Here are the Nobel Prize winners for 2023 and their significant contributions:
Physiology or Medicine: The award was given to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their work developing mRNA vaccines that helped protect millions of people during the Covid-19 pandemic. Their research, first published in 2005, uncovered a new method of using mRNA to trigger immune responses, which companies like Pfizer and Moderna would eventually use to produce effective vaccines at an unprecedented rate.
Physics: The laureates Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini, and Ferenc Krausz were jointly awarded the Noble Prize in Physics for their independent experiments and discoveries capturing the movement of electrons. Implementing technology that produces light pulses measured in attoseconds (an attosecond is one quintillionth, or 1×10 −18, of a second), the three scientists have enabled revolutionary means of tracking the unseen world.
Chemistry: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 was awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Louis E. Brus from Columbia University, and Alexei I. Ekimov from Nanocrystals Technology Inc. They were recognized for their discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. Quantum dots are nanoparticles so tiny that their size determines their properties. These smallest components of nanotechnology now spread their light from televisions and LED lamps and can also guide surgeons when they remove tumour tissue, among many other things.
Literature: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 was awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse. The Swedish Academy in Stockholm credited him with combining his strong linguistic and geographic connections to Norway with modernist techniques and commended him “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.
Peace: The Nobel Peace Prize 2023 was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian human-rights activist. She was recognized for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran, a symbolic show of support for the women’s-rights movement that sparked nationwide protests in the Islamic Republic in the past year. For decades one of Iran’s leading and most fearless human-rights campaigners, Mohammadi is currently serving multiple sentences amounting to more than 10 years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison for alleged propaganda activities.
The prize for Economic Sciences will be announced on Monday the 9th of October on the following page: Nobel Prize Economic Sciences
