Nobel Prize awards announced
10 Oct 2005 by Evoluted New Media
The Nobel Prizes for chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine have been awarded this week for research in areas as diverse as optics and dancing chemicals
The Nobel Prizes for chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine have been awarded this week for research in areas as diverse as optics and dancing chemicals
The Nobel Prizes for chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine have been awarded for research in areas as diverse as optics and dancing chemicals.
The Nobel Prize in chemistry went to three scientists for the development of an eco-friendly chemical reaction used to make drugs and plastics.
Robert H. Grubbs of the California Institute of Technology, Richard R. Schrock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yves Chauvin of the Institut Francais du Petrole received the prize “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis”.
Robert H. Grubbs: "It's one of those things no one ever expects to happen, not usually"
Metathesis - meaning to 'change-places' - has become one of organic chemistry's most important reactions, where double bonds are broken and made between carbon atoms in ways that cause atom groups to change places. It has been compared to a dance in which the couples change partners. An animation can be seen here.
This year's Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to three scientists in the field of optics. Roy Glauber of Harvard University is awarded half of the prize for his theoretical description of the behaviour of light particles. John Hall of the University of Colorado and Theodor Hänsch of the Max-Planck institute share the other half of the prize for their development of laser-based precision spectroscopy.
The award for Physiology or Medicine went jointly to Barry J.Marshall of the QEII Medical Centre, Australia and J. Robin Warren of Perth, Australia for their unexpected discovery that gastritis and peptic ulcer disease is the result of Helicobacter pylori infection. The initial stages their work challenged the dogma of the time. Dr Warren said: “nobody believed that there were bacteria in the stomach until I saw them there. And then it took a long time to convince everybody that they were there. It took about fifteen years before it started appearing in the textbooks.” Thanks to this discovery, peptic ulcer disease is no longer a chronic, frequently disabling condition, but a disease that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and acid secretion inhibitors.
Helicobacter pylori was found to cause peptic ulcers