UPDATE: And the Prize goes to… The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 to Robert J. Lefkowitz Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA and Brian K. Kobilka Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA “for studies of G-protein—coupled receptors”. It’s bio but with huge pharma implications.
I’m pleased to note that I wrote about Kobilka’s work back in 2010 although when I pressed him to hint at implications of that particular study he was reluctant to give me such a hint. Unfortunately, I don’t remember writing about Lefkowitz in the last few years.
The press release is here.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 was announced today. I hadn’t noticed until now that the prize money for this year’s Nobels is down 20% on that given last year. According to CNN this is “due to the turbulence that has hit financial markets.”
Turbulence? That’s whorls and eddies in a fluid that leads to a bumpy ride on an aeroplane or a bit of seasickness if you’re going by boat. It’s bloody great icebergs that have hit financial markets these last few years, “not a bit of turbulence”. Chaos theory helps us come to terms with the unpredictability of the weather, of catastrophic collapse, of fractal growth, and even economics. What is it that makes politicians and bankers imagine that they can control global finances? Haven’t they heard of the butterfly effect…
Anyway, back to the Nobels…you can watch the live stream later this morning: