Note: For an oblique angle on this news don’t miss the very last bullet on this post
Three competing researchers won the 2009 Nobel Prize for something that might sound like pure biology – deciphering the structure of protein-manufacturing ribosomes inside cells – but when you come down to it, living things are bundles of chemicals. This year’s Physiology winner for telomerase could’ve been construed as chemistry, for that matter. But the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm honored an odyssey of X-ray crystallography (which in turn is physics, sort of) by splitting the chemistry prize among Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel ; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University, and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. The latter was born in India and trained in the US, where he took American citizenship and conducted much of the ribosome work (Univ. of Utah, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, and more) before moving to Britain ten years ago. Yonath gets one third share, but she appears to have opened the way down this line of research for the other two.
Thus, as with the medicine/physiology and physics prizes earlier this week, the prize has a dominant US representation. But the prizes also sport a stew of national identities, sometimes blended in one person. It’s a commonplace that (non-military) science knows no borders. Even during the 
most paranoid days of the Cold War US, Soviet, and Chinese scientists were able to travel and stay more in touch than members of most other, non-diplomatic lines of work. But if one wanted to write a story on science’s transcultural fabric, this year’s multiple-passport, globe trotting science Nobel class is exhibit A.
The chemical X-ray analysis that won the prize is stupefying, and yet easy to appreciate. Just look at this image. It’s a bacterial ribosome colored by major units. How one takes a solution of a jillion of these snarls of molecular yarn and coaxes them into lining up in perfectly overlaid ranks as one single crystal for an X-ray shadow portrait has just gotta be extraordinarily hard work. The Grist down at the bottom has links that leads one to extensive background from the Nobel committee in Sweden (which is where The Tracker found this image). What Watson and Crick did with X-ray crystallography (and at same lab as where Ramakrishan is now) to realize DNA’s structure was historic and impressive. This ribosome replay is freakin’ amazing. Plus. one has to note that the Swedes’ background material notes coyly that modern equipment for gathering the diffracted X-rays’ caustics relies on CCDs – those video chips that won the physics prize this year. It’s all connected.
Almost forgot: this is a journalism site. Some of the usual crowd is hard at work trying to turn the same basic material and event into individually distinct, accurate, spritely, and uplifting stories of scientific spirit and triumph. Onward:
- AP – Karl Ritter, Matt Moore: 2 Americans, 1 Israeli Win Nobel Chemistry Prize ; They and most reporters, as does the Nobel committee, stress highly that the work’s payoff includes understanding how antibiotics cripple bacterial ribosomes, and how to design better ones.
- Reuters – Mia Shanley: Trio win chemistry Nobel for solving ribosome riddle ; Exuberantly but perhaps too broadly declares that DNA carries the blueprint for life and ribosomes translate that into life itself. Is is a mere quibble to wonder whether such phrasing categorizes things properly? Should’ve stuck to protein encoding, one thinks, tediously.
- The Hindu/ Press Trust of India: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: from a physicist to a Nobel laureate in Chemistry ; Says he is the seventh Indian or person of Indian ancestry to win a Nobel.
- Jerusalem Post* (staff + AP): Israeli scientist Ada Yonath wins Nobel Prize for chemistry ; This is interesting, if brief. She is the Weizman Institute’s first Nobel prize winner. That is a small surprise, for such a prestigious center of scholarship.
- *Speaking of Jerusalem Post – scroll down to yesterday’s tracker post on physics Nobels for the update there on its distinctive version of that news.
- NYTimes – Dennis Overbye, with Isabel Kershner in Israel : Three win Nobel for Ribosome Research ;
- LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II, with Richard Boudraux in Israel: 2 Americans, Israeli share Nobel Prize in chemistry ; Maugh definitely has earned a day off : he wrote all three Nobel prize stories this week and to do it from California means an early wake-up. He sifted all three science prizes to realize that Yonath is the only among nine new laureates to have no US citizenship – whether native born, naturalized, or naturalized and dual. And Maugh finds the right term to describe a requirement for a job in X-ray crystallography: excruciating patience.
- USA Today – Dan Vergano: Nobel Prize for chemistry goes to Israeli, 2 Americans ;
- NPR- Nell Greenfieldboyce: Ribosome Map Makers Win chemistry Nobel ;
- Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Cambridge chemist wins Nobel prize for showing how proteins are made in cells ; Hmm. He trained in physics, then went into biology. Not sure he is, formally, a chemist. Further hmmm – does it matter?
- BBC – Victoria Gill: Nobel Prize for chemistry of life ; Nice job on the vein of international collaboration and competition that suffuses much of science, as here.
- Financial Times – Clive Cookson: Trio share Nobel Prize for the chemistry of life ;
- Science News – Rachel Ehrenberg: Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded for Ribosome Research ;
Grist for the Mill:
Nobel Press Release ; Information for the Public ; Scientific Background ; These links all lead on to plenty more info.
Yale U. Press Release ;
MRC Laboratory of Mol. Biology Press Release ;
ONE MORE THING: At his CardioBrief site science writer Larry Husten asks: October thought experiment: suppose the World Series was covered like the Nobel Prize ; Great (but subjunctive tense, Larry, subjunctive!)
– Charlie Petit
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