The New York Times reports that Roger D. Kornberg (from the Stanford University School of Medicine) ‘won’ the Nobel Prize for chemistry earlier today. Kornberg is the fifth American who receives a Nobel Prize this year. That’s five out of five. Curiously enough, his father won the Nobel Prize as well half a century ago.
He received the Nobel Prize for
his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.
The work is important for medicine, because disturbances in that process are involved in illnesses like cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation. And learning more about the process is key to using stem cells to treat disease.
Also:
Kornberg’s award, following the Nobels for medicine and physics earlier this week, completes the first American sweep of the Nobel science prizes since 1983.
In Europe some people are worried about the level of the highest education / level of science as such. Yes, broadly we – Europeans – are better educated, but if one wants to be really highly educated, if one wants to persuit a career in science, belonging to the best of the best, one should move to America.
This is something I think about as well. It is a topic worth thinking about. The problem, of course, is that European countries are much smaller than the US and thus less potential geniuses. This means that EU countries have to work very closely together and bring the best of the best from all over Europe together at one (or a couple) of centers to continue learning, publishing and developing.
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