Degrees of Separation
(Wow – work’s been way too busy – so much it’s impeding my blog-life, which is pretty much unacceptable)
Anyway, I’m sure you all felt it. That air of anticipation that comes around the beginning of October. People opining on who they think the real contenders are – and of course who are unworthy pretenders.
Academy Award nominations? No.
Upcoming Presidential primaries? Nah.
Of course, it’s the big speculation on who wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! In my biz, there are really only two that matter – Chemistry and Physiology/Medicine. Physics has become so arcane, I can’t usually figure out what it was for. Literature and Economics? Please. And the Peace Prize? Not even awarded in Stockholm for goodness sake.
When the winner is announced, all of us (and by “us” I mean research types whether academic or industrial) go through pretty much the same questions.
(Questions to which the answer is almost invariably “no”)
Is it me?
Is it a friend of mine?
Is it someone that I worked for?
(Questions to which the answer may occasionally be “yes”)
Is it someone I’ve met?
Is it someone who someone I know worked for?
Is it someone that is famous enough to have stories (usually bad ones) told about them behind their back?
- My first brush with Nobel-fame came in 1987 when I was working as a chemist at DuPont (Better Living Through Chemistry) and my boss (a young woman with a newly minted PhD) came in and exclaimed, “Cram won the Nobel!” I was like, “Great! Who’s Cram?” She seemed a little annoyed that I didn’t remember that she had been a grad student for Donald Cram at UCLA. Pedigree matters to a lot of scientists
- In 1991, I met Kurt Wuthrich, who would later share the 2002 Nobel. It was pretty clear that he thought that he should have won the Prize already and why was the Committee taking so long to realize it. After he left, we walked around for weeks mimicking his Swiss accent saying, “Dere are always deese problemz with dee speckstrum…” (Translation: there are always these problems with the spectra… meaning typical artifacts). I met him again at a meeting in 1995. He didn’t remember me, so I made more fun of him when he left.
- I think my favorite though was getting a chance to shake hands with Linus Pauling when he made a swing through UNC when I was early in my grad career. As the person that I think of as the founder of protein biochemistry, he won the Nobel prize in 1954 for his description of chemical bonds (if you are a musician, maybe it would be akin to getting to say hi to Beethoven). Anyway, I’ve always thought he was a gobzillion times smarter than Watson or Crick, who've gotten to be a lot more famous. Pauling also won the Peace Prize in 1962 for his advocacy to halt nuclear testing. It was a great thrill to meet him.
Alas, all the questions had “no” answers this year – a guy by the name of Gerhard Ertl won the Prize in Chemistry for work on chemistry at solid surfaces. Something I’ve never known anything about.
Ah well, there’s always next year.
My Groups
-
Earth Science Updated: Yesterday
-
Booking Through Thursday Updated: 2 days ago
-
Sci Fi Media Updated: 3 days ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Comments
I don't follow the Nobel Prize awards (past or present) too closely, but I do often wonder how and why they select some of the winners. Sometimes, when I hear of a particular winner, I feel they must have stretched their criteria just so they have a candidate -- at least concerning literature and peace/politics. Now I'm off to Wikipedia to learn more about the Nobel Prize and its winners (laureates). Thanks for the inspiration!
I'm impressed that you got to meet Linus Pauling! How cool. Last year when I was at a blood banking conference, James Watson received an award but had a conflict so couldn't be there (I guess blood bankers aren't a very prestigious bunch). He gave a videotaped talk and one thing I remembered was how he talked about Pauling - apparently they were quite the rivals!
One of our blood bank pathologists likes to tell stories (and he's great at it). He tells of two BB pioneers (whose names escape me...Coombs and some other guy I think) who were doing the same work at the same time but were such bitter rivals that when they were both offered a share of the Nobel Prize in medicine, neither one would accept it because each refused to be onstage with the other. Can you imagine the egos??
Another funny one is when Karl Landsteiner won it in 1930 for the discovery of the A, B, and O blood types. He was informed that he'd been awarded the prize and didn't even tell his wife! She only found out because she happened to answer the phone when someone called to congratulate him. When she asked him why he never told her, he said, "Oh, it's no big deal." That's the other end of the "speckstrum."
enSue -- the discussion of who gets snubbed by the Nobel Committee is often more involved than actually picking the winners. People have been known to take out full page-ads in the NYT to state their case. The Nobel Committee though, has never amended or changed an award.
Its funny now, because there are bloggers who will handicap the chances of different people who are supposedly on the "short list". Its all incredibly political!
I agree with Hannabanna, I want to someday be able to talk about my brush with fame with this guy Steve Betz, who I never really met but kinda did. Maybe I should come to SanDiego and visit before you become too famous!!!!
oh, thanks for letting me know, Steve. i've been meaning to look into who won for Chemistry this year, but hadn't gotten around to it.... o__O
definitely unacceptable that work is cutting into your blogging time.
sdede2 -- you make a really good point about scientific greats who in their later years go off on tangents that just seem nutso. I think it has something to do with two things -- one, is that there's a drive to "do something meaningful" later in life to match what they had accomplished earlier in life. And to do that, I think they're driven to go after "things no one has ever thought of before" -- and for good reason.
The second is that having won honor after honor (including the Nobel), they pretty much have free discretion to study and write about whatever they want, with little peer-review or oversight.
And don't worry -- when you make it to SD (or I make it to Michigan) you can guarantee that I won't be too famous. The Beloved thinks I'm more likely to be a world-famous blogger than scientist!
Now you can say that not only are you a famous blogger, but that your work has been translated!
LC -- you know the more I thought about the Watson debacle (how coincidental to mention him a day before he says something so atrocious), the more annoyed I got.
Social scientists have been dis-crediting "intelligence" testing for the last two decades as biased and unreliable. And biologists now know that there is as much variation with in a "race" (as if that term actually has any meaning anymore) than between them. Utter bunk and horrible that he gets a global forum to spout it.