Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology
Japan-born scientist, Yoshinori Ohsumi illuminated
a cellular process called autophagy, or "self-eating," in which cells
take unneeded or damaged material, including entire organelles, and transport
them to a recycling compartment of sorts — in yeast cells, this compartment is
called the lisosome, while vacuoles serve a similar purpose in human cells.
Nobel Prize in Physics
David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael
Kosterlitz were jointly awarded this year's Nobel Prize in physics for
"theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological
phases of matter." (Topology refers to "a branch of mathematics that
describes properties that change step-wise," according to the Nobel
Foundation.)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L.
Feringa were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the design
and synthesis of molecular machines." In other words, this trio developed
the world's smallest machines by linking together molecules into a unit that,
when energy is added, could do some kind of work. These machines, a thousand
times thinner than a strand of hair, included a tiny lift, mini motors and
artificial muscles.
Nobel Peace Prize
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has won the Nobel
Peace Prize "for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than
50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least
220,000 Colombians and displaced close to 6 million people," according to
a statement by the Nobel Foundation.
