A week of Nobel Prize announcements began Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the medical award for uncovering the secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.
Three scientists together won the physics award on Tuesday. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser, and Austrian Anton Zeilinger had shown that tiny particles can maintain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, which can be used for specialized processing and to encrypt the information.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless and to Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way to “hook molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map the DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more accurately.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced on Monday.
The prizes involve a cash prize of SEK 10 million (nearly $ 900,000) and will be distributed on 10 December. The money comes from a legacy left by the creator of the prize, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.
