Congratulations to Ramakrishnan, Steitz, Yonath, and Curious Wavefunction

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." I know just about enough to recognize this as something biochemical, but I'm sure there will be plenty of commentary about this around science blogdom.

"Curious Wavefunction" is the name left by the commenter who predicted Yonath would win in this year's betting pool, and thus wins the right to author a guest post here. Congratulations, Curious. Send me email from the address you left in the comment form, and we can set this up.

More like this

By now, you probably already know that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath won the Nobel in chemistry for their work on the structure of the ribosome, and a well-deserved award it is. They (and many others) put a lot of work into puzzling out how this central feature of the…
Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time: Buying a Coke in Africa: are there lessons for malaria? The Paleo Paper Challenge in the Blogosphere (see also) RT @anthonymobile: The Open Laboratory 2008 anthology of science blogs is one of the most fun things i've…
I somehow managed to lose track of time for a bit, and forgot that it was Nobel season until I saw this morning's announcement that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine hase just been announced, going to Mario R. Capecchi, Sir Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies, for their discoveries of principles…
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae." Ethan will presumably have a post with about a gigabyte worth of images in it shortly, or if you…

Yea, there will be plenty of commentary about this. After this year's Physics selection, they do this in Chemistry. From the looks of it, Foundation is selecting on the bases of "International Involvement" in the project in lieu of the citations. Yea, I am proud of the fact that an Indian from Tamil Nadu won it but I got to admit there were much better candidates and even better citations.

By Jyoti Ballabh (not verified) on 07 Oct 2009 #permalink

Interesting Tom Steitz's longtime friend and collaborator on the ribosome structure, Peter Moore was left out, so was Harry Noller.

Did read some of the info they have on the Nobel site, amusing to see they linked this award with the Physics one (CCD cameras are very important for X-Ray crystallography).

They also mention this as a trilogy of structures (DNA, polymerase to transcribe the DNA to mRNA, and the ribosome to translate the mRNA to the amino acid sequence of protein, Crick's sequence hypothesis). Each has one a nobel in chemistry. The actual linking of nucleotide sequence to amino acid sequence also won a Nobel though in Physiology/Medicine.

By ponderingfool (not verified) on 07 Oct 2009 #permalink

I predicted Thomas Steitz for Chemietry, too, in addition to Blackburn & Greider for Physiology/Medicine. And I'm the same guy who predicted Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa for physics last year. Not that it means much.

Jyt Bllbh stp cmmntng n ths frms. Y r sch lsr. Y hv ltrll stln mn nd trst frm yr cllg snrs. Shm n y nd yr ccmplc Jsmn Kmbj (s sh yr sstr r grlfrnd r wf r wld b wf). Lr! knw y r fscntd wth MT bt thr s n Nbl Prz fr chtng ppl. D nt drm bt nbl prz whn y lrd dn s mn n-nbl thngs.

rn N. Bd (Wscnsn, Mlwk) Rchr grwl (Wscnsn, Mlwk) Rst f ffndd FMC flks Y sptfl rgmffns , wll dn b cmng p wth th cmmnt lstd bv. FMC grdt stdnts r th nl ns wh wll prfld b th Fds ch tm y wsh t vntr nt th S. ssm frm th cmmnt wht ws prdctd ws rght, smn dd gt cll frm th Fds. Sn th wll b knckng n yr drs, s st tght. r y gys rtrds r smpl lltrts? t's "lsr" nt lsr nd t's "Nbl" nt Nbl. Mthrfckng ndns! Thr s n stdnt frm FMC n FB's trrr wtch-lst. Y s hw h gts smkd. Shrq Shmm wll gt srprs gft fr gssng wh wrkd n hs cs.ll. ***FB Bstn Fld ffc, FB Chcg fld ffc pls tk nt f ths ndvdls. Thr SSNs, ndn Pssprt nmbrs, NP cds nd thr ddrsss hv bn mld t y. Nbl prz??? Jyt s n fr Nbl? Tht's nw t m. H hs th pttd whch s mr stbl fr Hdg fnds nt Nbl nd h knws t. s rgrds hm nd Jsmn, lgll mrrd n Cmmnwlth f Msschstts n M , . Y gys hv kds, strt flng fr pprwrk t pt thm ndr ncl Sm's wlfr. Y dmn mrns.

By Jonathan Schultz (not verified) on 11 May 2010 #permalink

The previous comment was disemvowelled for being creepy, hostile, and possibly threatening. Future attempts to post this sort of crap will be summarily deleted; persistent attempts will lead to banning.

This will not be tolerated.

anybody knows where is jyothi ballabh now?