Obama's Nobel Peace Prize lecture
posted by Dumsnill on Dec 10, 2009 - 155 comments

This year's Nobel Laureate in Literature is Romanian born author Herta Müller, who writes in German, as predicted yesterday by M. A. Orthofer of The Complete Review and Literary Saloon. Here's an interview with Herta Müller and a short bio.
posted by Kattullus on Oct 8, 2009 - 38 comments

Joseph Brodsky: In Praise of Boredom -- from his Dartmouth College commencement address in 1995. " Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open. For boredom speaks the language of time, and it teaches you the most valuable lesson of your life: the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. "You are finite," time tells you in the voice of boredom, "and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile."
posted by vronsky on Aug 20, 2009 - 38 comments

How to (and how not to) write poetry -- "selections from columns originally published in the Polish newspaper Literary Life. In these columns, famed poet Wislawa Szymborska answered letters from ordinary people who wanted to write poetry. Translated by Clare Cavanagh." Here is her Nobel acceptance speech, where she charmingly imagines a dialogue between herself and Ecclesiastes.
posted by vronsky on May 6, 2009 - 25 comments

What to Do. 2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman on what to do about the economic crisis. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Nov 30, 2008 - 67 comments

"...For his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity," the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Oct 13, 2008 - 94 comments

President Martti Ahtisaari wins the Nobel Peace Prize. A former Finnish President, an UN envoy, a social democrat, a school teacher and founder of Crisis Management Initiative has negotiated for peace in many troubled areas for three decades. Last fall and last summer CMI (without Ahtisaari's presence) called former Northern Ireland and South African militants to use their experience for finding Iraqi factions a way out of bloodshed. A plan for Kosovo. Negotiations ending 30-year conflict in Aceh, Indonesia. Negotiating Namibia independence. Got conflict? Mr. Ahtisaari is your man.
posted by Free word order! on Oct 10, 2008 - 16 comments

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to scientists who advanced the use of jellyfish green florescent protein, or GFP (previously), an indispensable tool in molecular biology. The man who discovered the GFP gene, however, is doing something quite different these days. [more inside]
posted by NikitaNikita on Oct 9, 2008 - 13 comments

The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Here's an old interview, a short video interview (in French) and a short story (in English).
posted by Kattullus on Oct 9, 2008 - 34 comments

Nobels for Physics announced. The prize will be shared between three individuals, including one American teaching at the University of Chicago. The other two winners are from Japan, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa .
posted by leybman on Oct 7, 2008 - 19 comments

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world... not the United States," he said. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature... That ignorance is restraining."

Nobel literature prize judge Horace Engdahl comes down hard against Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, and other crazy American shit that just can't cross the waters.
posted by plexi on Oct 6, 2008 - 124 comments

Luc Montagnier, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen take the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discoveries of the AIDS virus and HPV, respectively. Take that Gallo.
posted by dances_with_sneetches on Oct 6, 2008 - 20 comments

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died. ( BBC ) The great author and opponent of totalitarianism lived to see the end of Communism in the Soviet Union and almost everywhere else. He survived WWII as a commander in the Soviet army before being put into gulags where he spent 20 years. He went on to write the Gulag Archipelago and win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
posted by sien on Aug 3, 2008 - 75 comments

A 2007 Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough in genetics may hold the key to eliminating Trichotillomania: the gene Hoxb8 governs grooming behavior in mammals.
posted by hermitosis on Nov 7, 2007 - 12 comments

The Nobel Foundation sheds some on the missing Nobel Peace Laureate--Mahatma Gandhi.
posted by reformedjerk on Oct 16, 2007 - 50 comments

Albert A. Gore Jr. shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted." Still not running for president.
posted by blacklite on Oct 12, 2007 - 213 comments

"It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics...It should be possible, these days, to collect all knowledge you need from the internet. Problem then is, there is so much junk on the internet... I know exactly what should be taught to the beginning student...I can tell you of my own experiences. It helped me all the way to earn a Nobel Prize. But I didn't have internet. I am going to try to be your teacher. It is a formidable task."
posted by vacapinta on Aug 29, 2007 - 47 comments

Fritz Haber's story is the story of the double edged sword of science. He won the Nobel prize in 1918 for his groundbreaking work in breaking the nitrogen cycle for Germany's WWI efforts, but it's been estimated that two out of every five people now living would not have been born if it weren't for artificial fertilizers created using his process. He also spent much of the war developing poison gases; first chlorine (after watching its first use, Haber's wife committed suicide) and later Zyklon B (the cyanide insecticide later used against his fellow Jews in concentration camps). He died alone and in poverty in Switzerland. But the lessons of his life haven't quite been forgotten.
posted by Plutor on Nov 21, 2006 - 17 comments

In 1976, a young Bangladeshi economics professor named Muhammad Yunus founded Grameen Bank to implement microcredit — lending small sums to the very poorest members of society. Today, he and his bank share the Nobel Peace prize. Grameen, a profit-making company with social objectives, has lent $5.3bn to 6.4m people. 97% of borrowers are women, as Yunus believes [video] "men will do whatever they could to enjoy for themselves personally [but] women looked at it for the children, for the family and for the future."
posted by matthewr on Oct 13, 2006 - 24 comments

"Life is wise to deceive us," he once wrote, "for had it told us from the start what it had in store for us, we would refuse to be born." --Naguib Mahfouz, RIP --and more from when he won the Nobel in 1988
posted by amberglow on Aug 30, 2006 - 20 comments

Forty-nine published plays. Four Pulitzer Prizes. Three marriages. A suicide attempt. A celebrity for a father. A drug-addicted mother who blamed her habit on her son. A daughter estranged, a son who committed suicide. A Nobel Prize, the only ever awarded to an American playwright.
Eugene O'Neill from inside out: a documentary film for American Experience. More inside.
posted by matteo on Mar 30, 2006 - 16 comments

Games and Simulations at the Noble Prize website. See the right sidebar for a complete list of what's available.
posted by OmieWise on Dec 28, 2005 - 20 comments

Co-winner of the Nobel prize in economics Robert Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave a very interesting interview about how he became interested in economics, math, and the "topology of bagels." How he applied logic from the Talmud to bankruptcy and other economic events was described nicely at Slate here.
posted by Adamchik on Oct 21, 2005 - 4 comments

It's Pinter. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the English writer Harold Pinter, “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms”.
posted by Termite on Oct 13, 2005 - 34 comments

Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. (previous)
posted by Silune on Oct 7, 2005 - 29 comments

Americans, German win nobel prize for physics. They won for for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique, which among other thing allows them to measure the speed of light to such accuracy that it is now used as the definition for the meter, see if the laws of physics were the same at the beginning of time, and make gps satellites work much better.
posted by stilgar on Oct 4, 2005 - 5 comments

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004: Elfriede Jelinek, probably best known for the story behind Michael Haneke's La Pianiste.
posted by mr.marx on Oct 7, 2004 - 22 comments

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) - one of the greatest poets of the 20th century - passed away on Saturday in Krackow, Poland. I want to remember him here with this: "Conversation with Jeanne"
posted by lilboo on Aug 16, 2004 - 8 comments

J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Speech. It seemed to him, coming from his island, where until Friday arrived he lived a silent life, that there was too much speech in the world. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, delivers his lecture from the perspective of Robinson Crusoe.
posted by _sirmissalot_ on Dec 9, 2003 - 8 comments

Shirin Ebadi wins Nobel Peace Prize Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi has won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2003. Ebadi is Iran's first female judge and a leading figure in the struggle for women's and children's rights in Iran. She is known for representing the interests of persecuted individuals and has braved reprisals for her beliefs.
posted by dagny on Oct 10, 2003 - 8 comments

What do the pope, Bono, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, and Michael Jackson have in common? They're all part of one of the weakest Nobel Peace Prize slates in history. Peace has been a commodity in such short supply recently that a Norwegian researcher has commented that "no political leaders have distinguished themselves in ways deserving of the prize." Another commentator said this time last year that the committee would send the strongest message to the world by selecting nobody.
posted by PrinceValium on Oct 6, 2003 - 28 comments

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday. Two candidates with buzz this year are Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, better known as Adonis, and New Zealand novelist-memoirist Janet Frame. Other candidates frequently mentioned include JM Coetzee, Philip Roth, Inger Christensen, Tomas Transtroemer, Margaret Atwood and Carlos Fuentes.
posted by Daze on Sep 30, 2003 - 20 comments

Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded The Nobel Prize. [via the "fortune" command]
posted by hob on Aug 7, 2003 - 15 comments

Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected and rightful leader of Burma (Myanmar,) and the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was arrested by Burma's military government 9 days ago after a premeditated attack on her motorcade. The U.N. representative visiting Burma has not been allowed to see her. There has been a crackdown on the democracy movement, and Suu Kyi's arrest may signal a split within the military government. [More inside.]
posted by homunculus on Jun 9, 2003 - 31 comments

"It's a beautiful day..." So i hear U2's singer, the great and charismatic Bono, has just been nominated for nobel peace prize. Of course, we the french, find it very amusing to find Chirac nominated. (Oh, the hysteria if ever he won). Also in the race is ex Gov. George H Ryan, who amongst other achievements declared a moratorium in 2000, before leaving his job a few months ago... with class. Or maybe they'll just choose Bono & Chirac for knowing how to work together on the 'drop the debt' issue? So, what do you say? (i'd have to go with Bono, i'm afraid. Rock n roll but effective and passionate...)
posted by Sijeka on Feb 19, 2003 - 39 comments

The acceptance speech of Nobel Price winner for literature Imre Kertesz
posted by semmi on Dec 10, 2002 - 30 comments

Nobel Prize for Literature. We've got a winner. Imre Kertesz from Hungary. Ever heard of him?
posted by ushuaia on Oct 10, 2002 - 16 comments

And the Winner Is ... Tomorrow the Nobel Foundation will announce its 2002 award for literature. Anyone have a particular author they'd like to see get the gold?
posted by risenc on Oct 9, 2002 - 91 comments

Madame Wu Through the Looking-Glass: If you look into a mirror, you might wonder if that mirror-world is a possible world. This mirror-symmetry possibility is known in physics as parity conservation. Well, 1956 was the year that Parity fell. That's the year that Madame Wu created and performed an experiment that revealed once and for all that the Looking-Glass world is not the same as ours. This is an epochal discovery. Nature distinguishes between left and right. Here's some basics of Madame Wu's revolution. Why isn't she better-known outside of Physics? And why wasn't she awarded the Nobel Prize?
posted by vacapinta on Aug 14, 2002 - 27 comments

A petition to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Afghan Nuclear Scientists for hiding radioactive material that could have been used for a nuclear bomb by Al Qaeda. I think it's an inspired and appropriate suggestion, and the petition could be of great use in attraction the attention of nominators and Nobel committee.
posted by adrianhon on Apr 13, 2002 - 4 comments

In case you still thought there was still anything even slightly rational, even-handed and non-ideological about the Nobel Peace Prize: Members of the NPP committee that gave Shimon Peres the Prize in 1994 are now attacking him for not singlehandedly putting a stop to Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian territory, even though here's only a member of the cabinet, not the leader of the country. (Alternatively, they say, he should have quit.) Which would be okay, since what's going on now isn't very peaceful ... except that they've said not a peep about about the actions of one of the other two men that shared the prize that year, one Yassir Arafat. (The third, Yitzhak Rabin, apparently gets off the hook since he's already dead.)
posted by aaron on Apr 5, 2002 - 12 comments

Bush and Giuliani nominated for Nobel Peace Prize Rudy? No way - I still don't know what this guy did beyond being a fatherly voice for NYC. As for GW, well I know some will strongly disagree, but waging war for peace is sorta like having sex for virginity.
posted by holycola on Feb 21, 2002 - 15 comments

Bush and Blair Nominated for 2002 Peace Prize ''The background for my nomination is their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace,'' Nesvik said. ''Unfortunately, sometimes ... you have to use force to secure peace.'' ---Harald Tom Nesvik
posted by ezfowler on Feb 4, 2002 - 25 comments

The Nash equilibrium
So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos....from John F. Nash Jr.'s autobiography for the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics.
posted by riley370 on Dec 12, 2001 - 8 comments

The PBS show "Nobel:Visions of our Century" interviews past Nobel Prize winners on their views of social responsibility. Which got me thinking, is the Nobel Prize the top award society can give? Is it a Grammy? A Pulitzer? Or is it something completely different altogether? Granted I will never win any of them, I was wondering what the planet Earth's top honor was.
posted by remlapm on Dec 12, 2001 - 7 comments

UN wins Nobel Peace Prize. Discuss
posted by Zootoon on Oct 12, 2001 - 20 comments

Finally the Nobel Prize For Literature Gets It Right Jorge Luis Borges didn't get it. Neither did Marcel Proust. But today V.S.Naipaul, arguably the best writer in the English language since Samuel Beckett died, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Doesn't this just show it helps not to be English(e.g. Irish, American, Indian or Trinidadian)to be able to write dry and timeless prose such as Sir Vidia's?
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 11, 2001 - 29 comments

Recognising "Renegage Economics"? Joseph Stiglitz, who was famously cast into the wilderness by the IMF and World Bank, walked off with a share of this year's Nobel Prize for Economics, for his work on the asymmetric benefits of unrestricted "open markets": in short, the way that promoting "free trade" favours the developed nations over the developing. A calculated fuck-you to the neo-liberal mainstream, or a recognition that the critique of globalisation extends well beyond street protesters?
posted by holgate on Oct 10, 2001 - 8 comments

"Soccer" has been nominated for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. No, really.

Any other suggestions for nominations?
posted by Avogadro on Jan 22, 2001 - 24 comments

Eyes on the Prize White House lobbied Norwegians for Clinton Nobel Peace Prize. Clinton and his minions are despicable, no?
posted by argus on Oct 13, 2000 - 4 comments