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2020 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson
Reporter: Aviva Lev- Ari, PhD, RN
UPDATED on 10/16/2020
The Nobel Prize for economic sciences this year went to Paul MIlgrom and Robert Wilson. Milgrom is recognized as one of the world’s great experts in auction theory, and I interviewed him for my book In the Plex (finally out in paper next February!) about Google’s clever AdWords approach to bidding, which was crafted by Google engineer Eric Veach along with his boss Salar Kamangar. I’d asked Milgrom to compare the AdWords system to the competitor, Overture:
One fan of Veach’s system was the top auction theorist, Stanford economist Paul Milgrom. “Overture’s auctions were much less successful,” says Milgrom. “In that world, you bid by the slot. If you wanted to be in third position, you put in a bid for third. If there’s an obvious guy to win the first position, nobody would bid against him, and he’d get it cheap. If you wanted to be in every position, you had to make bids for each of them. But Google simplified the auction. Instead of making eight bids for the eight positions, you made one single bid. The competition for second position will automatically raise the price for the first position. So the simplification thickens the market. The effect is that it guarantees that there’s competition for the top positions.”
Veach and Kamangar’s implementation was so impressive that it changed even Milgrom’s way of thinking. “Once I saw this from Google, I began seeing it everywhere,” he says, citing examples in spectrum auctions, diamond markets, and the competition between Kenyan and Rwandan coffee beans. “I’ve begun to realize that Google somehow or other introduced a level of simplification to ad auctions that was not included before.” And it wasn’t just a theoretical advance. “Google immediately started getting higher prices for advertising than Overture was getting,” he notes.
Subject: Clarence Thomas wants to rethink internet speech. Be afraid
Paul Milgrom (left) and Robert Wilson share the 2020 Nobel prize in economic sciences for improvements to auction theory and invention of new auction formats.
Image Credit: Elena Zhukova for the Stanford Graduate School of Business
The 2020 Nobel prize in economic sciences rewards work on an ancient form of transaction that has acquired new complexity and urgency in the modern age: the auction.
Insights in auction theory made by Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, both of Stanford University in California, have found applications ranging from the pricing of government bonds to the licensing of radio-spectrum bands in telecommunications.
Diane Coyle of the University of Cambridge, UK, says that the Nobel, announced on 12 October, will be widely welcomed. “These two not only did foundational work themselves”, she says, “but also inspired cohorts of younger researchers.”
Economist Preston McAfee of Google agrees. “I, and thousands like me, use the fruits of their work on a daily basis to make markets work better — to improve pricing, to manage incentives, to facilitate decision-making, to increase efficiency.”
Their research has intersected with computer science and communications engineering to lay the foundations for many online platforms, Coyle adds.
Economist John Kagel of Ohio State University in Columbus, USA, called it “an outstanding selection”.
Online platforms such as eBay have raised public awareness of some of the complexities of auctions. There are many ways to stage them: for example, in a so-called “English auction” the item on offer simply goes to the highest bidder; whereas in a “Dutch auction” the selling starts from a high price, and bidders submit the price they are willing to pay.
But bidding is affected by many more factors that might reduce the seller’s final profit, cause losses for the winning bidder, create inefficiencies of allocation, or harm the public good. The work of the two laureates has helped to reduce these problems and to suggest new, more efficient ways for auctions to be conducted.
One problem is that different bidders can have different degrees of knowledge about an item for sale. For example, in a property auction, all bidders for a property will have access to some public information such as its resale value. But other kinds of information — such as hidden structural damage — will be private and not known to everyone.
A bidder who does not have such information might end up overpaying if they want to buy the property. They might be able to infer what others know about the value if bids are public – and people start to drop out – but not if bids are private.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Wilson showed what happens to prices and profits in auctions when bidders have different degrees of private information.
Furthermore, if information about a property is highly uncertain — if the nature of the neighbourhood is rapidly changing, say — that could make buyers cautious and reduce the seller’s profit. In the 1980s, Milgrom — a former doctoral student of Wilson’s — developed models (partly in conjunction with Robert Weber of Northwestern University) that showed there is then an incentive for sellers to gather and share expert information with bidders, within different auction formats. The predictions of how such public information helps prevent losses to sellers and increases their revenue have been born out by experiments, says Kagel.
A spectrum of options
Auctions can be more complex when the goods for sale are divisible into parts or batches — for example, when governments sell licenses to companies bidding to operate in energy, telecommunications or transportation markets. One issue for such auctions is that sellers are vulnerable to collusion between buyers to keep the buying price down. Wilson’s work in the 1970s helped to identify these problems and to design new auctions to avoid them, for example in markets for electricity provision.
The sales of items might also be interdependent. A classic example in the 1990s was the sale of radio-frequency bands to telecom companies for mobile-phone networks — which many countries decided was best done through auctions.
If rights to frequency bands were simply auctioned region by region, a national telecoms company couldn’t be sure of acquiring the same frequency everywhere. And the value to them for one region would depend on whether they could buy the same frequency band elsewhere. The resulting patchwork of coverage would be inconvenient for users too.
To tackle such problems, Milgrom and Wilson (and independently, McAfee) devised the simultaneous multiple-round auction (SMRA). Here, bidders can place bids over several rounds of bidding. This gives them a chance to glean something about others’ private information while bidding, creating fairer and more efficient outcomes.
This approach was used in 1994 for auctioning telecom licenses in the United States, and has been adopted in Canada, India, and several European and Scandinavian countries. Milgrom has also devised other formats that ease some of the shortcomings of the SMRA.
“Unlike many theoreticians, Wilson and Milgrom brought their work to the real world, and transformed government policies toward auctions around the world,” says McAfee.
“There was no question that these two would win the Nobel prize at some point,” says economist Paul Klemperer of the University of Oxford. “It could have happened at any time in the past 20 years.”
“One could even imagine Paul Milgrom having a second Nobel prize,” he adds, for his work in information economics and industrial organization. Milgrom has given a Nobel acceptance speech before: in 1996, as a stand-in for William Vickery, who died three days after the announcement of his prize for laying the foundations of auction theory in the 1960s.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020 was awarded jointly to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.”
Prize announcement
Announcement of the 2020 Prize in Economic Sciences by Professor Göran K. Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on 12 October 2020.
“This prize is about avoiding the winner’s curse”
Immediately after the announcement, Tommy Andersson, member of the committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, was interviewed by freelance journalist Joanna Rose regarding the 2020 Prize in Economic Sciences.
Press release: The Prize in Economic Sciences 2020
“for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”
Their theoretical discoveries have improved auctions in practice
This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how auctions work. They have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies. Their discoveries have benefitted sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world.
People have always sold things to the highest bidder, or bought them from whoever makes the cheapest offer. Nowadays, objects worth astronomical sums of money change hands every day in auctions, not only household objects, art and antiquities, but also securities, minerals and energy. Public procurements can also be conducted as auctions.
Using auction theory, researchers try to understand the outcomes of different rules for bidding and final prices, the auction format. The analysis is difficult, because bidders behave strategically, based on the available information. They take into consideration both what they know themselves and what they believe other bidders to know.
Robert Wilson developed the theory for auctions of objects with a common value – a value which is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone. Examples include the future value of radio frequencies or the volume of minerals in a particular area. Wilson showed why rational bidders tend to place bids below their own best estimate of the common value: they are worried about the winner’s curse – that is, about paying too much and losing out.
Paul Milgrom formulated a more general theory of auctions that not only allows common values, but also private values that vary from bidder to bidder. He analysed the bidding strategies in a number of well-known auction formats, demonstrating that a format will give the seller higher expected revenue when bidders learn more about each other’s estimated values during bidding.
Over time, societies have allocated ever more complex objects among users, such as landing slots and radio frequencies. In response, Milgrom and Wilson invented new formats for auctioning off many interrelated objects simultaneously, on behalf of a seller motivated by broad societal benefit rather than maximal revenue. In 1994, the US authorities first used one of their auction formats to sell radio frequencies to telecom operators. Since then, many other countries have followed suit.
“This year’s Laureates in Economic Sciences started out with fundamental theory and later used their results in practical applications, which have spread globally. Their discoveries are of great benefit to society,” says Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Prize Committee.
Paul R. Milgrom, born 1948 in Detroit, USA.
Ph.D. 1979 from Stanford University, Stanford, USA. Shirley and Leonard Ely Jr. Professor of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, USA.
Robert B. Wilson, born 1937 in Geneva, USA.
D.B.A. 1963 from Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus, Stanford University, USA.
The Prize amount: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the Laureates. Further information: www.kva.se and http://www.nobelprize.org Press contact: Eva Nevelius, Press Secretary, +46 70 878 67 63, eva.nevelius@kva.se Experts: Tommy Andersson, +46 73 358 26 54, tommy.andersson@nek.lu.se, Tore Ellingsen, +46 70 796 10 49, tore.ellingsen@hhs.se, Torsten Persson, +46 79 313 39 04, torsten.persson@iies.su.se, Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
The University of California has a proud legacy of winning Nobel Prizes, 68 faculty and staff have been awarded 69 Nobel Prizes.
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
PREVIOUS PRIZE WINNERS
The University of California has a proud legacy of winning Nobel Prizes that stretches all the way back to 1939, when Ernest O. Lawrence was awarded the prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron. In the years since, dozens of other University of California faculty and staff have been awarded this highest international honor for their contributions in medicine, economics, physics and more.
Today, 68 faculty and staff have been awarded 69 Nobel Prizes.
View as grid
Name
Campus affiliation
Field of study
Year of award
Jennifer Doudna
UC Berkeley
Chemistry
2020
Andrea Ghez
UCLA
Physics
2020
Reinhard Genzel
UC Berkeley
Physics
2020
Randy Schekman
UC Berkeley
Physiology or medicine
2013
Lloyd Shapley
UCLA
Economics
2012
Shinya Yamanaka
UC San Francisco
Physiology or medicine
2012
Saul Perlmutter
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
2011
Elizabeth Blackburn
UC San Francisco
Physiology or medicine
2009
Oliver E. Williamson
UC Berkeley
Economics
2009
Roger Y. Tsien
UC San Diego
Chemistry
2008
George Smoot
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
2006
Richard R. Schrock
UC Riverside
Chemistry
2005
David Gross
UC Santa Barbara
Physics
2004
Finn E. Kydland
UC Santa Barbara
Economic sciences
2004
Irwin Rose
UC Irvine
Chemistry
2004
Robert F. Engle
UC San Diego
Economic sciences
2003
Clive Granger
UC San Diego
Economic sciences
2003
Sydney Brenner
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
2002
George Akerlof
UC Berkeley
Economic sciences
2001
Alan J. Heeger
UC Santa Barbara
Chemistry
2000
Herbert Kroemer
UC Santa Barbara
Physics
2000
Daniel McFadden
UC Berkeley
Economic sciences
2000
Louis J. Ignarro
UCLA
Physiology or medicine
1998
Walter Kohn
UC Santa Barbara
Chemistry
1998
Robert B. Laughlin
UC Livermore Lab
Physics
1998
Paul D. Boyer
UCLA
Chemistry
1997
Steven Chu
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
1997
Stanley B. Prusiner
UC San Francisco
Physiology or medicine
1997
Paul Crutzen
UC San Diego
Chemistry
1995
Mario J. Molina
UC San Diego
Chemistry
1995
Frederick Reines
UC Irvine
Physics
1995
F. Sherwood Rowland
UC Irvine
Chemistry
1995
John Harsanyi
UC Berkeley
Economic sciences
1994
Harry Markowitz
UC San Diego
Economic sciences
1990
J. Michael Bishop
UC San Francisco
Physiology or medicine
1989
Harold E. Varmus
UC San Francisco
Physiology or medicine
1989
Donald J. Cram
UCLA
Chemistry
1987
Yuan T. Lee
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Chemistry
1986
Gerard Debreu
UC Berkeley
Economic sciences
1983
Czeslaw Milosz
UC Berkeley
Literature
1980
Roger Guillemin
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
1977
Renato Dulbecco
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
1975
George Emil Palade
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
1974
John Robert Schrieffer
UC Santa Barbara
Physics
1972
Hannes Alfven
UC San Diego
Physics
1970
Luis Walter Alvarez
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
1968
Robert W. Holley
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
1968
Julian Schwinger
UCLA
Physics
1965
Charles H. Townes
UC Berkeley
Physics
1964
Maria Goeppert-Mayer
UC San Diego
Physics
1963
Francis Crick
UC San Diego
Physiology or medicine
1962
Melvin Calvin
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Chemistry
1961
Donald A. Glaser
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
1960
Willard Libby
UCLA
Chemistry
1960
Owen Chamberlain
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
1959
Emilio Segrè
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Chemistry
1959
Linus Pauling
UC San Diego
Chemistry, Peace
1954, 1962
Edwin McMillan
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Chemistry
1951
Glenn T. Seaborg
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Chemistry
1951
William Giauque
UC Berkeley
Chemistry
1949
John Howard Northrop
UC Berkeley
Chemistry
1946
Wendell Meredith Stanley
UC Berkeley
Chemistry
1946
Ernest Lawrence
UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab
Physics
1939
Harold Urey
UC San Diego
Chemistry
1934
HOW UC NOBEL LAUREATES ARE COUNTED
Our list of Nobel Prize winners includes University of California faculty and staff who were affiliated with UC when they received their award. It also includes faculty and staff who joined UC after receiving their Nobel Prize. And although we are immensely proud of the many UC alumni who have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes, they are not counted here. Nor are visiting scholars or others who had short-term assignments with UC. Finally, our Nobelist list is a “lifetime” list and includes those living, retired or deceased.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier & Jennifer A. Doudna
Reporters:Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D. and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
UPDATED on 11/12/2020
Harvard’s Jack Szostak congratulates former advisee Jennifer Doudna
BYAlvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer
DATE
It was a toast from one Nobel laureate to another, sweetened by the pride of a mentor to a prized student.
When Jennifer Doudna Ph.D. ’89 was honored on Wednesday with the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the CRISPR gene-editing technique, she became the second person to gain such an honor from the lab of Jack Szostak, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Szostak, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2009 for work on how telomere caps keep the body’s chromosomes from breaking down, advised Doudna’s doctoral work on RNA and on Wednesday raised a glass in honor of Doudna, now at the University of California, Berkeley. In a tweet, Szostak expressed his delight at seeing someone he once guided through her early scientific steps soar to science’s highest reaches:
Doudna received the prize together with Emmanuelle Charpentier, for their work discovering and developing CRISPR as a precise gene-editing tool. In just the eight years since the pair announced their discovery the use of the technique has rapidly spread to a host of fields, allowing researchers to alter the code of life and develop resistant crops, new medical therapies, and even anticipate curing inherited diseases.
Live webcast from the press conference where the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020.
The Nobel Prize
@NobelPrize
BREAKING NEWS: The 2020 #NobelPrize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.”
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna“for the development of a method for genome editing.” The announcement was made at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. #nobelprize
Emmanuelle Charpentier Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany
Jennifer A. Doudna University of California, Berkeley, USA
“for the development of a method for genome editing”
Genetic scissors: a tool for rewriting the code of life
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.
Researchers need to modify genes in cells if they are to find out about life’s inner workings. This used to be time-consuming, difficult and sometimes impossible work. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, it is now possible to change the code of life over the course of a few weeks.
“There is enormous power in this genetic tool, which affects us all. It has not only revolutionised basic science, but also resulted in innovative crops and will lead to ground-breaking new medical treatments,” says Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
As so often in science, the discovery of these genetic scissors was unexpected. During Emmanuelle Charpentier’s studies of Streptococcus pyogenes, one of the bacteria that cause the most harm to humanity, she discovered a previously unknown molecule, tracrRNA. Her work showed that tracrRNA is part of bacteria’s ancient immune system, CRISPR/Cas, that disarms viruses by cleaving their DNA.
Charpentier published her discovery in 2011. The same year, she initiated a collaboration with Jennifer Doudna, an experienced biochemist with vast knowledge of RNA. Together, they succeeded in recreating the bacteria’s genetic scissors in a test tube and simplifying the scissors’ molecular components so they were easier to use.
In an epoch-making experiment, they then reprogrammed the genetic scissors. In their natural form, the scissors recognise DNA from viruses, but Charpentier and Doudna proved that they could be controlled so that they can cut any DNA molecule at a predetermined site. Where the DNA is cut it is then easy to rewrite the code of life.
Since Charpentier and Doudna discovered the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors in 2012 their use has exploded. This tool has contributed to many important discoveries in basic research, and plant researchers have been able to develop crops that withstand mould, pests and drought. In medicine, clinical trials of new cancer therapies are underway, and the dream of being able to cure inherited diseases is about to come true. These genetic scissors have taken the life sciences into a new epoch and, in many ways, are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.
Emmanuelle Charpentier, born 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. Ph.D. 1995 from Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany.
Jennifer A. Doudna, born 1964 in Washington, D.C, USA. Ph.D. 1989 from Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
(CNN)The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing.
They discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and micro-organisms with extremely high precision.
Before announcing the winners on Wednesday, Göran K. Hansson, secretary-general for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said that this year’s prize was about “rewriting the code of life.”
The American biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna (left) and French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, pictured together in 2016.
The CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools have revolutionized the molecular life sciences, brought new opportunities for plant breeding, are contributing to innovative cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true, according to a press release from the Nobel committee.
There have also been some ethical concerns around the CRISPR technology, however.
Charpentier, a French microbiologist, and Doudna, an American biochemist, are the first women to jointly win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the sixth and seventh women to win the chemistry prize.
Scenes from day that UC Berkeley Professor Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize For the full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/07/… University of California, Berkeley, biochemist Jennifer Doudna today won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing it with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier for the co-development of CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing breakthrough that has revolutionized biomedicine. CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists to rewrite DNA — the code of life — in any organism, including human cells, with unprecedented efficiency and precision. The groundbreaking power and versatility of CRISPR-Cas9 has opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology, agriculture and medicine, including the treatment of thousands of intractable diseases. Doudna and Charpentier, director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, will share the 10 million Swedish krona (more than $1 million) prize. “This great honor recognizes the history of CRISPR and the collaborative story of harnessing it into a profoundly powerful engineering technology that gives new hope and possibility to our society,” said Doudna. “What started as a curiosity‐driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition. I encourage continued support of fundamental science as well as public discourse about the ethical uses and responsible regulation of CRISPR technology.” Video by Clare Major & Roxanne Makasdjian
Jennifer Doudna wins 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry
By Robert Sanders, UC BerkeleyWednesday, October 7, 2020
“This great honor recognizes the history of CRISPR and the collaborative story of harnessing it into a profoundly powerful engineering technology that gives new hope and possibility to our society,” said Doudna. “What started as a curiosity‐driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition. I encourage continued support of fundamental science as well as public discourse about the ethical uses and responsible regulation of CRISPR technology.”
“The groundbreaking work of professor Jennifer Doudna has ushered in a revolutionary new era in genomics,” said UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D., in a statement this morning. “This Nobel Prize, which recognizes the discovery and real-world applications of CRISPR-Cas9, will continue to transform the scientific world, opening up new avenues for curing genetic diseases, improving crops and developing new biofuels. On behalf of the entire UC community, I join Chancellor Carol Christ in extending heartfelt congratulations to professor Doudna.”
While women have done research at UC Berkeley that, after they left the campus, won them a Nobel Prize, Doudna is the first woman on the UC Berkeley faculty to win the coveted award. She is the campus’s 25th Nobel laureate; the 24th winner, Reinhard Genzel, won the Nobel Prize in physics just yesterday.
Today’s honor also brings another first: Doudna and Charpentier are the first women to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences together, which sends the message, Doudna said, that “women rock.”
“Many women think that, no matter what they do, their work will never be recognized the way it would be if they were a man,” said Doudna, who was awakened from a sound sleep by a reporter at 2:53 a.m. today, learning for the first time that she’d won a Nobel. “And I think (this prize) refutes that. It makes a strong statement that women can do science, women can do chemistry, and that great science is recognized and honored.
“That means a lot to me personally, because I know that, when I was growing up, I couldn’t, in a million years, have ever imagined this moment.”
Doudna said she is “really, really proud to be representing Berkeley, … a public university that supports great science and great education, … a place that welcomes everyone, people from all over the world.” She added, “It’s a great feeling to have such incredible colleagues who are part of this.”
2020 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for Hepatitis C Discovery goes to British scientist Michael Houghton and US researchers Harvey Alter and Charles Rice
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2020 was awarded jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.”
Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to Hepatitis C discovery
By James Gallagher Health and science correspondent
The winners are British scientist Michael Houghton and US researchers Harvey Alter and Charles Rice.
The Nobel Prize committee said their discoveries ultimately “saved millions of lives”. The virus is a common cause of liver cancer and a major reason why people need a liver transplant.
In the 1960s, there was huge concern that people receiving donated blood were getting chronic hepatitis (liver inflammation) from an unknown, mysterious disease. The Nobel Prize committee said a blood transfusion at the time was like “Russian roulette”. Highly sensitive blood tests mean such cases have now been eliminated in many parts of the world, and effective anti-viral drugs have also been developed. “For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating Hepatitis C virus from the world,” the prize committee said. However, the 70 million people are currently living with the virus, which still kills around 400,000 a year.
The mystery killer
The viruses Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B had been discovered by the mid-1960s.
But Prof Harvey Alter, while studying transfusion patients at the US National Institutes of Health in 1972, showed there was another, mystery, infection at work. Patients were still getting sick after receiving donated blood. He showed that giving blood from infected patients to chimpanzees led to them developing the disease.
The mysterious illness became known as “non-A, non-B” hepatitis in and the hunt was now on.
Prof Michael Houghton, while at the pharmaceutical firm Chiron, managed to isolated the genetic sequence of the virus in 1989. This showed it was a type of flavivirus and it was named Hepatitis C.
And Prof Charles Rice, while at Washington University in St. Louis, applied the finishing touches in 1997. He injected a genetically engineered Hepatitis C virus into the liver of chimpanzees and showed this could lead to hepatitis.
The History, Uses, and Future of the Nobel Prize, 1:00pm – 6:00pm, Thursday, October 4, 2018, Harvard Medical School
Reporter in Real Time: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
Center for the History of Medicine
Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
invites you to register for
The History, Uses, and Future of the Nobel Prize
1:00pm – 6:00pm, Thursday, October 4, 2018
A half-day symposium bringing together an international group of historians and Nobel laureates to consider the history of the Nobel Prize and its enduring social, political, and scientific roles
PROGRAM
Panel I: Scientific Credit and the History of the Nobel Prize
Chair:Allan Brandt (Harvard Medical School and Harvard University) /
Jacalyn M. Duffin (Queen’s University): Commemorating Excellence: the Nobel Prize and the Historical Sociology of Science /
Nils Hansson, Thorsten Halling, and
Heiner Fangerau(Heinrich Heine-University): The First US-American Nobel Prize Nominees in Medicine (and why they failed) /
Jeffrey Flier(Harvard Medical School): The Past, Present, and Future of Scientific Credit in Biomedicine
Panel II: The Nobel – and Ig Nobel – Prize in Practice
Chair: David S. Jones (Harvard Medical School and Harvard University) /
David Kaiser(Massachusetts Institute of Technology): But Does it Scale? Awarding Nobel Prizes in Physics amid Exponential Growth /
Marc Abrahams (Annals of Improbable Research/Ig Nobel Prizes): Ig Nobel: Research that Makes You Laugh, then Makes You Think
Panel III: The Uses and Future of the Nobel Prize
Chair: Scott H. Podolsky(Harvard Medical School) /
Eric Chivian, Ira Helfand,
Bernard Lown,
James Muller, and
John Pastore(leadership of IPPNW, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1985): Decreasing the Nuclear Threat to Humanity – Nobel Peace Prizes to IPPNW in 1985 and ICAN in 2017 /
Torsten Wiesel (recipient, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1981): Nobel – Excellence Forever /
Jack Szostak (recipient, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009): Opportunities and Responsibilities that Come with Winning the Nobel Prize
Over the last few years, researchers have published atomic structures of numerous complicated protein complexes. a. A protein complex that governs the circadian rhythm. b. A sensor of the type that reads pressure changes in the ear and allows us to hear. c. The Zika virus.
We may soon have detailed images of life’s complex machineries in atomic resolution. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 is awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules. This method has moved biochemistry into a new era.
A picture is a key to understanding. Scientific breakthroughs often build upon the successful visualisation of objects invisible to the human eye. However, biochemical maps have long been filled with blank spaces because the available technology has had difficulty generating images of much of life’s molecular machinery. Cryo-electron microscopy changes all of this. Researchers can now freeze biomolecules mid-movement and visualise processes they have never previously seen, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals.
Electron microscopes were long believed to only be suitable for imaging dead matter, because the powerful electron beam destroys biological material. But in 1990, Richard Henderson succeeded in using an electron microscope to generate a three-dimensional image of a protein at atomic resolution. This breakthrough proved the technology’s potential.
Joachim Frank made the technology generally applicable. Between 1975 and 1986 he developed an image processing method in which the electron microscope’s fuzzy twodimensional images are analysed and merged to reveal a sharp three-dimensional structure.
Jacques Dubochet added water to electron microscopy. Liquid water evaporates in the electron microscope’s vacuum, which makes the biomolecules collapse. In the early 1980s, Dubochet succeeded in vitrifying water – he cooled water so rapidly that it solidified in its liquid form around a biological sample, allowing the biomolecules to retain their natural shape even in a vacuum.
Following these discoveries, the electron microscope’s every nut and bolt have been optimised. The desired atomic resolution was reached in 2013, and researchers can now routinely produce three-dimensional structures of biomolecules. In the past few years, scientific literature has been filled with images of everything from proteins that cause antibiotic resistance, to the surface of the Zika virus. Biochemistry is now facing an explosive development and is all set for an exciting future.
Joachim Frank, born 1940 in Siegen, Germany. Ph.D. 1970, Technical University of Munich, Germany. Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, USA. http://franklab.cpmc.columbia.edu/franklab/
Richard Henderson, born 1945 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ph.D. 1969, Cambridge University, UK. Programme Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/groups/rh15/
2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall (ex-Brandeis, University of Maine), Michael Rosbash (Brandeis University) and Michael W. Young (Rockefeller University in New York) for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm
Jeffrey C. Hall was born 1945 in New York, USA. He received his doctoral degree in 1971 at the University of Washington in Seattle and was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena from 1971 to 1973. He joined the faculty at Brandeis University in Waltham in 1974. In 2002, he became associated with University of Maine.
Michael Rosbash was born in 1944 in Kansas City, USA. He received his doctoral degree in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. During the following three years, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Since 1974, he has been on faculty at Brandeis University in Waltham, USA.
Michael W. Young was born in 1949 in Miami, USA. He received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas in Austin in 1975. Between 1975 and 1977, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto. From 1978, he has been on faculty at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Key publications
Zehring, W.A., Wheeler, D.A., Reddy, P., Konopka, R.J., Kyriacou, C.P., Rosbash, M., and Hall, J.C. (1984). P-element transformation with period locus DNA restores rhythmicity to mutant, arrhythmic Drosophila melanogaster. Cell 39, 369–376.
Bargiello, T.A., Jackson, F.R., and Young, M.W. (1984). Restoration of circadian behavioural rhythms by gene transfer in Drosophila. Nature 312, 752–754.
Siwicki, K.K., Eastman, C., Petersen, G., Rosbash, M., and Hall, J.C. (1988). Antibodies to the period gene product of Drosophila reveal diverse tissue distribution and rhythmic changes in the visual system. Neuron 1, 141–150.
Hardin, P.E., Hall, J.C., and Rosbash, M. (1990). Feedback of the Drosophila period gene product on circadian cycling of its messenger RNA levels. Nature 343, 536–540.
Liu, X., Zwiebel, L.J., Hinton, D., Benzer, S., Hall, J.C., and Rosbash, M. (1992). The period gene encodes a predominantly nuclear protein in adult Drosophila. J Neurosci 12, 2735–2744.
Vosshall, L.B., Price, J.L., Sehgal, A., Saez, L., and Young, M.W. (1994). Block in nuclear localization of period protein by a second clock mutation, timeless. Science 263, 1606–1609.
Price, J.L., Blau, J., Rothenfluh, A., Abodeely, M., Kloss, B., and Young, M.W. (1998). double-time is a novel Drosophila clock gene that regulates PERIOD protein accumulation. Cell 94, 83–95.
Keeping time on our human physiology
The biological clock is involved in many aspects of our complex physiology. We now know that all multicellular organisms, including humans, utilize a similar mechanism to control circadian rhythms. A large proportion of our genes are regulated by the biological clock and, consequently, a carefully calibrated circadian rhythm adapts our physiology to the different phases of the day (Figure 3). Since the seminal discoveries by the three laureates, circadian biology has developed into a vast and highly dynamic research field, with implications for our health and wellbeing.
Figure 3. The circadian clock anticipates and adapts our physiology to the different phases of the day. Our biological clock helps to regulate sleep patterns, feeding behavior, hormone release, blood pressure, and body temperature.
Medicine Nobel awarded for work on circadian clocks, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young unpicked molecular workings of cells’ daily rhythms.
Circadian clocks are molecular oscillators with ~24-hour periods that drive daily biological rhythms. Such clocks are found in all of the major branches of life, and they likely represent ancient timekeeping systems important for predicting daily environmental cycles on our rotating planet. In mammals, circadian clocks are present in most if not all cells. These distributed clocks control a myriad of processes, in aggregate creating coherent 24-hour programs of physiology and behavior.
A picture of how circadian clocks are built has emerged in the last two decades. The core mechanism is a transcriptional feedback loop, wherein the protein products of several clock genes build the molecular machinery to inhibit the transcription factor responsible for their own production. The molecular components of circadian clocks are conserved from insects to humans.
The Weitz lab uses molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and structural biology to investigate the mammalian circadian clock. The focus of our efforts at present is to understand the circadian clock in terms of the integrated functions of its several multi-protein machines. This effort is principally based on the purification of endogenous circadian clock protein complexes from mouse tissues and their biochemical analysis and structural study by cryo-electron microscopy.
Fig. 1. Class-average electron microscopy images of the mouse nuclear PER complex, a core circadian clock machine. It is a 1.9-MDa assembly of about thirty proteins that appears as a quasi-spherical, beaded particle of 40-nm diameter. Our current work provides an initial low-resolution view of the structural organization of endogenous clock machinery from a eukaryote. We aim to obtain high-resolution structures.
Selected papers:
Duong HA, Robles MS, Knutti K, Weitz CJ. A molecular mechanism for circadian clock negative feedback. Science 332, 1436-1439 (2011).
Padmanabhan K, Robles MS, Westerling T, Weitz CJ. Feedback regulation of transcriptional termination by the mammalian circadian clock PERIOD complex. Science 337, 599-602 (2012).
Kim JY, Kwak PB, Weitz CJ. Specificity in circadian clock feedback from targeted reconstitution of the NuRD co-repressor. Mol. Cell 56, 738-748 (2014).
Aryal RA, Kwak PB, Tamayo AG, Chiu PL, Walz T, Weitz CJ. Macromolecular assemblies of the mammalian circadian clock. Mol. Cell (2017, in press).
Prolonged Wakefulness: Lack of Sufficient Duration of Sleep as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Diseases – – Indications for Cardiovascular Chrono-therapeutics
But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.
Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”
So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.
Bob Dylan Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature, Scientists cited his Verses in Scientific Article Titles
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
In 1964, I was in the 9th grade in High School in Haifa, Israel, our very gifted English teacher, brought to class Bob Dylan and explained in class how important it is to expose high school students to his very creative poetic expressions and lyrics which had an influence on her as a Literature Critique.
Our English teacher, Tamara has immigrated to Israel from the UK. Tamara Sachs, who Chaired the Committee for CurriculumDevelopmentfor the English Language Arts Subject Matter at Ministry of Education in Israel, was also the Editor of the Textbook used for English Subject matter in Israeli high Schools for the 9th and 10th grades. She created Textbooks that had Contemporary Literature contents beside the Classic English Text taught in high School in Israel and part of the National Standardized Matriculation Exam at the end of the 12th grade.
I enjoyed Bob Dylan songs ever since, 1964 to Present.
I took my family to attend his performance in the Berkshires, MA on JUL2 2016 SATURDAY, 7:00 PM
Tanglewood welcomes Bob Dylan with special guest Mavis Staples to the Koussevitzky Music Shed on Saturday, July 2 at 7 p.m. Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has performed twice at Tanglewood first in 1991 and again during the 1997 season. Gates open at 4PM.
All three VIP packages include a merchandise item designed and created exclusively for package purchasers and a collectible laminate to remember your evening.
Front Row Package $355 – Front Row Ticket – SOLD OUT
UPDATED on 12/15/2016
Patti Smith covers, bungles Bob Dylan’s song upon accepting his Nobel Prize at ceremony in Stockholm, 12/10/2016
Carl Gornitzki and colleagues examine how far medical scientists are under his spell
In September 2014 it emerged that a group of scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden had been sneaking the lyrics of Bob Dylan into their papers as part of a long running bet. The story, originally published in the house magazine KI-Bladet, quickly went viral—spreading from the local Swedish press to international media such as theGuardian and Washington Post.12 It all started in 1997 with a review in Nature Medicine entitled “Nitric oxide and inflammation: the answer is blowing in the wind.”3 A local phenomenon was thus revealed, but was this Dylan citing unique to the Karolinska Institute? We decided to investigate how Dylan’s lyrics are cited in the biomedical literature.
Knockin’ on pollen’s door
We used a list of all Dylan’s song and album titles downloaded from bobdylan.com to do a search using Medline in May 2015. In addition, we searched for truncated versions of a selection of the most popular Dylan songs to find modified titles,4 such as “Knockin’ on pollen’s door: live cell …
Citing Dylan. Bob Dylan has won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2015, inspired by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who had been sneaking Dylan lyrics into their papers, a team writing in the BMJ reported that Dylan citations were “uncommon before 1990 but [have] increased exponentially since then”. They note: “Some journals have more Dylan citing articles than others; for instance, we found six articles citing Dylan songs in Nature.”
2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices, the winners: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
3 Makers of World’s Smallest Machines Awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry
■ Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices.
Who are the winners?
Dr. Sauvage, 71, was born in Paris and received his Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of Strasbourg in France, where he is a professor emeritus. He is also director of research emeritus at the National Center for Scientific Research in France.
Dr. Stoddart, 74, was born in Edinburgh, received his Ph.D. in 1966 from Edinburgh University, and is a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He previously taught at U.C.L.A. and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to science.
Dr. Feringa, 64, was born in Barger-Compascuum, the Netherlands, and received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Groningen, where he is a professor of organic chemistry.
Molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices, may eventually be used to create new materials, sensors and energy storage systems, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the prize.
“In terms of development, the molecular motor is at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s, when scientists displayed various spinning cranks and wheels, unaware that they would lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans and food processors,” the academy said.
The three scientists — Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa — will share equally in the prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or about $930,000.
Why did they win?
Nanotechnology — the creation of structures on the scale of a nanometer, or a billionth of a meter — has been a field of fruitful research for a couple of decades. Now, scientists are learning how to construct tiny moving machines about one-thousandth the width of a strand of human hair.
Why is the work important?
The three men invigorated the field of topological chemistry, the academy said on Wednesday. They were pioneers in the second wave of nanotechnology, a field that the physicist Richard P. Feynman, also a Nobel laureate, foresaw as early as 1959. He gave a seminal lecture in 1984, toward the end of his life, on design and engineering at the molecular scale.
In living organisms, nature has produced a slew of molecular machines that ferry materials around cells, construct proteins and divide cells. Artificial molecular machines are still primitive by comparison, but scientists can already envision applications in the future.
“Think about nanomachines, microrobots,” said Dr. Feringa, who spoke by telephone with journalists assembled in Stockholm at the prize announcement. “Think about tiny robots that the doctor in the future will inject in your blood veins, and they go search for cancer cells or going to deliver drugs, for instance.”
The technology could also lead to the creation of “smart materials” that change properties based on external signals, Dr. Feringa said.
2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states, the winners: David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
3 Who Studied Unusual States of Matter Win 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics
David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics last Tuesday for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states.
Who are the winners?
Dr. Thouless, 82, was born in Bearsden, Scotland, was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and received a Ph.D. in 1958 from Cornell. From 1965 to 1978, he taught mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham in England, where he collaborated with Dr. Kosterlitz. In 1980, he joined the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is now an emeritus professor.
Dr. Haldane, 65, was born in London. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge, where he was also an undergraduate, in 1978. He worked at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France; the University of Southern California; Bell Laboratories; and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990.
Dr. Kosterlitz, 73, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and received his doctorate in high-energy physics from Oxford University in 1969. He has worked at the University of Birmingham; the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Turin, Italy; and Cornell, Princeton, Bell Laboratories and Harvard.
The scientists relied on advanced mathematical models to study “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter,” in the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Their studies may have major applications in electronics, materials science and computing. In an email, Michael S. Turner, a physicist at the University of Chicago, described the work as “truly transformational, with long-term consequences both practical and fundamental.”
Why did they win?
The three laureates sought to understand matter that is so cold or so thin that weird quantum effects overpower the random atomic jostling that dominates ordinary existence. Superconductivity, in which all electrical resistance vanishes in matter, is one example of such an effect.
Dr. Thouless and Dr. Kosterlitz worked together at the University of Birmingham in the 1970s to investigate what happens when two-dimensional films of matter shift from one exotic phase, like superconductivity, to another.
