Every year at around this time, I make a summary post about the winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes because I feel that insufficient attention is paid to them. I always ignore the Peace Prize and the Literature Prize. Here are the winners for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology \/ Medicine and Economics categories.<\/p>\n
The physics prize seems unexciting to me but I guess it is practical and useful. It goes to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for discovering how to produce blue light beams from semi-conductors. This is what enabled modern LED lamps<\/strong> to be a reality as it is not possible to create white lamps without blue light.<\/p>\n The chemistry prize goes for to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner for the invention of nanoscopy<\/strong>. Previously, optical microscopes were limited to a resolution of about half the wavelength of light, or about 200 nanometres. This prize is awarded for two separate developments: STED microscopy which uses two laser beams, one to stimulate fluorescent molecules to glow and another to cancel out all fluorescence except for that within a nanometre-sized volume, and single-molecule microscopy which relies on turning the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off and superimposing all of the images thereby gained into a single super-image. Both techniques bring microscopy into the nano-scale.<\/p>\n The physiology \/ medicine prize goes to\u00a0John O\u00b4Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for research into the positioning system<\/strong> in the brain. As would be obvious, many animals have a sense of location and an internal map of the locations that they know and how paths lead from one place to another.\u00a0O\u00b4Keefe realized that a specific type of nerve cell in the brain of a rat always activated when in a specific location. The two others discovered another type of nerve cell that together generate a coordinate system that allows for positioning and pathfinding. Together these constitute the essential elements of what is effectively an internal GPS.<\/p>\n The economics prize goes to Jean Tirole. This is for a body of work rather than any single significant discovery so it’s harder to summarize. Apparently his most important work lies in clarifying how to understand and regulate<\/strong> industries that are dominated by a few powerful firms. He also showed that regulation needs to be adapted to the conditions specific to each industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every year at around this time, I make a summary post about the winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes because I feel that insufficient attention is paid to them. I always ignore the Peace Prize and the Literature Prize. Here are the winners for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology \/ Medicine and Economics categories. The physics prize … Continue reading Nobel Prizes 2014<\/span>