AAAS Members among 2002 Nobel Prize Winners

As founded in Alfred Nobel's will 102 years ago, the Nobel Prize was the first "truly international prize."

In an introduction to The Nobel Prize: The First 100 Years (edited by Agneta Wallin Levinovitz and Nils Ringertz), the authors describe their view of the growing prestige of the Nobel Prize. First, they say, it represents a way of recognizing "the most significant contributions to the progress of mankind," in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economics. "The main reason for the prestige of the prize today is, however, the lasting importance of the names on the list of Laureates, and their contributions to human development."

Five of the scientists who were recently awarded Nobels in economics, chemistry, medicine and physics are members and/or fellows of AAAS. Their names and their contributions to advancing science are listed below:

CHEMISTRY: Kurt Wuthrich, a AAAS Fellow and professor of biophysics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and a visiting professor of structural biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, was recognized for his work using nuclear magnetic resonance imagery to map the structure of proteins.

Wuthrich, who shared the prize with John B. Fenn, of the Virginia Commonwealth University, and Koichi Tanaka, of the Shimadzu Corporation, "developed a general method of systematically assigning certain fixed points in the protein molecule, and also a principle for determining the distances between these," according to the Nobel Foundation's 9 October press release. "Using the distances, (Wuthrich) was able to calculate the three-dimensional structure of the protein. The advantage of NMR is that proteins can be studied in solution, i.e. an environment similar to that in the living cell."

The NMR technique permits scientists to view the structure of the proteins and to design drugs that can treat, for instance, HIV and cancer.

MEDICINE: Sydney Brenner, a AAAS Fellow and founder of the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, CA, and H. Robert Horvitz, David H. Koch Professor of Cancer Biology at MIT, received the prize in medicine for identifying key genes in the nematode (a roundworm), Caenorhabditis elegans that regulate organ development and programmed cell death, and for showing that corresponding genes exist in humans.

"The discoveries are important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases," noted the 7 October press release that announced that Brenner and Horvitz would share the prize with John E. Sulston, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK.

PHYSICS: Riccardo Giacconi, a AAAS Fellow and research professor in the Johns Hopkins' Department of Physics and Astronomy, was recognized for building the first X-ray telescopes and for research that "laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy."

Giacconi, who shared the prize with Raymond Davis Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania, and Masatoshi Koshiba, of the University of Tokyo, "detected for the first time a source of X-rays outside our solar system and he was the first to prove that the universe contains background radiation of X-ray light," according to the 8 October press release announcing the award. "He also detected sources of X-rays that most astronomers now consider to contain black holes."

ECONOMICS: Vernon Smith, a AAAS Fellow and professor of law and economics at George Mason University, divided the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Princeton University psychology professor Daniel Kahneman.

Smith was awarded the prize for his seminal role in developing the field of experimental economics, according to the 9 October press release that accompanied the announcement.

"He has developed an array of experimental methods, setting standards for what constitutes a reliable laboratory experiment in economics," the release noted. "In his own experimental work, he has demonstrated the importance of alternative market institutions, e.g., how the revenue expected by a seller depends on the choice of auction method...His work has been instrumental in establishing experiments as an essential tool in empirical economic analysis."

—Coimbra Sirica

18 October 2002