This year’s Nobel Prize winners were revealed throughout the first two weeks of October. Here are the details, and Quartz’s coverage of the people and ideas behind the awards.
💊 Monday, Oct. 3: the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi of Tokyo Institute of Technology “for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.” Read Quartz’s story about the prize and the science behind Ohsumi’s work. Also, learn why a quarter of all Nobel Prizes in medicine, including this year’s, have gone to research cell biology.
🌀 Tuesday, Oct. 4: the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded toDavid Thouless of the University of Washington, Duncan Haldane of Princeton University, and Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” Read Quartz’s story explaining the science behind the prize.
🔬 Wednesday, Oct. 5: the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, and Bernard Feringa of the University of Groningen ”for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.” Read Quartz’s story explaining the science behind the prize.
🕊 Friday, Oct. 7: the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, 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.” Read Quartz’s story explaining why this is a shocking decision.
💰 Monday, Oct. 10: the economics science prize in memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Oliver Hart of Harvard University and Bengt Holmström of Massachusetts Institute of Technology “for their contributions to contract theory.” Read Quartz’s story explaining the economics behind the prize.
📚 Thursday, Oct. 13: the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Read Quartz’s story about the American folk singer whose poetic lyrics defined his generation.