I somehow managed to lose track of time for a bit, and forgot that it was Nobel season until I saw this morning’s announcement that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine hase just been announced, going to Mario R. Capecchi, Sir Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies,
for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells
Good thing they got the Nobel, because that sounds like the sort of icky, un-Godly work we wouldn’t want to actually, you know, fund.
Anyway, the announcement of this prize means that the rest of the Nobels will be announced over the next week or so. (via RSS, if you want it in almost-real-time). And, unfortunately, the Physics prize will be announced tomorrow morning, which doesn’t give a great deal of time for guessing games.
However, I will repeat last year’s betting pool, even in this compressed time frame. So, the title pretty much says it all:
Leave a comment here guessing the winner of one or more of this year’s Nobel Prizes. If you correctly identify any of the laureates, you’ll win a prize.
Rules and restrictions below the fold:
The prize last year was the right to choose a post topic, which I’m also offering as an incentive for donating to DonorsChoose. So, if you’re cheap, this is a good way to get to dictate blog content. Alternately, you can request something cheap and tacky from Japan, as I do have a tacky little souvenir statue that I bought for the “guess the pictures” contest, before I saw the glow-in-the-dark Buddha.
Guesses are limited to one per person per Prize (this means you, Jonathan vos Post), and must include both the name and the Prize you think they’ll win. Ideally, you should also include a short comment on the research area of the people in question, but this isn’t required. Thus, an ideal entry would be of the form “Richard Dawkins will win the Peace Prize for his efforts to make us all coalesce into one big gut-laugh at religion,” and this would get you nothing if he subsequently wins the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences. You can guess the same person for more than one prize, but only one person per prize.
Winning entires must be posted by midnight Eastern time of the day before the announcement. Thus, the deadlines are:
- Physics: midnight tonight
- Chemistry: midnight Tuesday
- Literature: midnight Wednesday
- Peace: midnight Friday
- Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Scienes: midnight Sunday
The contest is not open to members of the Swedish Academy or their families or employees.
So, let’s hear some guesses. Who’s going to win some dynamite money this year?