Nobel prize award week got under way

Achievements in science and in literature were honoured this week as the Nobel prize committee unveiled the first of 2023’s laureates.

Four of the six prizes had been announced as we went to press. 

Hungarian biochemist Prof Katalin Karikó and Prof Drew Weissman, from the Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, US, shared the prize for after their work in RNA biology led to the rapid development of mRNA Covid vaccines.

Pierre Agostini, of The Ohio State University, Ferenc Krausz, of Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, and Anne L’Huillier, of Lund University won the for creating tiny pulses of light that can be used to study electrons.

Two US scientists – Moungi Bawendi and Louis Brus – share the with Russian colleague Alexey Ekimov for their work on ‘quantum dot’ nanotechnology, which is used in consumer electronics including TV screens and LED lamps, and by doctors to map biological tissue.  

And Norwegian writer Jon Fosse has been named this year’s literature laureate “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. Fosse writes in Norwegian Nynorsk and his work spans plays, children’s books, poetry and essays. 

Image: Adam Baker