Word: nobel
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Close watchers of the Nobel Prize for Literature look at the selection process as a kind of geopolitical checkers match, as the Swedish Academy plucks major figures from the national literatures of far-flung countries: China (Gao Xingjian, 2000) Trinidad and Tobago (V.S. Naipaul, 2001), Hungary (Irme Kertesz, 2002), South Africa (J.M. Coetzee, 2003), Austria (Elfriede Jelinek, 2004), England (Harold Pinter, 2005), Turkey (Orhan Pamuk, 2006). By choosing Doris Lessing in 2007 the Academy has scored a triple: she was born in Iran, known then as Persia, in 1919; raised in Zimbabwe, known then as Rhodesia; and lives...
Even random research projects deserve recognition. Last week’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in Sanders Theatre did just that, celebrating the most improbable research done this past year. This class of winners canvassed everything from vanilla fragrance via cow poop to a “gay bomb” that made enemy soldiers mind-numbingly sexy to each other. (Sounds dangerous—and fabulous!) War-time orgies aside, the awards also mentioned a study on the effects of Viagra on jet-lagged hamsters. Diego A. Golombek, who conducted the study, flew in from Argentina to accept...
Guests were greeted with an accordion sextet in lab coats and bow ties as they filed into Sanders Theatre last night for the Seventeenth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Awards. The awards recognize unusual scientific achievement, which this year included a self-refilling bowl that induces unknowing subjects to eat extra servings of soup without feeling any fuller, to a study on the side effects of sword swallowing. A slew of past Nobel and Ig Nobel Laureates attended, including many who have become regular fixtures at the Ig Nobel prize ceremony. Kees Moeliker said he has flown over from the Netherlands...
...many books have you read that are as relevant to kindergartners as they are to college graduates?Personally, I can think of very few—not even the Harry Potter series rises to the challenge. So when I heard that Nobel laureate E.J. Corey, the Harvard Chemistry Department’s biggest gun, planned to write a book examining the biochemistry of the world’s most important medicines that would be accessible to college undergrads and scientists alike—the equivalents of kindergartners to college graduates in terms of technical scientific knowledge—it?...
...former trade unionist and Polish President Lech Walesa is the city of Gdansk's most famous son, then its second-most famous progeny is probably the Nobel Laureate German writer Gunter Grass. Grass, of course, was born in Danzig, as Gdansk was known before it reverted to Poland at the end of World War II. And while Walesa became internationally renowned for leading the shipyard strike that led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union and proved to be a decisive blow in the collapse of Polish communism, Grass was honored for his passionate and clear-eyed excoriation...