Peace, Hope and Chemistry

The 2008 Nobel Awards have recently been announced, although these inventors and humanitarians will receive their honors until December. Despite their intimidating accomplishments, remember that all these award-winners started off as students like us, more worried about the next exam than about saving the world. But now they are doing just that, with the advances they have brought about in their fields. Peace This year, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. Born in Finland in 1937, Ahtisaari has made it his life work to resolve international conflicts. He played important roles in many peace negotiations, including drafting a report on human rights in Austria and leading effects to clinch a joint agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. He also helped with the 2005 peace accord between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province. This helped to end a thirty-year uprising, thanks in a large part to his organized talks between Indonesia's government and the Free Aceh Movement. During the 20 years he spent abroad, he worked as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the United Nations in New York. Strong links with the UN led to his heading an investigation into, and improving on, it's security. He also played a significant part in negotiations that led to the independence of Namibia from South African rule in 1990, his proudest achievement. Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will go to French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of HIV, which they made in 1983. They share the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that causes cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. The scientists are continuing to dedicate themselves to fighting AIDS and cancer, hoping, of course, for a cure. Already, they have made available crucial diagnostic tests that are needed to control the disease, and their efforts will go a long way to help future scientists. Literature This year the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a French author who has been writing since age seven. He became well-known at age 23 with the publication of his first novel Le Proces-Verbal, which was published in English the following year as The Interrogation. Since 1963, he has published more than 36 other books, including 20 novels. He claims his work is inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson and other great adventure novelists, and traveling around the world has definitely played a role in his writing. Readers of his work say that he writes with a lot of compassion and combines romantic nostalgia with the contemporary world. Most of his work has been translated into English, so, if anyone's interested in a good adventure novel from a French traveler's point of view, check out Wandering Star or The Book of Flights. His latest novel, Ritoumelle de la Faim, was published this year. It explores French guilt over the country's record under German occupation in World War Two. Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be shared between three people this year- Osamu Shimomura from Japan, and Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien from the US. These men will be awarded for their work in discovering and developing green fluorescent protein, of GPF, which has helped researchers watch the tiniest details of life within cells and living creatures. Since their discovery, GPF has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience, enabling researchers to study processes that were previously invisible, like the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread. The scientists say that the best part about their research is that it can continue to be improved on to help others. For example, Tsien is currently building on his fluorescent protein work to develop a way to deliver specially targeted drugs to cancer tumors. Physics For Physics, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Matkoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa from Japan and Yoichiro Nambu from the US. These scientists are responsible for theoretical advances that help explain the behavior of small particles in nature. Kobayashi and Maskawa made a discovery which predicts the existence of three families of quarks in nature; in other words, they are learning more than anyone else about the building blocks of matter and the small particles that make up our lives. Yoichiro Nambu has helped to revolutionize modern scientific ideas about the nature of the most fundamental particles. His theories work to explain in a unified way three of the four fundamental forces of nature: strong, weak and electromagnetic. Together, these three scientists are taking great leaps to help mankind understand the world around us. Economics The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences will go to Paul Krugman for his analysis of scale affects, trade patterns, and where economic activity takes place. Since the 1970s, Krugman has helped deepen the world's understanding of trade and economic activity by demonstrating models and publishing his work. He is also a Princeton professor, where he shares his explanations with his many students. But sources say his real gifts lie in explaining, then disseminating, complex economic concepts in an engaging way. Over the last decade, his polemical books and press articles have done much to re-establish the idea that clear economic thinking matters, helping countries to understand how to improve their own economies.

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