The Nobel Prize
After inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel died in 1896, he declared in his will that he wanted his fortune to be used to honor “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” The categories were determined in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace—the fields he was most involved with during his lifetime. The first Nobel Prizes were given out in 1901, and the prize in economics was introduced in 1969. The prize and its laureates are announced every year in October.
Medicine
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun on October 7, 2024, “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.”
Victor Ambros born in 1953 in Hanover, New Hampshire, graduated with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979. Currently, he is a natural sciences professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His colleague Gary Ruvkun was born in Berkeley, California in 1952 and received his PhD from Harvard University in 1982. He is now a professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Ambros and Ruvkun discovered microRNA while studying how different cell types develop. RNA molecules carry genetic code to execute protein production. Regulation of gene activity creates variations in cell types, and the laureates' discovery uncovered a new principle of this regulation. The microRNAs they discovered are the main enablers of complex evolution.
Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on October 8, 2024, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” The prize amount is just above 1 million dollars and will be shared equally between the laureates.
John J. Hopfield was born in 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated with a PhD from Cornell University in 1958 and is now a professor at Princeton University. In 1982, Hopfield invented the Hopfield Network, a method for saving and recreating patterns used in machine learning. Machine learning is an artificial neural network in which the computer receives information or training data that interprets and processes. Based on prior examples, the computer can then make predictions and decisions about unknown data. With Hopfield’s network, if a computer is fed an incomplete image, it methodically works to find the image most similar to the incomplete one, thus, allowing users to recreate partial data.
Geoffrey E. Hinton was born in 1947 in London, UK. He graduated with a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. Currently, os a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. In 1985, Hinton created a new network called the Boltzmann machine based on the Hopfield network. The machine works as a classifier and categorizes the data that the computer remembers via the Hopfield network. Through examples, the machine learns to recognize similar traits and through training, can recognize corresponding qualities in unknown information.
Chemistry
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to David Baker and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper on October 9, 2024. Baker’s prize was given “for computational protein design” and Hassabis and Jumper were awarded “for protein structure prediction.” Half of the prize money, around $500,000 dollars, will be given to Baker, while Hassabis and Jumper will share the remaining half.
David Baker was born in 1962 in Seattle, Washington. He graduated with a PhD from the University of California Berkeley in 1989. He now works as a professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physicsin the University of Washington as well as an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His discoveries were about proteins, which are large molecules made up of amino acids that form the basis of chemical reactions needed for sustenance. In 2003, Baker used amino acids, which are known as the basic building blocks of life, to design a new protein. Later, he developed methods for creating proteins with new functions that did not exist before.
Demis Hassabis, born in London, England in 1976, and John M. Jumper, born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1985, both work in Google DeepMind in London. Hassabis, the CEO of the company, graduated with a PhD from University College London in 2009. Jumper, who is a senior research scientist in the company graduated with a PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017. DeepMind was an AI-based start-up that Hassabis founded with two other colleagues. After selling the company to Google in 2014, he remained as CEO. Hassabis and Jumper were awarded the Nobel thanks to the AI model dubbed AlphaFold2 they introduced in 2020. The model allows researched to virtually predict the structure of virtually all identified proteins.
Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang on October 10, 2024, by the Swedish Academy “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” She is the first South Korean woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.
53 year old author Han Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea on November 27, 1970. Kang studied Korean language and literature at the Yonsei University in Seol. After graduating in 1993, she enrolled in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1998. Her work contains themes like violence, grief, and patriarchy. Her novels explore “the broad spectrum of humanity,” and are “variations of this theme of human violence.”
Peace
On October 11, 2024, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that they would be awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hindankyo “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
After the nuclear attacks on Japan during World War 2, this global movement was established to bring attention to the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons. The movement was formed by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and their testimonies helped spread resistance against the use of nuclear weapons. By awarding this year’s prize to the organization, the committee aims to “honor all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.”
Economy
On October 14, 2024, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel jointly to Daron Acemoğlu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”
Daron Acemoğlu was born in Istanbul, Türkiye in 1967 and graduated with a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1992. Simon Johnson was born in 1963 in Sheffield, UK and graduated with a PhD from MIT in 1989. Finally, James A. Robinson was born in 1960, and graduated with a PhD from Yale University in 1993. He now works as a professor at the University of Chicago while the other two laureates are professors at MIT.
The laureates work demonstrated the necessity of societal institutions for the development of a country. Their research showed and explained the principle of how societies that exploit their citizens cannot evolve. The findings pointed to European colonization as a large factor for changing institutions around the globe. The changing systems introduced by the Europeans have had long term effects that have impacted the current prosperity of colonized societies. By noticing this correlation, the laureates introduced a solution for reducing the economic gap between countries via societal institutions.
Edited by: Melisa Altıntaş
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