Nobel Committee

A University of Pennsylvania graduate, a fellow researcher at New Jersey's Bell Laboratories and a Shanghai-born scientist will share the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics for work on the optical side of the digital revolution. George E. Smith, who got his B.A. from Penn in 1955 and lives in Waretown, Ocean County, and Nova Scotia-born Willard S. Boyle invented the charge-coupled device, an image-capturing technology that led to digital cameras in 1969. They'll share half of the $1.4 million prize with Charles K. Kao, who in 1966 determined how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers, which can carry information - text, music and pictures - more compactly and with less signal loss than metal wires.

Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for not committing the heinous acts so traditional among his predecessors. Under this criterion, Saddam Hussein might win next year's prize if he decides to pull out of Kuwait. What twisted logic is it that honors someone for promoting "peace" by not re-invading sovereign nations to put down their longings to breathe free? For allowing the Berlin Wall, a wall his country's leaders ordered erected, to be torn down? There was the little matter of the attempted strangulation of the Baltic states, but the Nobel committee chose to ignore that.

NEW YORK - Ralph Steinman, a pioneer in understanding how cells fight disease, tried to help his own immune system thwart his pancreatic cancer. Steinman survived until Friday. Three days later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. The Nobel committee, unaware of his death, announced the award Monday in Stockholm. Steinman's employer, Rockefeller University in New York, learned of his death after the Nobel announcement. Steinman's wife, Claudia, said the family had planned to disclose his death Monday - only to discover an e-mail to his cellphone from the Nobel committee.

From the vantage point of October, it appears that Philadelphia was on to something when it awarded - against a backdrop of some protest - its July Fourth Liberty Medal to South Africa's Nelson Mandela and his one-time jailer, the nation's president, F. W. de Klerk. This week, and with much the same feeling of risk and conflicted emotions, the prestigious Nobel Committee selected the same two men for its Peace Prize - despite the past, despite South Africa's continuing violence and despite the unfinished business of uplifting that country's long-suffering black majority.

Renato Dulbecco, 97, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his seminal research on the interaction between tumors and cells, died Sunday in California. Dr. Dulbecco, an early proponent of sequencing genomes that led to the Human Genome Project, died in La Jolla, Italy's National Research Council - where Dr. Dulbecco worked on the genome project in the 1990s - said Monday. Dr. Dulbecco was a founding fellow of the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he was an emeritus president and distinguished professor.

Tom Foglietta, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, was pleased as punch when he learned that his friend, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, had been selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. "I just had tears in my eyes," the former South Philly congressman said yesterday from Rome. "I was just totally emotional and moved by it. To have a friend to receive a Nobel peace award is a decisive moment in anybody's life. " Part of Foglietta's pride in Kim's accomplishment stems from the beating Foglietta absorbed for Kim in 1985.

Jay Nordlinger?is a senior editor of National Review and the author of the just-released "Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World" (Encounter Books) The story of the Nobel Peace Prize is a long one, beginning in 1901. It is also an interesting one, boasting a huge, diverse cast of characters. In 1947, it becomes a bit of a Philadelphia story. The prize was shared that year by two Quaker relief organizations: the Friends Service Council in London and the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.

That's some prize, that Nobel Prize. Sometimes, though, it comes with a sermon attached. All of the Nobelists announced so far are incredibly deserving. Especially moving is the life story of Mario Capecchi, one of three winners for the Nobel in medicine. At 9, he was abandoned on the streets of postwar Italy. He was found, taken to the United States, and lived for a while in Bucks County. Later, as a molecular geneticist, he helped to invent "knockout" mice (mice in which you can deactivate the gene of your choice, and thus learn what the gene does)

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias received the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and said he hoped that it would strengthen the Central American peace plan for which it was awarded. Arias called on the United States and the Soviet Union to let Central Americans resolve their own problems. "In the name of God, at least they should leave us in peace," he said. "We cannot require sovereign states to conform to patterns of government not of their own choosing. But we can and do insist that every government respect those universal rights of man that have meaning beyond national boundaries and ideological labels," Arias said.

The 1988 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded yesterday to the United Nations' peace-keeping forces, which have served in trouble spots for more than 40 years. "The Nobel Committee recognizes that the quest for peace is a universal undertaking involving all the nations and peoples of the world," U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar said while announcing the award to a delighted gathering of the 43d U.N. General Assembly. "The award is a tribute to the idealism of all who have served this organization and in particular to the valor and sacrifices of those who have contributed, and continue to contribute, to our peace-keeping operations.

Jay Nordlinger?is a senior editor of National Review and the author of the just-released "Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World" (Encounter Books) The story of the Nobel Peace Prize is a long one, beginning in 1901. It is also an interesting one, boasting a huge, diverse cast of characters. In 1947, it becomes a bit of a Philadelphia story. The prize was shared that year by two Quaker relief organizations: the Friends Service Council in London and the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.

Renato Dulbecco, 97, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his seminal research on the interaction between tumors and cells, died Sunday in California. Dr. Dulbecco, an early proponent of sequencing genomes that led to the Human Genome Project, died in La Jolla, Italy's National Research Council - where Dr. Dulbecco worked on the genome project in the 1990s - said Monday. Dr. Dulbecco was a founding fellow of the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he was an emeritus president and distinguished professor.

NEW YORK - Ralph Steinman, a pioneer in understanding how cells fight disease, tried to help his own immune system thwart his pancreatic cancer. Steinman survived until Friday. Three days later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. The Nobel committee, unaware of his death, announced the award Monday in Stockholm. Steinman's employer, Rockefeller University in New York, learned of his death after the Nobel announcement. Steinman's wife, Claudia, said the family had planned to disclose his death Monday - only to discover an e-mail to his cellphone from the Nobel committee.

The Chinese government has denounced the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned dissident writer Liu Xiaobo as "blasphemy. " Liu unnerved China's ruling elite in 2008 by drafting a document called Charter 08, which calls on the Communist Party to relinquish its exclusive hold on power and permit democratic reforms. Ten thousand Chinese have signed this manifesto. (I interviewed Wan Yanhai, one of the original signers, in June in Philadelphia, after he was forced to flee his country.

A University of Pennsylvania graduate, a fellow researcher at New Jersey's Bell Laboratories and a Shanghai-born scientist will share the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics for work on the optical side of the digital revolution. George E. Smith, who got his B.A. from Penn in 1955 and lives in Waretown, Ocean County, and Nova Scotia-born Willard S. Boyle invented the charge-coupled device, an image-capturing technology that led to digital cameras in 1969. They'll share half of the $1.4 million prize with Charles K. Kao, who in 1966 determined how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers, which can carry information - text, music and pictures - more compactly and with less signal loss than metal wires.

Had Tony Soprano been under his care, Aaron Beck says he could have cured his panic attacks in two sessions. Bada-bing that, Sigmund Freud. Instead, Dr. Melfi kept the Sopranos mob boss on the couch for years with traditional psychoanalysis, delving into his childhood and deconstructing his dreams. Beck, the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist who founded the burgeoning field of cognitive therapy, says he and Tony together would have set up short-term goals, then strategized behavior changes to attain them.

That's some prize, that Nobel Prize. Sometimes, though, it comes with a sermon attached. All of the Nobelists announced so far are incredibly deserving. Especially moving is the life story of Mario Capecchi, one of three winners for the Nobel in medicine. At 9, he was abandoned on the streets of postwar Italy. He was found, taken to the United States, and lived for a while in Bucks County. Later, as a molecular geneticist, he helped to invent "knockout" mice (mice in which you can deactivate the gene of your choice, and thus learn what the gene does)

The United Nations and its secretary-general, Kofi Annan, were awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for their "efforts to achieve peace and security in the world" since the Cold War. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said its choice of winners was "underpinned" by the Sept. 11 attacks and the retaliation by the United States, which has mounted its diplomatic and military response with only a marginal role for the United Nations so far. Committee leader Gunnar Berge told reporters in Oslo that the United Nations might have won even if there had been no Sept.

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced it had awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize for Peace to Kim Dae Jung, president of South Korea, "for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular. " But we in Philadelphia already knew President Kim was great. He was awarded the city's Liberty Medal in 1999. And right now, do we ever need thoughts of peace. Middle East turmoil and the murderous bombing of the USS Cole remind us that it takes just one scream to shatter the calm.

Tom Foglietta, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, was pleased as punch when he learned that his friend, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, had been selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. "I just had tears in my eyes," the former South Philly congressman said yesterday from Rome. "I was just totally emotional and moved by it. To have a friend to receive a Nobel peace award is a decisive moment in anybody's life. " Part of Foglietta's pride in Kim's accomplishment stems from the beating Foglietta absorbed for Kim in 1985.