NLS Profiles

After the announcement of the Nobel Committee that Ralph Steinman had been awarded the other half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of dendritic cells nobody could get hold of him to announce the news or get an interview. Hours later the tragic news of his death three days earlier made headlines around the world.

The doors of the Thavenius saloon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm open and two researchers come in. Not in lab coats or scruffy jeans and T-shirts, but in suits,; one of them with a discrete pin picturing Alfred Nobel on his jacket. Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman have been awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and have come to Stockholm to join the festivities of the Nobel week.

When Dan Shechtman saw the first signs of quasicrystals nobody believed him. He had to endure being called a quasiresearcher, was asked to leave his research group and to check up on the basic facts.

I met professor Ei-ichi Negishi on the first day of his Swedish visit, in a festively decorated Grand Hotel and with the snow whirling outside.

Professor Robert G. Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2010 for “the development of in vitro fertilization”.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for mapping the ribosome at the atomic level. The pioneering work was performed by the Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath, who dedicatedly and persistently continued to reveal the large and complex ribosome structure at a time when many believed it was impossible.