Nobel Prize

STOCKHOLM - Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for a discovery that faced skepticism and mockery, even prompting his expulsion from his research team, before it won widespread acceptance as a breakthrough. While doing research in the United States in 1982, Shechtman discovered a new chemical structure - quasicrystals - that researchers previously thought was impossible. He was studying a mix of aluminum and manganese in an electron microscope when he found the atoms were arranged in a pattern that appeared contrary to the laws of nature.

The Nobel Prize in physics goes to three men who upended our view of the heavens by discovering that the universe, rather than continuing to slow down after the Big Bang, is now speeding up as it expands - due to a still-mysterious force that has been dubbed dark energy. One of the three is astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, 52, a graduate of Germantown Friends School, who grew up in West Mount Airy and now works at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Nobel Prize Winner grew up here Saul Perlmutter won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics yesterday, but it wasn't until the California scientist who grew up in West Mount Airy was awakened by a telephone call from a reporter in Sweden that he learned of the distinction. " 'How do I feel about what?' " Perlmutter, 52, remembered asking the reporter before dawn from his Berkeley home. His wife looked online and told him it wasn't a hoax. "Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call," Perlmutter, a graduate of Germantown Friends School, told the Associated Press shortly after the announcement in Stockholm.

STOCKHOLM - A pioneering researcher was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine yesterday, three days after dying of pancreatic cancer without ever knowing he was about to be honored for his immune-system work that he had used to prolong his own life. The Nobel committee said it was unaware that Canadian-born cell biologist Ralph Steinman had died when it awarded the prize to him, American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann. Since the committee is supposed to consider only living scientists, the Nobel Foundation held an emergency meeting yesterday and said the decision on the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million)

The Nobel Prize in physics goes to three men who upended our view of the heavens by discovering that the universe, rather than continuing to slow down after the Big Bang, is now speeding up as it expands - due to a still-mysterious force that has been dubbed dark energy. One of the three is astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, 52, a graduate of Germantown Friends School who grew up in West Mt. Airy and now works at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Baruj Benacerraf, 90, a Venezuela-born immunologist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, died Tuesday of pneumonia at his Boston home. A physician-scientist, Mr. Benacerraf discovered that genetic factors played a central role in the function of the immune system. That finding led to a 1980 Nobel Prize for him and colleagues Jean Dausset of the University of Paris and George Snell of Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. He also led the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow, 89, a medical physicist who persisted in entering a field largely reserved for men to become only the second woman to earn a Nobel Prize in medicine, died Monday in New York City, where she had lived most of her life. Dr. Yalow, a product of New York City schools and the daughter of parents who never finished high school, graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College at age 19 and was its first physics major. Yet she struggled to be accepted for graduate studies.

Baruch Blumberg, a Philadelphia researcher who won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1976 for his work on hepatitis B, died Tuesday in Moffett Field, Ca., at the age of 85. He collapsed after giving a speech at the International Lunar Research Park Exploratory Workshop being held at the NASA Ames Research Center, said his daughter, Anne Blumberg. Her father, who was the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute from 1999 to 2002, had been in good health and died of an apparent heart attack, according to NASA.

The awarding of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed Chinese dissident was met with a combination of joy, neutrality and even criticism yesterday by some students at the Penn and Drexel campuses. Liu Xiaobo, 54, China's most-prominent dissident, has championed free speech, democratic reforms and peaceful, political change in his country. His writings, spread on the Internet, have made him a criminal in the Chinese government's eyes. After co-authoring the Charter '08 document, which called for more freedom and an end to the Communist Party's political dominance, Liu was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison.