The Nobel prize for chemistry this year is given to one Japanese and two American scientists. This was for the ability of a jellyfish to glow and then transform it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology for seeing the extravagant movement of living cells and the numerous proteins within them.
The three scientists are Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston university medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.
Royal Swedish academy of sciences will honor the three of them with a third of the 10 million Krona prize (about $1.4 million).
“The reaction was just a surprise” said Dr. Shimomura when he was asked that what was his reaction after receiving a 5.am call informing him that he has won the Nobel prize.
Dr.Tsien was listed in the last week’s list of Thomson Reuters as a prediction for this year’s Nobel Prize. But he said “I didn’t want to put any credence in it” as the predictions for physics medicine prizes this week were false.
Dr. Chalfie confessed at a news conference at Columbia that he never received a call from Sweden for his achievement. “I slept through it” he said. He also told that just because he had turned down his ringer a few days ago, he thought that the phone was ringing at his neighbors place at 6.10 in the morning.
“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone. I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.” he added.
