STOCKHOLM - Two Japanese scientists and a Tokyo-born American shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics for discoveries in sub-atomic particles, the prize committee said on Tuesday.
The Nobel committee lauded Yoichiro Nambu, a Tokyo-born American citizen, and Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan for separate work that helped explain why the universe is made up mostly of matter and not anti-matter via processes known as broken symmetries. They helped figure out the existence and behavior of the very tiniest particles known as quarks.
Nambu, a professor at the University of Chicago, was recognized for his discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry. It helps underlie the Standard Model of physics, which unites three of the four fundamental forces of nature: strong, weak and electromagnetic, leaving out gravity.
Nambu also influenced the development of quantum chromodynamics, a theory that describes some of the interactions between protons and neutrons, which make up atoms, and the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons.
Nambu shared half of the prestigious 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize with Kobayashi of Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and Maskawa of Kyoto University.
Kobayashi and Maskawa proposed the six types of quarks -- up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. All were later discovered in high-energy particle physics experiments.
"The fact that our world does not behave perfectly symmetrically is due to deviations from symmetry at the microscopic level," the committee said. This broken symmetry allowed particles of matter to outnumber particles of anti-matter.
This is lucky for all living things -- because if the universe were symmetrical, anti-matter would be constantly meeting matter and exploding in a burst of energy.
Kobayashi said the news came as a shock. "It is my great honor and I can't believe this," he said. But Maskawa said he was not surprised.
"There is a pattern to how the Nobel prize is awarded. I did not think I would get the award up until last year, but I predicted it pretty much this year," he was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency.
"I am very happy that Professor Yoichiro Nambu was awarded. I myself am not that happy. It's a noisy celebration for society."
Physicists are now searching for the spontaneous broken symmetry, the Higgs mechanism, which threw the universe into its current imbalance at the time of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
This Higgs mechanism gave the particles their masses and there should be a Higgs particle, theory predicts. Scientists at the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN in Switzerland, will be looking for this particle when they re-start the collider in spring of 2009.
The prize, awarded by the Nobel Committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was the second of this year's crop of Nobel prizes.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Three Europeans Win The 2008 Nobel Prize For Medicine
Three European scientists who discovered viruses that cause cervical cancer and AIDS share this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine. A German virologist, Harald zur Hausen, will receive half the award for his discovery of H.P.V., the human papilloma virus, according to the announcement made on Monday by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which selects the medical winners of the prize. The discovery led to development of a vaccine against cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
The institute said the other half of the award will be shared equally by two French virologists, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Since its discovery in 1981, AIDS has rivaled the worst epidemics in history. An estimated 25 million people have died, and 33 million more are living with H.I.V.
Dr. zur Hausen of the University of Heidelberg was cited for discovering the first H.P.V., type 16, in 1983 from biopsies of women who had cervical cancer. A year later, Dr. zur Hausen cloned H.P.V. 16 and another type, 18. The two H.P.V. types are consistently found in about 70 percent of cervical cancer biopsies throughout the world, the institute said.
Of the more than 100 human papilloma viruses now known, about 40 infect the genital tract, and 15 of them put women at high risk for cervical cancer. Papilloma viruses account for more than 5 percent of all cancers worldwide.
The Karolinska Institute said that discovery of H.I.V. by the French scientists, Dr. Barre-Sinoussi and Dr. Montagnier, led to blood tests to detect the infection and to anti-retroviral drugs that are effective in prolonging the lives of patients. The tests are now used to screen blood donations, making the blood supply safer for transfusions. The viral discovery has also led to an understanding of the natural history of H.I.V. infection in people, which ultimately leads to AIDS unless treated.
H.I.V. is a member of the lentivirus family of viruses. The French scientists were cited for identifying what is now known as H.I.V. in lymph nodes from early and late stages of the infection.
“Never before has science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment for a new disease entity,” the Karolinska Institute said.
Nobel Foundation rules limit the number of recipients of its medical prizes to a maximum of three each year, and omissions often create controversy. This year, the Karolinska committee excluded an AIDS virologist, Dr. Robert C. Gallo, who worked for many years at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., before moving to the University of Maryland in Baltimore.
Dr. Gallo and the French team have vied in a long-running dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V. and the development of a test to detect it in blood. In 1987, President Reagan and Jacques Chirac, who was then prime minister of France, signed an agreement that allowed the two countries’ institutes to share millions of dollars of royalties and credit for the discovery.
Dr. Gallo told the Associated Press on Monday that it was “a disappointment” not to have been honored with the French team. Dr. John E. Niederhuber, the director of the National Cancer Institute, said Monday that Dr. Gallo “was instrumental in every major aspect of the discovery of the AIDS virus.” He added: “Dr. Gallo discovered interleukein-2 (Il-2), an immune system signaling molecule, which was necessary for the discovery of the AIDS virus, serving as a co-culture factor that allowed the virus to grow. Numerous scientific journal articles, many co-authored by Dr. Gallo and Dr. Luc Montagnier, cite the two scientists as co-discoverers of the AIDS virus.”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a virologist and immunologist who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he was delighted that the Karolinska committee honored the discoverers of two viruses that cause two important diseases.
“There’s no doubt that Bob Gallo made enormous contributions to AIDS research, and if the Nobel rules allowed four recipients, Bob would belong in the group” that was honored on Monday, Dr. Fauci said in an interview.
The institute said the other half of the award will be shared equally by two French virologists, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Since its discovery in 1981, AIDS has rivaled the worst epidemics in history. An estimated 25 million people have died, and 33 million more are living with H.I.V.
Dr. zur Hausen of the University of Heidelberg was cited for discovering the first H.P.V., type 16, in 1983 from biopsies of women who had cervical cancer. A year later, Dr. zur Hausen cloned H.P.V. 16 and another type, 18. The two H.P.V. types are consistently found in about 70 percent of cervical cancer biopsies throughout the world, the institute said.
Of the more than 100 human papilloma viruses now known, about 40 infect the genital tract, and 15 of them put women at high risk for cervical cancer. Papilloma viruses account for more than 5 percent of all cancers worldwide.
The Karolinska Institute said that discovery of H.I.V. by the French scientists, Dr. Barre-Sinoussi and Dr. Montagnier, led to blood tests to detect the infection and to anti-retroviral drugs that are effective in prolonging the lives of patients. The tests are now used to screen blood donations, making the blood supply safer for transfusions. The viral discovery has also led to an understanding of the natural history of H.I.V. infection in people, which ultimately leads to AIDS unless treated.
H.I.V. is a member of the lentivirus family of viruses. The French scientists were cited for identifying what is now known as H.I.V. in lymph nodes from early and late stages of the infection.
“Never before has science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment for a new disease entity,” the Karolinska Institute said.
Nobel Foundation rules limit the number of recipients of its medical prizes to a maximum of three each year, and omissions often create controversy. This year, the Karolinska committee excluded an AIDS virologist, Dr. Robert C. Gallo, who worked for many years at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., before moving to the University of Maryland in Baltimore.
Dr. Gallo and the French team have vied in a long-running dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V. and the development of a test to detect it in blood. In 1987, President Reagan and Jacques Chirac, who was then prime minister of France, signed an agreement that allowed the two countries’ institutes to share millions of dollars of royalties and credit for the discovery.
Dr. Gallo told the Associated Press on Monday that it was “a disappointment” not to have been honored with the French team. Dr. John E. Niederhuber, the director of the National Cancer Institute, said Monday that Dr. Gallo “was instrumental in every major aspect of the discovery of the AIDS virus.” He added: “Dr. Gallo discovered interleukein-2 (Il-2), an immune system signaling molecule, which was necessary for the discovery of the AIDS virus, serving as a co-culture factor that allowed the virus to grow. Numerous scientific journal articles, many co-authored by Dr. Gallo and Dr. Luc Montagnier, cite the two scientists as co-discoverers of the AIDS virus.”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a virologist and immunologist who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he was delighted that the Karolinska committee honored the discoverers of two viruses that cause two important diseases.
“There’s no doubt that Bob Gallo made enormous contributions to AIDS research, and if the Nobel rules allowed four recipients, Bob would belong in the group” that was honored on Monday, Dr. Fauci said in an interview.
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