2000 Nobel Prize Announcements <Prev Next>

The 2000 Nobel Prizes are awarded in the early October. The Nobel Prizes in Peace, Literature, Economics,Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine have been announced as well as the Ig Nobel Prizes!

The time of the announcement is given in Stockholm time; subtract 6 hours to get the US Eastern Standard Time). If you use a JavaScript-enabled browser, move your mouse over the prize category and the status bar will display how soon the prize in this category will be announced.

Date: Friday, October 13, 2000 (11:00 a.m.) Prize: PEACE Awarding institution: The Norwegian Nobel Institute And the winner is... Kim Dae Jung for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular. Date: Thursday, October 12, 2000 (1:00 p.m. at the earliest) . Prize: LITERATURE Awarding institution: The Swedish Academy And the winner is... Gao Xingjian for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama. Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 (11:45 a.m. at the earliest) Prize: ECONOMICS Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden "to James Heckman for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples and to Daniel McFadden for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice" Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 (3:15 p.m. at the earliest) Prize: CHEMISTRY Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... ALAN J. HEEGER, ALAN G. MacDIARMID, and HIDEKI SHIRAKAWA "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers." Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 (11:45 a.m. at the earliest) Prize: PHYSICS Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences And the winners are... Zhores I. Alferov, and Herbert Kroemer "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics" and Jack S. Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit". Date: Monday, October 9, 2000 (11:30 a.m. at the earliest) Prize: PHYSIOLOGY or MEDICINE Awarding institution: The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute And the winners are... Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system" Date: Thursday, October 5, 2000 at 7:30 pm EDT Prize: IG NOBEL PRIZES Awarding institution: The Annals of Improbable Research And the winners are: PSYCHOLOGY David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kreuger of the University of Illinois, for their modest report, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6):1121-34, December 1999. LITERATURE Jasmuheen of Australia, first lady of Breatharianism, for her book Living on Light, which explains that although some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to. BIOLOGY Richard Wassersug of Dalhousie University, for his first-hand report, "On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica," The American Midland Naturalist, 86(1):101-9, July 1971. PHYSICS Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK), for using magnets to levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler. Additional information can be found in MV Berry and AK Geim, "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons", European Journal of Physics, 18:307-13, 1997. CHEMISTRY Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California (San Diego), for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Additional information can be found in D Marazziti, HS Akiskal, A Rossi, and GB Cassano, "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love," Psychological Medicine, 29(3):741-5, May 1999. ECONOMICS The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, for bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass-marriage industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1800-couple wedding in 1975, a 6000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a 36,000,000-couple wedding in 1997. MEDICINE Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis of Amsterdam, for their illuminating report, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal", British Medical Journal, 319:1596-1600, 1999. COMPUTER SCIENCE Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona, for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard. PEACE The British Royal Navy, for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout "Bang!" PUBLIC HEALTH Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullet of Glasgow, for their alarming report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow," Scottish Medical Journal, 38:185, 1993.