Nobel Prize

Today, the Nobel committee announced the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine: Andy Fire and Craig Mello. They did work on RNA interference in C. elegans. My Cell Bio. Professor mention these two researchers in class and that she thought that they would win the Nobel prize at one point. In our discussion class we talked about them winning the prize as well (which is when one of classmates said that Fire and Mello sounds like some 70s folk group). The discussion leader said that he was surprised the Fire and Mello won this year because they published their findings in 1998 and that is a short time for Nobel recognition. We talked about the people who have won multiple times (Marie Curie specifically) and then he couldn't remember the name of the other multiple winner : Linus Pauling (Linus Pauling was heavily involved in determining the structure of DNA). On of the other students thought he was thinking about Rosalind Franklin and then the student remarked that someone stole the work of her desk as we were leaving. And of course I said, "I hate Watson, he is such a jerk." To which the professor said that Watson once spoke at Iowa, and he thought he was a jerk as well. But it got me thinking about the Nobel. It would be really cool to personally know someone who won, but at the same time I think that the Nobel committee might be full of crap. Only 11 women have won the Nobel despite nominal work (i.e. Lise Mietner). And it has been awarded for "debatable" advancements (like when it was given to Antonio Egas Moniz for developing the lobotomy). But on the upside there is an Ig Nobel awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research for work that cannot or should not be reproduced. Maybe that's what he was going for with the lobotomy.

"It's upset the balance in the alley. There used to be one cool married guy and one cool single guy. Now it's just me and three losers."- Dale Gribble