Open Thread: Nobel Prizes 2007

This is just what it looks like: an open thread for you to discuss the 2007 Nobels. Say anything, or take one of these as a starting place.

  • A Good Year for Europe

    A commenter at Terra Sigillata said:

    This year's Nobels (so far) have a distinctly European flavour.

    I don't think any of the winners were born in the US, though two of the three Medicine winners are US citizens.

    Two born in Germany, two in Britain, one in France, one in Italy.

    A second commenter added:

    Am I the only person who thinks that the prizes are getting rather less ink/pixels than they would if an American won?

  • Applied Science?
    Some have observed that coverage of this year's prizes stresses the commercial applications of the work. Bora at A Blog Around the Clock even titled his post about the physics prize "iPod wins the Nobel!." He was being tongue-in-cheek, and one of his commenters added:

    I almost shredded the paper this morning when I had to read through 4/5th of the article to find out what the Nobel prize was actually awarded for. Ipod was mentioned several times in the first 4/5ths of the article.
  • Guess The Winner
    Finally, there's still a little time left to speculate on who might take the Peace and Economics prizes, and why.
Tags

More like this

[Aufmerksamkeit! Begrüßen Sie deutsche Freunde und Leser des Focus Wissenschafts-Community. Glückwünsche zu Profs Ertl und Grünberg auf dieser enormen Ehre!] I'm intentionally being dramatic but an interesting discussion emerged in the comment thread of my post on the work of Germany's Gerhard Ertl…
This year Nobel prizes, to date, are a sweep for Europe. Is this a trend, or a fluke? Before world war 2, Europe dominated Nobel prize winnings, in the sciences and medicine, after the second world war, the US rapdily developed dominance, partly by virtue of having brought over a lot of the…
October is almost upon us, which means that the winners of the 2008 Nobel Prizes will be announced soon. Very soon-- the first announcement (for Medicine) is next Monday. The most important announcement-- the Nobel in Physics-- is next Tuesday, October 7. This is a good excuse for a contest, so:…
From QOTD: The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel died at San Remo, Italy on this day in 1896. Under the terms of his will, his estate was arranged so as to grant prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, and Peace, these five prizes were first awarded on the fifth anniversary of…

I'm gonna start to cry... You poor Americans!! Seriously, why do the Nobel prizes have to be evenly distributed? It's just randomness at work. Why do you have to infer something about American scientific advance?! Come on...

When I initially commented I clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now every single time a comment is extra I get 4 emails with the identical comment. Is there any implies you probably can remove me from that service? Many thanks!