Israeli Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Asking whether any Israelis will win Nobel Prizes has become an annual event. Fortunately, celebrating the naming of a new Israeli laureate has become an almost biennial occurance this last decade.

Today, two years after Prof. Ada Yonath shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Prof. Daniel Shechtman of the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) was announced as the sole winner of this year's prize. His discovery of quasicrystals was so unique and had such important implications, that the Swedish Academy decided he was worthy of a prize all to himself. In recent years, the scientific Nobel Prizes have been shared by two or three people, so being the sole recipient is an extraordinary honour.

I can imagine all the BDSers are popping a vein right now.

Predicting the Nobel Prizes 2010

It is well into Nobel Week, with the Nobel Prizes in medicine and chemistry already having been announced. Today, the winner of the physics prize will be announced, and tomorrow and on Friday the non-scientific laureates will be declared. These two, the literature and peace categories, are what interest me the most. People are guessing who will win, and I'll join the game, even though there is a 99.9% of being wrong.

And my nominees for the Nobel Prize in Literature are:

1. Amos Oz - he's mentioned every year, and he is one of the most respected authors in the world. I read somewhere that all kinds of bookies have his chances listed as being very low this year, compared with very high chances in 2009. They say this might mean that information leaked that Oz wasn't even on the shortlist. I'm hoping that's wrong.

2. David Grossman - he's both a great author and a bereaved father through whom the Nobel Committee can send an anti-war message.

3. Margaret Atwood - novelist, poet and essayist all in one.

4. Etgar Keret - he's too young to win, but one can still hope that one of my favorite authors will win. Not this year, I guess, but in 2030 perhaps?

5. Art Spiegelman - will the Nobel Committee have the guts to award the prize to one of the first people to prove that comics are a respectable genre?

And my nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize are:

1. One or more of the Afghan women leading the fight for equal rights in the war-torn country.

2. Parents Circle - Bereaved Families - this year no Israeli or Palestinian leader deserves the prize, but maybe the Committee will award a grassroots effort by those hurt the most by the conflict.

3. Bill Clinton - Two US presidents year after year? Slim chance, but I'd like my favorite leader to win for his Clinton Global Initiative and other efforts.

4. The International Committee of the Red Cross - the Nobel Committee can always go with a safe choice and award the ICRC with a fourth Peace Prize, which it last won back in the Mad Men era, 1963.

5. Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident - he seems like the top candidate on the lists of other bloggers and pundits, so I'll mention the possibility, too, just to be on the safe side.

Obama Just Earned His Nobel

Although I voted for Barack Obama, I wasn't too crazy about him. I thought he wasn't prepared to lead the United States. When he won his Nobel Prize for peace, I thought it was ridiculous, and still think he shouldn't have won in 2009. Obama has proved me wrong about his preparedness for the job, at least when it comes to domestic issues. What he has done with his health insurance reform is huge. That alone now makes him worthy, in my opinion, of a peace prize. He may not have resolved international conflicts, but  his actions will bring about an improvement in the health of millions of Americans and will prevent the deaths of countless people who currently can't afford care for their curable diseases. This will save no less lives than bringing an end to a bloody war.

Nobel Committe Wrong, Obama Right

Yesterday, I wrote here that President Barack Obama should not have won the Nobel Peace Prize. I still think so, but I liked Obama's speech reacting to the award. He said himself that he did not feel deserving, since he has not yet achieved enough. He seemed genuinely uncomfortable. He was right to say that he would accept the prize for those who believe in a world of dialogue. He was also right that this is meant to encourage him to continue with his international policies, rather than to acknowledge his work till now.

So, Obama should not have been chosen by the Nobel Committee, but I don't hold it against him. I hold it against the committee.

An Israeli Wins a Nobel

A few days ago, an Israeli chemist, Prof. Ada E. Yonath of the Weitzman Institute, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, together with two Americans. She is the first woman to win the chemistry prize in 40 years. I'm very happy whenever an Israeli wins, but this also reminds me of the fact that Israeli academia is seriously underfunded. Israel needs to give universities more resources in order for today's students and young researchers to one day be able to win another scientific Nobel Prize.

Obama Cult of Personality Reaches Oslo

I voted for Barack Obama, and I'm glad he's the president, rather than a Republican. I support many of his policies. Still, I see absolutely no reason why he is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize so early into his presidency, especially since he certainly never did anything significant before he was elected president. Though he has lofty goals, he has not achieved them yet. He is repairing the damage left by George W. Bush in the international arena, but he has a lot of work left. The world hasn't suddenly fallen in love with America because of Obama, at least not the third world. He has brought some change, but not a revolution.

Two previous sitting presidents won the Nobel Prize. Teddy Roosevelt was five years into his presidency when he was honored with the prize. Woodrow Wilson had been president for seven years. A third US president, Jimmy Carter, won decades after leaving office. And Obama? He was just 9 months into the job. I've heard a report that he was nominated just two weeks after taking the oath of office.

There are many who see Barack Obama as some kind of political messiah. All the political art he inspired during the campaign, and all the enthusiasm he generated among young Americans who are interested more in celebrities than politics, the zillion Time magazine covers (I'm sure they'll be happy for the excuse to put Obama on the cover again) - it looked quite a bit like a cult of personality. Now, the Nobel Committee has joined in.

Giving Obama the prize now is a mistake. The Norwegians should have waited a few years to see if he actually earns it. I have to say, though, that compared to the egregious mistakes of some of the previous years, this year's choice is just misguided, but not totally outrageous.

A Racist Nobel Laureate

James Watson, who was one of the scientists to win the 1962 Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of DNA, may be a talented scientist but he's also an idiot. He said in a recent interview that the West's foreign policy toward Africa was wrong, since it's based on the assumption that black people are intellectually equal to white people. He says tests have shown that this isn't the case. He also said that anyone who has spoken to a black person could see that blacks aren't as intelligent as white folks.

As a world renowned geneticist, not-so-dear Watson is a very dangerous racist. His bogus scientific proof can sound convincing to many. Never mind that in the past there were advanced and successful African civilizations, including black African civilizations, which were destroyed by European colonialism. In fact, in ancient times, black people were treated equally in the Greek and Roman cultures. This concept of black inferiority came only later, when Africa became the main source for slaves. But racists don't know this and won't acknowledge it.

There's a chance British authorities will indict him for hate speech. I hope they do, even if he goes back to the United States, where he'll be safe from prosecution. It won't bother him much, but at least it will inconvenience him.

Bill Clinton's Gore-ish Nightmare

Step 1 of Bill Clinton's nightmare is coming true. He had a dream of winning a Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. Now his former Vice-President, Al Gore, has gotten the nod while Clinton himself is empty handed. The next steps in the nightmare are as follows:

• Gore's Nobel convinces him he should run for president.
• Gore defeats Hillary in the primaries.
• Since Hillary is not elected president, Bill is not appointed Special Envoy to the Middle East, which would have been his best chance to earn his own Nobel.

So, Gore, December in Norway, January in Iowa? That would be interesting...

But enough about presidential politics. Do Al Gore and the United Nations' Panel on Climate Change deserve the prize? The Nobel committee certainly gave in to a trend. It's very fashionable to talk about global warming these days. That doesn't mean that it was wrong. It was right to address this issue this year.

Are Al Gore and the UN panel the climate change advocates most worthy of a prize? Yes, they are. Al Gore is not only the most prominent advocate, he's also been addressing the topic for decades. He didn't hop on a trendy bandwagon - he created it. The worthiness of the UN panel is less clear cut. On the one hand it didn't say anything that other scientists haven't been saying for years. On the other hand, it is the most high-level official panel to say these things, and that is their importance and that is why, in the final analysis, the panel is worthy of the Nobel.

Nobel Week

With the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine tomorrow, the 2007 Nobel Week will be upon us. Aside from the annual question of whether any Israelis will win any prizes (David Grossman and Amos Oz are always mentioned as top contenders for a Literature Nobel), which applies to all categories, I'm most interested in which political controversies will be conjured up by the various Nobel committees.

I don't expect controversies in the first three prizes to be announced, unless they involve embryonic stem cell research or cloning. The picks for medicine, chemistry and physics might cause debates among scholars as to whether or not the winners were the most worthy scientifically, but the winners there are usually selected truly because of scientific merit. The last three prizes, literature (to be announced Thursday), Peace (Friday) and Economics (next Monday) are the interesting ones. The peace prize is purely political. No matter who is chosen, controversy will quickly follow. Bloggers will start analyzing what message the Norwegian committee is sending President Bush. It could be someone big and famous (a world leader, Bono, Bill Gates etc.) or it could be someone relatively unknown, like when Shirin Ebadi and Wangari Maathai were awarded the prize in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

Literature and economics are less political. Economic research has more direct political impact than the exact sciences, though usually this prize is awarded according to merit. I'm sure the committee didn't give Robert Aumann the prize in 2005 for his extremist right-wing views. It will be interesting to see if the winner of the literature prize will be a critic of President Bush like 2005's Harold Pinter, or a persecuted writer like last year's winner, Orhan Pamuk.

Anyway, brace yourselves for some international discontent this week.