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Article: Playing catch-up; The 2001 Nobel prizes.(Nobel-prize judges still living in the past)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- October 13, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Still famous, after all these years
This year's Nobel prizes were awarded for work on cell division, Bose-Einstein condensates and single-handed catalysts
WELL, they blew it. The Nobel authorities had a perfect opportunity to give an award that followed the letter of their founder's will ("shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind"), and they chose not to. There was, in other words, no prize for last year's announcement of two draft versions of the human genome. Perhaps the controversial race between the public and private sequencing projects was too ...