14 DAY TRIAL // During December 5-11, Nobel Prize laureates participate in extensive manifestations in Stockholm and Oslo, as the Nobel Week takes its regular course. This year, the winners in each category were offered the prestigious awards for remarkable contributions to their fields of research. As always, there were six Prizes to be won, in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Economics and Peace efforts. And the winners are...
For the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics and for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry, which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature, Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2008. Nambu received half of the Prize, while the other two researchers got a quarter each.
For the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP, Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien received the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The three scientists received one third of the prize each for their remarkable contribution to the field of chemistry, and for the potentially huge impact that their protein could have on medical sciences.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008 was split between Harald zur Hausen, for his discovery of the human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer in women, who received half the Prize, and researchers Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, who discovered the human immunodeficiency virus as early as 1984, and got a quarter of the Prize each.
For the "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization", the Nobel Prize commission awarded the 2008 Literature Prize to French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. The grandeur of his work left him without competition for this year's edition of the awards.
In the Commission's own words, "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts," the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Finnish peace activist, Martti Ahtisaari. The announcement was made by Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman, professor Ole Danbolt Mjös, on October 10th, 2008.
The 2008 Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's Central Bank) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Princeton University professor Paul Krugman, "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." The financial institution set up the Economics prize to commemorate Nobel in 1969.