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OSLO, Norway — The award Friday of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has brought this week’s Nobel announcements to a conclusion. Only, the economics prize on Monday remains.
The peace prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, Norway. The others are awarded in Stockholm.
The award ceremony will be held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.
Here are this year’s winners so far:
Medicine
On Oct. 6, the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to three scientists for their work on the immune system.
Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check, viewed as critical to understanding autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
In separate projects, the trio identified the importance of what are now called regulatory T cells. Scientists are using those findings in a variety of ways: to discover better treatments for autoimmune diseases, to improve organ transplant success and to enhance the body’s own fight against cancer, among others.
Bronkow, 64, is now a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Ramsdell, 64, is a scientific adviser for San Francisco-based Sonoma Biotherapeutics. Sakaguchi, 74, is a distinguished professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University in Japan.
Physics
On Oct. 7, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to another trio of scientists for their research on the “weirdness” of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling. That has enabled the ultrasensitive measurements achieved by MRI machines and laid the groundwork for better cellphones and faster computers.
The work by John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis took the seeming contradictions of the subatomic world — where light can be both a wave and a particle and parts of atoms can tunnel through seemingly impenetrable barriers — and applied them in the more traditional physics of digital devices. The results of their findings are just starting to appear in advanced technology and could pave the way for the development of supercharged computing.
Clarke, 83, conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley; Martinis, 67, at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Devoret, 72, is at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Clarke spearheaded the project.
Chemistry
On Oct. 8, another scientific trio won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside. Experts say the work lays the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.
Experts say the work of Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi “may contribute to solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges.”
Kitagawa, 74, is with Japan’s Kyoto University, while Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia. Yaghi, 60, is with the University of California, Berkeley.
Literature
On Oct. 9, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for work the judges said upholds the power of art in the midst of “apocalyptic terror.” His surreal and anarchic novels combine a bleak world view with mordant humor,
Krasznahorkai, 71, has since written more than 20 books, including “The Melancholy of Resistance,” a surreal, disturbing tale involving a traveling circus and a stuffed whale, and “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” the sprawling saga of a gambling-addicted aristocrat.
Krasznahorkai has been a vocal critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, especially his government’s lack of support for Ukraine after Russia launched an all-out war.
Peace
On Oct. 10, Machado of Venezuela won the Nobel Peace Prize, and was lauded for being a “key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided.”
Machado was set to run against President Nicolás Maduro last year, but the government disqualified her. The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations.
Machado went into hiding and hasn’t been seen in public since January, and as a result it’s unclear whether she will attend the awards ceremony in Stockholm in December.
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