Today it was time for The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to some other scientists and also announce that they have decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 with one half to Charles K. Kao “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication” and the other half jointly to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor”.

Press Release: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics…2009/press.html

A PDF file can be downloaded here: Information for the Public.

Well, I guess it couldn’t be more related to today’s era of Internet communication and digital imaging, a prize about light. Some 40 years ago Kao showed that with truly pure glass in optical glass fibers it would give vastly improved light transmission, and thus be possible to use over longer ranges.

Willard Boyle and George Smith, originally looking for a new information storage technology, came up with the CCD (based on the photoelectric effect that Einstein showed); photocells emitting electrons in proportion to the intensity of the light. The rest is history; today CCD technology is common everywhere.

Next up is the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, also announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; tomorrow 7 October 11:45 a.m. CET.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 was awarded jointly to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath

“for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”.

A core process in translating DNA (the blueprint) to proteins, the building blocks that comes in all shapes and functions; we get haemoglobin, insulin, antibodies and all that.

One could say that this is the third prize in a series of prizes, starting 1962 with James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins being awarded for describing the DNA molecule. In 2006 Roger D. Kornberg got the prize for describing how the information is copied from the DNA to the RNA molecule, the messenger that carries the information to the ribosome which in turn creates the protein. The scientists think of this as translation; DNA/RNA language becomes protein language.

Perhaps as with computer languages, high-level and low-level, a difference in abstraction levels?

Anyhow, the knowledge about the structure and function of the ribosome can help us develop new antibiotics, which we really need since many disease-generating bacteria have become resistant to most of what we have in our arsenal.

Press Release
Information for the Public

Tomorrow it is time for the Swedish Academy to announce the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature; as always at 1:00 p.m. CEST.

As announced today by the Permanent Secretary of The Swedish Academy, the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the German author Herta Müller

“who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”.

Tomorrow it is time for the Nobel Peace Prize, announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee at 11:00 a.m. CEST.

Today the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is awarded to President Barack Obama

“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

Press Release.

That completes the announcements of the Nobel Prizes this week. On Monday, 12 October 1:00 p.m. CEST, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will be announcing the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.