In 1973, while working as a young post-doc in Zanvil A. Cohn's laboratory in Rockefeller University,
Ralph Steinman described a completely new immune cell within the lymphoid organs of mice (original paper can be read
here). Based on it's distinctive shape, with it's many branched projections, he named the cell "
dendritic cell" (derived from the Greek word for "tree").
Such began a
prolific and
illustrious career, devoted to the further understanding of these cells, which transformed the way the world understood how the immune system worked. Yesterday,
Dr Steinman was awarded the The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 "
for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity". Tragically,
he had died just three days earlier of pancreatic cancer, and never learned that he was to be awarded science’s top honour.
[more inside]
posted by kisch mokusch
on Oct 4, 2011 -
25 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
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
