2009 Nobel Prize Announcements

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Prize Announcements

The 2009 Nobel prize in Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physics and Physiology or Medicine and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel as well as the Ig-Nobel Prizes have been announced!

While you're here, why not also read about past winners.

N.B. The time of the announcement is given in Stockholm time (Central European Time); subtract 6 hours to get the US Eastern Daylight Time).


    Date: Monday, October 12, 2009 (13:00 CEST at the earliest)
    Prize: ECONOMICS
    Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    And the prize goes to...

    Elinor Ostrom
    for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons

    and

    Oliver E. Williamson
    for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.


    Date: Friday, October 9, 2009 (11:00 a.m. CEST)
    Prize: PEACE
    Awarding institution: The Norwegian Nobel Institute
    And the prizes go to...

    Barack Obama
    for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.


    Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009
    Prize: LITERATURE
    Awarding institution: The Swedish Academy
    And the prize goes to...

    Herta Müller
    who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.



    Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 (11:45 a.m. CEST at the earliest)
    Prize: PHYSICS
    Awarding institution: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    And the prizes go to...

    Charles K. Kao
    for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication

    and

    Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith
    for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor.



    Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009 (7:30 pm EDT)
    Prize: IG NOBEL PRIZES
    Awarding institution: The Annals of Improbable Research
    And the winners are:

    VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE
    Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
    REFERENCE: "Exploring Stock Managers' Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production," Catherine Bertenshaw [Douglas] and Peter Rowlinson, Anthrozoos, vol. 22, no. 1, March 2009, pp. 59-69. DOI: 10.2752/175303708X390473.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Peter Rowlinson. Catherine Douglas was unable to travel because she recently gave birth; she sent a photo of herself, her new daughter dressed in a cow suit, and a cow.

    PEACE PRIZE:
    Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, determining for experiment by whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
    REFERENCE: "Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull?" Stephan A. Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael J. Thali and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 16, no. 3, April 2009, pp. 138-42. DOI:10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Stephan Bolliger

    ECONOMICS PRIZE:
    The directors, executives, and auditors of four banks Icelandic Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank Iceland of for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and versa vice and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.

    CHEMISTRY PRIZE:
    Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga, and Victor M. Castano of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, for creating diamonds liquid from specifically from tequila.
    REFERENCE: "Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila," Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M. Castano, 2008, arXiv:0806.1485.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Javier Morales and Miguel Apatiga

    MEDICINE PRIZE:
    Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his hand left but never cracking the knuckles of his hand right every day for more than sixty (60) years.
    REFERENCE: "Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?", Donald L. Unger, Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Donald Unger

    PHYSICS PRIZE:
    Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.
    REFERENCE: "Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins," Katherine K. Whitcome, Liza J. Shapiro & Daniel E. Lieberman, Nature, vol. 450, 1075-1078 (December 13, 2007). DOI:10.1038/nature06342.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Katherine Whitcome and Daniel Lieberman

    LITERATURE PRIZE:
    Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in country the Jazdy Prawo whose name in Polish means "Driving License".
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: [Karolina Lewestam, a Polish citizen and holder of a Polish driver's license, speaking on behalf of all her fellow Polish licensed drivers, expressed her good wishes to the Irish police service.]

    PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE:
    Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
    REFERENCE: U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a "Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks. "
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Elena Bodnar.

    MATHEMATICS PRIZE:
    Gideon Gono, governor of s Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range numbers of from very small to big very by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).
    REFERENCE: Zimbabwe's Economy Casino Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges, Gideon Gono, ZPH Publishers, Harare, 2008, ISBN 978-079-743-679-4. Zimbabwe

    BIOLOGY PRIZE:
    Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
    REFERENCE:"Microbial Treatment of Kitchen Refuse With Enzyme-Producing Thermophilic Bacteria From Giant Panda Feces," Fumiaki Taguchia, Song Guofua, and Zhang Guanglei, Seibutsu-kogaku Kaishi, vol. 79, no 12, 2001, pp. 463-9. [and abstracted in Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, vol. 92, no. 6, 2001, p. 602.]
    "Microbial Treatment of Food-Production Waste with Thermopile Enzyme-Producing Bacterial Flora from a Giant Panda" [in Japanese], Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, Yasunori Sugai, Hiroyasu Kudo and Akira Koikeda, Journal of the Japan Society of Waste Management Experts, vol. 14, no. 2, 2003, pp. , 76-82.
    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Fumiaki Taguchi


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