The 2008 Nobel Prize winners were announced over the past week and I must say, I am disappointed that my many contributions to each of the appropriate fields has been overlooked once again. The fields medal people better not make the same mistake. However, to show that I am not bitter, here are the winners:
Harald zur Hausen took half the nobel price in Medicine for discovering the link between the human papilloma virus and cervical cancer. The remainder of the prize was shared between Francoise Barre-Sinousse and Luc Montagnier for their role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared equally between three Americans, Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tslen. They were cited for their discovery and development of a green fluorescent protein GFP.
The Nobel prize in Physics was shared between three. Japanese physicists Makoto Kobasyashi and Toshihide Maskawa were awarded one quarter of the prize each for “their discovery of the origin of a broken symmetry that predicted the existence of at least three families of quarks”. The American physicist Yoichiro Nambu received the remainder of the prize for “the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”.
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, the French “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization” took home the Nobel prize in Literature.
Martti Ahtisaari of Finland was awarded the Peace prize as a sort of lifetime achievement award. The citation reads “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”.
The Economics prize was awarded to Paul Krugman of Princeton University for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.
