Deutsche Welle,
7 October 2013
The Nobel
season has kicked off with the awarding of the prize for physiology or
medicine. This year's laureates are Thomas C. Südhof from Germany, and the US
duo James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman.
"Through
their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Südhof have revealed the exquisitely
precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo,"
the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement when
awarding the prize.
For
example, their research sheds light on how insulin is manufactured and released
into the blood at the right place at the right time, the Nobel committee said.
It said the
laureates' work deepened understanding of how disruptions in the transport of
cells contribute to neurological diseases, diabetes and immunological
disorders.
All three
laureates work at US universities. Südhof joined Stanford University in 2008,
Rothman is a professor at Yale University, and Schekman is at the University of
Berkeley, California.
The Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each
year. This week will also see the awarding of the Nobel Prizes for physics on
Tuesday, and for chemistry on Wednesday.
The Swedish
Academy, which makes the annual decision on who receives the Literature Prize,
announced on Monday that the winner will be disclosed on Thursday, as had been
widely expected.
Nobel
highlight
The season
culminates in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Price on Friday, October 11, in Oslo,
Norway. A record 259 nominations have been submitted for this year's prize.
Among the
people widely mentioned as possible laureates is Malala Yousafzai, the
Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head last year by the Taliban
for championing education for girls.
Last year's
winner was not a person, but an entity: the European Union, which received the
prize in recognition of its achievements in bringing about reconciliation and
integration in Europe.
Extra prize
The Nobel
season will end on October 14 with the presentation of the Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economic Sciences, a prize not originally established by the will of the
award's founder, Alfred Nobel. This prize was introduced in 1968 by the Swedish
central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, in memory of Nobel, an industrialist who
invented dynamite.
All the
prizes are traditionally presented to the winners in a ceremony in Stockholm on
December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
Laureates receive a diploma, medal and around eight million Swedish kronor
(920,000 euros, $1.25 million).
The Nobel
Prizes were established in Nobel's will in 1895 and are widely seen as his
attempt to be remembered by posterity for something more than an invention that
has caused so much destruction. The prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or
medicine, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901.
tj/hc (AFP, AP, Reuters)
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