Nobel tribute
Elsevier congratulates the 2012 Nobel Laureates and their prominent findings in the fields of Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economics. We feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with these remarkable scientists in the creation and publication of their award-winning research. In recognition of these extraordinary scholars, we make their articles published with Elsevier freely available.
2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology
Elsevier congratulates Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka
Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka were jointly awarded this year's Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."
Gurdon and Yamanaka discovered that mature, differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop: where once it was believed that a mature cell is confined to its specialized state, we now know it is capable of being reprogrammed and restructured to achieve pluripotency.
In 1962 – the year of Yamanaka's birth – Gurdon made the ground-breaking discovery that the specialization of cells is reversible by replacing the immature nucleus of an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus of a mature intestinal cell. The modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole, indicating that cells' development is not unidirectional; Gurdon published his seminal research in Developmental Biology. Over forty years later, Yamanaka's groundbreaking 2006 paper in Cell changed the landscape of the stem cell field. He discovered through a simple switching of transcription factors that mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature, pluripotent stem cells – cells that can develop into any type of cell in the body. Taken together, these discoveries present exciting opportunities for the study of disease mechanisms and cellular development.
Sir John B. Gurdon was born in Dippenhall, UK, in 1933, and is currently a Distinguished Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. He has published in a number of Elsevier journals, including Cell, Current Biology and Mechanisms of Development.
Shinya Yamanaka was born in Osaka, Japan in 1962, and is a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University. Yamanaka is on the editorial boards of Cell and Cell Stem Cell, and has published important papers in both journals. He has also published in Current Biology, Genomics and Neuroscience Letters and has contributed to the Handbook of Stem Cells.
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2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
Elsevier congratulates Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland
Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland were jointly awarded this year's Prize in Physics "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems."
Haroche and Wineland have independently developed new methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while still preserving their quantum nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable. The Laureates have revolutionized the field of quantum physics through their innovative methods for observing individual quantum systems without destroying them.
Haroche and his team of researchers trapped microwave photons in a small cavity between two superconductive mirrors – mirrors so reflective that a single photon can bounce back and forth for nearly a tenth of a second before it is lost or absorbed. Haroche and his team then performed a number of quantum manipulations on the trapped photons, allowing them in turn to measure a single photon without destroying it.
Wineland used a different approach to solve the same problem: he and his team isolated ions in a vacuum and used laser pulses to lower their temperatures until they were in their lowest-energy state. Wineland was then able to adjust the ion slightly, in effect forcing it to exist in two different states at once. In this way he too was able to measure the quantum phenomena of the ion without disturbing or destroying it.
The scientists' revolutionary discoveries and methods have allowed researchers to take the first steps toward building the first quantum computer and developing a super-accurate ionic clock, one with over a hundred times greater precision than traditional caesium clocks.
Serge Haroche was born in 1944 in Casablanca and earned his PhD from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie. He is currently the Chair of Quantum Physics at the Collège de France. Haroche has published extensively in Optics Communications and the Journal of Luminescence.
David J. Wineland is an American physicist born in 1944. He earned his PhD at Harvard University working under Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., a fellow Nobel Laureate. Wineland has published in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals and Physics Letters A.
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2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Elsevier congratulates Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka
Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka were jointly awarded this year's Prize in Chemistry "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors."
Lefkowitz and Kobikla worked together to answer a question that stumped scientists for years: how do cells sense and respond to external stimuli? Until Lefkowitz and Kobilka made their discovery it was suspected that cell surfaces contain sensors – but no one could say exactly how these sensors were able to transmit external signals across the cell membrane to the inside of the cell. Working with a team of researchers, Lefkowitz was able to identify several receptors that exist on cells' walls by using radioactively tagged substances to follow the path of a hormone, such as adrenaline, as it binds to the surface of a cell via the receptor. These receptors, Lefkowitz discovered, span the width of the cell wall. When adrenaline attaches to the outside of the receptor it causes it to change shape, effectively sending a signal from outside the cell to within, without ever breaching the cell membrane.
When Kobilka joined the research team some years later, the two professors sought to isolate and identify a specific adrenaline receptor – and found that there exists a whole family of receptors that look alike and function in the same manner. These receptors are called G-protein coupled receptors, and they play a crucial role in our bodies' response to light, flavor, odor, adrenaline, histamine, dopamine, and serotonin. About half of all medications achieve their effect through G-protein coupled receptors and now, thanks to Lefkowitz and Kobilka, we have a greater understanding of the process – and great potential to develop more effective, targeted drugs in the future.
Robert Lefkowitz was born in 1943 in New York City and is presently a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and at Duke University. Lefkowitz is an advisory board member for Life Sciences and has published extensively in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Biochemical Pharmacology, Trends Pharmacological Sciences, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, and Cell.
Brian Kobilka was born in 1955 and is currently a professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Kobilka is an editorial board member of Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, and has published in numerous Elsevier journals, such as Current Opinion in Structural Biology, Analytical Biochemistry, and Biochemical Pharmacology.
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2012 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences
Elsevier congratulates Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley
This year's Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was jointly awarded to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design."
The two American professors took on the complex economic problem of how to match different agents as best as possible. Shapley approached the problem as an abstract concept with fellow researcher David Gale. Together, they set out to determine how individuals can best be paired up when they all have different views on who would be the best match for themselves. The economists developed an algorithm that solved the theoretical problem of pairwise matching, known today as the Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm.
Some years later, Roth applied the techniques Shapley had developed to a number of real-world scenarios – for instance, to help hospitals match organ donors with transplant patients or students with universities. Roth's empirical applications of Shapley's ideas led him to redesign existing algorithms that had their own shortcomings. In 1997, the National Resident Matching Program adopted Roth's specially-designed algorithm, based largely on Shapley's theoretical work, to successfully match over 20,000 first-year residents to their preferred residency hospitals.
Shapley was born in 1923 in Cambridge, MA, and is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has served on the editorial board for Games and Economic Behavior and as the advisory editor for the Journal of Mathematical Economics; in addition to these journals, he has published in the Journal of Economic Theory.
Roth was born in 1951 and is currently a George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. He has contributed to the Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications and has been published in a number of Elsevier journals, including Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Economic Letters, and the Journal of Economic Theory.
Access a variety of their articles published with Elsevier for free here.
Read about the 2011 Nobel Prize Laureates.
Read about the 2010 Nobel Prize Laureates.
Read about the 2009 Nobel Prize Laureates.
Read about the 2008 Nobel Prize Laureates.
