25 8 years ago

nytimes.com

qubax• 8 years ago

Could've just linked to the actual source.

https://www.nobelprize.org

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/press-relea...

dannykwells• 8 years ago

Very excited about this Nobel - it recognizes a practical but extremely useful set of tools that are the backbone of modern therapeutic development, on one hand (phage display) and have proven immensely useful to improving protein design and engineering, on the other.

It's also great to see improved representation from the Nobels this year: female winners in both chemistry and physics (where there have been respectively, 5 and 4 previous winners, TOTAL, since the prize began) and for both cases, (some) winners without "glamorous" science careers at rich private universities with massive labs, high profiles, TED talks, etc.. Just great scientists, doing their jobs. Hopefully more to come like these in the coming years.

chrisbrandow2• 8 years ago

FWIW, it seems to me that Nobel prize winners are not typically on the TED circuit. Though most do have large labs. That is usually indicative of the fruitful research that leads to the Nobel prize later.

dbcooper• 8 years ago

They're never going to give it to John Goodenough. :(

beautifulfreak• 8 years ago

Reuters publishes an annual list of its picks for the Nobel prize. Goodenough was listed way back in 2015. I just hope his solid state battery turns out to be viable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarivate_Citation_Laureates, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13916255

radus• 8 years ago

I also hope that his design will be good enough.

obscurantist• 8 years ago

Unlike my laptop battery, he has a long lifespan and I'm sure he'll stick around for the next few years. Just enough time to finally award the man.

tzs• 8 years ago

This has not been a good Nobel year for Wikipedia.

First, yesterday, we find that Physics winner Donna Strickland did not have a page. She had one four years ago briefly, but it had been quickly deleted on notability grounds.

And now today we get a Chemistry winner, George P. Smith, who also did not have a page--not even an old deleted page. His first page was created this morning after the Prize was announced.

This also happened last year, also in Chemistry, with Jacques Dubochet.

hackinthebochs2• 8 years ago

I don't see what the problem is. Should every published scientist have a wikipedia page? It's not obvious that they should, not every scientist is notable to the general public. The fact that they received a Nobel doesn't mean they were notable before they received the Nobel.

pyb• 8 years ago

"The fact that they received a Nobel doesn't mean they were notable before they received the Nobel."

It does, pretty much by definition of a Nobel prize.

chriskanan• 8 years ago

I don't disagree, but it does seem like if someone discovers something Nobel worthy that the discovery itself or the paper should have been cited within Wikipedia somewhere.

That said, Prof. Arnold definitely deserved a Wikipedia page before winning the Nobel: she had trained multiple students that had Wikipedia pages, won numerous awards, been elected to all three National Academies, did seminal work using DE, and has had many other research accomplishments.

wolfgke2• 8 years ago

Should every published scientist have a wikipedia page? It's not obvious that they should, not every scientist is notable to the general public.

To me it rather shows what a bad judgement the Wikipedia moderators have on notability.

lvs• 8 years ago

No, you've got that all backwards. The Nobel recognizes the well-established notability of seminal work. It is not somehow an announcement of freshly discovered notability.

vikingo9• 8 years ago

In fact there are nearly always a series of prizes one typically sees before the Nobel, e.g. the Wolf Prize, Boltzmann medal, etc. It would be odd that someone comes out of left field and takes the Nobel.

pradn• 8 years ago

It is possible that they didn't meet the notability criteria before winning the prize. Not everyone who wins was already famous, even in their field.

Wikipedia is volunteer-edited. You can write articles for scientists too!

mikepurvis• 8 years ago

Right, and then immediately have some editor come along and delete them for not being notable enough. No thanks.

chrisbrandow2• 8 years ago

It would be worthwhile to go back for the last 5 years of chemistry/physics nobels and see how many winners had a Wikipedia page. Maybe this has been done, but I haven’t seen it.

If had to guess, I bet it’s not uncommon to not be in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not as much of interest to most in the academic research environment and as noted by others, these folks are often not well known outside their specialized disciplines.

nabla9• 8 years ago

Frances Arnold received Millennium Technology Prize in 2016 (€1 million) and Draper Prize in 2011 ($500,000). Both can be considered as "Nobel's for Engineering".

Nobel Prize in Chemistry Is Awarded to 3 Evolutionary Scientists

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