The 2025 Nobel prizes are coming out this week. Today the one in medicine was announced:
There have been several exciting new drugs called checkpoint inhibitors in the last few years for which this research provided important foundational studies.
Speculation for the Peace Prize is all over the place. There doesn’t seem to be a clear frontrunner. I look forward to being surprised.
And I won’t be disappointed if one of the losers has an aneurysm and ragequits this world.
I think the Nobel Peace Prize should go to the guy whose brilliant strategy ended the war between two countries somewhere in Asia, or maybe the Middle East – he doesn’t quite remember what countries they were, but he’s sure that he ended whatever war there was. No one has ended wars better than he has. As he predicted, he ended the war in Ukraine on the very first day of his inauguration, just due to his sheer brilliance!
Who are some of the nominees? I suppose Trump is one (I’ll refrain from commenting further on that), but who are some of the others?
There are always hundreds of nominees. Their names (and who nominated them) are not made public. All information is speculative.
Thanks for that; it is good to know. But it is somewhat comforting that we do not know who was nominated. That way, it will be a real surprise, rather than people discussing and creating an online popularity contest.
I just got a chance to read the Ars article listed in the OP, describing the discovery that won the Nobel in Medicine.
Highly, highly recommended reading. An amazingly well written and accessible story of scientific investigation. Genuinely inspiring.
So the physics Nobel was just announced:
John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Michel H. Devoret (Yale University, New Haven, CT and University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), and John M. Martinis (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”.
Essentially, this means the foundations of superconducting circuits, which e.g. IBM uses in their quantum computers. That means another one of the foundational technologies for quantum computing getting the nod (after ion traps/cavity QED and entangled photons), but not (yet?) quantum computing itself, with David Deutsch always being a betting favorite.
(Also, one of the laureates in medicine might not know of his good fortune yet, as he’s apparently off hiking off-grid somewhere in Idaho: Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid | Nobel prizes | The Guardian)
Please, please, please give the peace prize to the January 6 investigation committee. Please.
No, jack shit didn’t get done, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Every year, I look at the winners to see if it’s someone I’ve heard of, or, particularly for the scientific awards, work that I’m familiar with. I was particularly pleased when Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman won the medicine prize a couple of years ago for work that led to the mRNA vaccines against COVID or when Kazuo Ishiguro won the literature prize.
But most years, I’ve never heard of the people or their work.
My nephew is doing T cell research (pretty sure a different aspect), will definitely ask him about the prize.
Brian
One of of the Physics winners was a part of my thesis committee (and is still a friend). Another taught me how to deposit niobium as a fellow grad student from a different research group (and is more of an acquaintance).
My bet is on the Peace Prize going to some multinational NGO, a la Doctors without Borders or the like. Though “no prize” is also an option; IIRC, that happened once or twice during WWII.
And while the nominee list is secret, there are enough folks qualified to submit nominations that it’s virtually certain that Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, the leaders of Hamas, Kim Jong Un, and Khamenei have all been nominated. As well as Biden, Harris, the J6 committee, Zelenskyy, and pretty much everyone else prominent on the world stage.
Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their development of metal–organic frameworks that could eventually help reduce pollution and combat climate change. A member of the Nobel committee likened the discovery to Hermione Granger’s seemingly bottomless enchanted handbag in the “Harry Potter” series, in that the frameworks may look small from the outside, but are able to hold surprisingly vast quantities within them.
The Nobel Committee said Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi were being awarded for “groundbreaking discoveries,” saying “some of these may contribute to solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges.”
Is Hermione really the type model for a Bag of Holding, nowadays? To me, that’ll always be Mary Poppins.
I would have said Felix the Cat, but nobody younger than me would know what the Hell I was talking about.
The Nobel Committee announced Thursday that 71 year old Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in literature. He is known for postmodern and apocalyptic novels and novellas like Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance.
In a statement the committee says it is honoring Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
Satantango, Krasznahorkai’s first novel, came out in 1985. It’s about a pair of swindlers and a nearly abandoned collective farm.
László Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in literature
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561746/nobel-prize-in-literature
Sounds like I need to do some homework.
I’d go with Fat Feddy’s Cat, but no one except a generation older than me would know what I am talking about…