Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 was given to three scientists who produced atom-by-atom maps of the mysterious, life giving ribosome that allows researchers to produce powerful new antibiotics. The ribosome present in the DNA translates the information in the DNA to life. Ada Yonath from Israel and US scientists Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz shared the 10 million Swedish crown (US$1.4 million) prize for showing how the ribosome operates at the atomic level. According to the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, since ribosomes are crucial to life, they are major target for new antibiotics.

A method known as X-Ray crystallography was used to pinpoint each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms present in the ribosome. The technique involves impinging X-rays at a crystal. The rays are scattered when they impinge on the atoms and by looking at how they spread out, scientists can determine where atoms are positioned. Yonath was the first person to research into this area when she first tried the method on the ribosome. She began by taking a microorganism found in the nearby Dead Sea and crystallizing its ribosomes by freezing them at nearly minus 200 degree Celsius. But it took another 20 years before a full map was made. The three scientists arrived to the same conclusion almost simultaneously in 2000, publishing crystal structures that were sharply enough defined to locate atoms. The research has vast implications in the field of medicine, since fifty percent of all antibiotics target the ribosome, this finding can lead to the development of other substances that can block and disturb bacteria in our bodies.

German novelist, Herta Muller has become the 12th woman in 108 years to win the Nobel Prize for literature. She was praised by the Nobel judges for depicting the landscape of the dispossessed with the concentration of poetry and frankness of prose. Muller constantly returns to the oppression, dictatorship, and exile of her own life in her novels, essays, and poems. Worth 10 million Swedish kronor the Nobel is awarded to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, as described in Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895.

According to the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, Muller had the capacity of really giving you the sense of what it was to live in a dictatorship, to be as a minority in another country and to live in exile. Muller has a very fine tuned precision in her language.

Born in Romania in 1953, Muller rejected to work together with Ceausescu’s Securitate, lost her job as a teacher, and was a subject of repeated threats until she emigrated in 1987. She now lives in Berlin, where she has received a multitude of literary awards, including Germany’s most prestigious, the Kleist prize, the Frankz Kafka, and the 100,000 Euro Impac award for Hertzier.

US President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2009. According to the Nobel Committee Obama won the prize for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. Obama’s efforts for nuclear disarmament were well appreciated.

There was widespread surprise at the committee’s decision. Many people were skeptical and commented that the decision had come too soon, even before Obama had made any concrete foreign policy achievement. The Nobel laureate chosen by a five-member committee wins a gold medal, a diploma, and 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1.4million). According to the Nobel committee, the reason why prize was awarded to Obama less than a year after he took office was that the Nobel committee wanted to support what he was trying to achieve. Obama’s efforts to transform the world into a nuclear free planet were noticed by the Nobel committee. French president Nicolas Sarkozy said the award confirmed that America’s return to the hearts of the people of the world.

The Nobel Prize in Economics is officially known as “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” and was announced on October 12, 2009. The Nobel Prize in Economics for 2009 was awarded jointly to Elinor Ostrom for her work on analysis of economic governance, especially the commons and Oliver Williamson for his work on analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm. As soon as the prize was announced, the winners were criticized by the traditionalists as unknown in the field of New Institutional Economics, and even unworthy of the honor. However, Douglass North, recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, 1993 was pleased at the announcement of this year’s winners and welcomed the two pioneers to the Nobel Prize winner’s circle.

Elinor Ostrom, Ph.D, is Professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, both at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Oliver Williamson, Ph.D, is the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics and Law, and Professor at the Graduate School, both at the University of California, Berkeley.