by Mark Johnson

Created on: March 19, 2010

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) left nine million dollars in his will to establish the Nobel prizes.  These are given “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”  The first awards were distributed in 1901, in the categories of peace, literature, physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine.  In 1938, the category of economics was established by Riksbank, a Swedish bank celebrating its 300th anniversary.

In 2007, the prize winners, known as “Nobel Laureates,” were:

Physics:   Albert Fert of France and Peter Gruenberg of Germany received this award for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistence.  Applications of this have revolutionized data retrieval from hard disks and opened the door to further developments.

Chemistry:   Gerhard Ertl of Germany received this award for his research into chemical reactions on surfaces.  Chemical reactions take place on solid surfaces (such as explaining why iron rusts or how artificial fertilizers are produced) as well as in test tubes, and Ertl’s work shows how reliable results can be obtained in this area of research.

Physiology or Medicine:   Mario Capecchi (USA), Sir Martin Evans (UK), and Oliver Smithies (USA) were awarded this prize for their work in gene modification.   Their work involved the use of embryonic stem cells to introduce specific genetic modifications in mice.

Literature:   Doris Lessing (UK) was awarded the prize for her literary career.  She has written over fifty books, various short stories and nonfiction pieces, and even two operas.  Her work is described as “exposing the extraordinary in the ordinary.”

Peace:   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore (USA) divided this prize.  Their work related to climate change, both by publicizing man-made climate change to the world and by working to develop the foundation of measures to counter these changes.

Economics:   Leonid Hurwicz (USA), Eric Maskin (USA), and Roger Myerson (USA) received this prize for the development of mechanism design theory.  Mechanism design theory provides tools for the analysis of the best institutions to minimize economic losses generated by private information.  For example, will an auction maximize the seller’s revenue, or will some other transactional format be better?  What collective decision-making processes result in the implementation of desirable projects and denying undesirable projects?

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