Who Would You Love to See Win a Nobel Prize?
October means Nobel prize season! Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economic sciences are announced each year. This month, we asked: Who would you love to see win and why? We invited members of our community to submit answers about someone they knew personally or admire from afar. We encouraged people to have fun with their responses and opened our question for submissions related to historical figures as well contemporaries. To add your voice to the conversation, please submit a comment below or via this form.
“Dr. Paul Farmer’s trailblazing humanitarian efforts were second to none. His work will leave a lasting legacy in the most needed countries. While Nobel Prizes aren’t awarded posthumously, he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.” –Karen Bruynell, M.M., administrative director, Brigham Education Institute
“Over the last decades, tremendous progress has been made by many dedicated investigators in sleep and circadian research and medicine. I would love to see the Nobel prize in Medicine or Physiology be awarded to Dr. Joseph Takahashi for discovering the molecular basis of the mammalian circadian clock and its importance for physiology, to Dr. Eve Van Cauter for her seminal work revealing that sleep is not just important for the brain but also for the body, and to Dr. Charles Czeisler for his groundbreaking work demonstrating the importance of light for the human circadian timing system.” –Frank Scheer, PhD, director of the Medical Chronobiology Program and senior neuroscientist in the Departments of Medicine and Neurology
“As someone who cannot see without my glasses, I think whoever invented spectacles should get a Nobel Prize. Simple windows balanced on our noses open the world! A simple and highly effective invention.” –Valerie Luyckx, MBBCh, MSc, PhD, Division of Nephrology
“I would love to see Dr. Robert Langer win a Nobel prize in medicine. Dr Langer is chemical engineer and scientist and David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. His contributions in the fields of drug and gene delivery, bioengineering and drug targeting have resulted in several patents and inventions that helped improve the life of patients all over the world.”—Ahmed Elzoghby, PhD, instructor of Medicine, Division of Engineering in Medicine
“I would love to see Yuri Kochiyama win a Nobel Peace Prize. Yuri Kochiyama is best known for her work as a human rights activist and speaking out against oppressive institutions and racial injustice in the United States. She has also successfully worked towards building solidarity among people of color, which makes her a personal inspiration to me.”—Cherice Chan, BA, research assistant, Department of Newborn Pediatric Medicine
“Dr. Paul Farmer, acknowledging the Nobel can’t be granted posthumously. I can think of no one who better embodied medical care as a form of love and basic humanity than Dr. Farmer. His world view and work serve as a shining example of what we must prioritize in this challenging geopolitical moment, especially when those most impacted have contributed the least to those challenges.”—Bernie Jones, EdM, vice president, Primary & Value-Based Care, Public Policy, and Administrative Operations