2023-10-02 00:46:53
Like every year, I have to predict who will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Science. The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology will be announced on Monday, October 2 at around 11:30 CEST, at the earliest, in Physics on Tuesday the 4th at around 11:45 and in Chemistry on Wednesday the 5th at around 11:45. As every year there are hundreds of researchers who deserve each of these awards and have not yet received it; and every year new candidates are added. Even knowing that I am going to fail, I allow myself to make a prediction (based on those that have been published in different media or sources).
Every year the team led by David Pendlebury at the company Clarivate uses its selection algorithm based on citations to articles in the Web of Science to add new candidates to the Hall of Citation Laureates; The list grows little by little each year. Obviously, candidates from previous years are still strong candidates for the award (if they have not already received it), especially since they are expected to accumulate nominations for their candidacies. There are many other sources, such as Megan Molteni, Elaine Chen, “GLP-1 drugs are transforming diabetes, obesity and more. Could a Nobel be next? STAT, 30 Sep 2023; «Who’s Next? Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 – Voting Results September 29,» Chemistry Views, 29 Sep 2023; Hamish Johnston, «Who will win the Nobel Prize for Physics? Our predictions for 2023,» Physics World, 29 Sep 2023; among many other sources. By the way, this year it has become fashionable to use ChatGPT, Bing, Claude and other similar artificial intelligences to make predictions, but most of them are terrible (scientists who already have a Nobel Prize are predicted). Gemma Conroy tells us, «Can AI predict who will win a Nobel Prize? With a few modifications, ChatGPT-like models could enhance the art of identifying future laureates,» News, Nature 28 Sep 2023; and, by the way, Pendlebury’s algorithm at Clarivate uses a proprietary AI algorithm.
Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (October 01, 2023)
I repeat myself (like in 2021 and 2022), but it must already be falling. My strongest candidates for the award are the fathers of modified messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, Katalin Karikó (68 years old)BioNTech (Germany) and Drew Weissman (64 años), Univ. Pennsylvania (USA). They have already received the most prestigious awards (including the Princess of Asturias in 2021, the Breakthrough in Life Sciences in 2022, and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Biology and Biomedicine from the BBVA Foundation in 2022). The enormous number of lives saved thanks to the Pfizer/BioNTech and ModeRNA COVID-19 vaccines leaves no room for doubt. Could you share the award with a third person? I could accompany you Robert Langer (75 years old), MIT (USA), father of drug delivery technologies, being founder of the company ModeRNA and many therapies related to mRNA beyond vaccines; Without a doubt, this trio will receive the Nobel Prize one year and there is no better year than 2023. Unfortunately, the other fathers of COVID-19 vaccines, such as Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, Sarah Gilbert, Philip Felgner or Derrick Rossi , among other people, in my opinion, will be left without an award.
This year, the company Clarivate has added seven candidates to its list of potential winners of the Nobel Prize. The strongest prediction is the trio of Carl H. June (69 years)University of Pennsylvania (United States), Steven A. Rosenberg (83 years old)National Cancer Institute, Maryland (United States), and Michel Sadelain (~64 years), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (United States) for the development of CAR-T therapy (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell therapies), or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies and their use as immunotherapy for cancer treatment. Without a doubt, they are also strong Nobel candidates (in fact, June and Sadelain have recently received the 2024 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences).
Clarivate also highlights Rob Knight (46 years old), University of California at San Diego (United States), for his computational and experimental research on the microbiome; In my opinion, he is still young and I think he will not receive the award this year. Finally, another trio stands out, Clifford B. Saper (~70 years)Harvard Medical School, Boston (United States), Emmanuel Mignot (years)Stanford University, California (United States), and Masashi Yanagisawa (63 años)University of Tsukuba (Japan), Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States, for his genetic and physiological studies on the sleep/wake cycle and for the discovery of hypocretin/orexin as sleep regulators involved in the cause of narcolepsy.
The STAT website has predicted a Nobel for the trendy topic, drugs based on the GLP-1 hormone to control diabetes and lose weight; but I’m not at all clear.
Nobel Prize in Physics (October 2, 2022)
This year predicting the Nobel Prize in Physics is extremely difficult. You have to turn to classic candidates in fields that are fashionable. Coinciding with one of Physics World’s predictions, I opt for a prize for applied physics, for example optics, in line with the recent winners of the Wolf Prize in Physics 2022: Paul Corkum (79 years old)University of Ottawa (Canada), Ferenc Krausz (61 years)Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich (Germany) and Anne L’Huillier (65 years old), Lund University, Sweden, for pioneering contributions to ultrafast laser science and attosecond physics. That there is a woman (and that she is Swedish) and that they are from three different countries, seems to me a perfect reason to award them this award (although perhaps the Swedish Academy waited a few more years to award them).
The company Clarivate has added three candidates to its list of potential winners of the Nobel Prize. Federico Capasso (~74 years)Harvard University, Cambridge, United States, for his pioneering work in photonics, plasmonics, and metasurfaces, as well as for his contributions to the invention and improvements in the quantum cascade laser. Sharon C. Glotzer (~50 years), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (United States), for showing the role of entropy in the self-organization of matter and for introducing strategies to control the assembly process to design new materials. AND Stuart SP Parkin (67)Max Planck Institute for Physical Microstructure in Halle (Germany), for his research in spintronics and, in particular, in the development of high-density magnetic data storage memories.
Physics World proposes that the award be given to the field of condensed matter physics or applied physics. That is why they highlight Federico Capasso, already mentioned by Clarivate, as the eternal candidate Lene Hau (63 years old)Harvard University (United States), for “slow” light, and in Spanish Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (47 years old), MIT (United States), for their work on magic angle rotated bilayer graphene. The truth is, I don’t see any of these candidates as clear (although I dream of an award for Pablo, although I hope for it in about ten years).
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (October 3, 2022)
It is also extremely difficult to predict this award this year. But I’m going to opt for a recent classic, which appears in many lists: Omar M. Yaghi (58 years old)University of California at Berkeley (United States), perhaps accompanied by Omar Farha (~45 years), Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (United States), for his pioneering work in lattice chemistry and the synthesis of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Its applications in clean energy technologies, such as the storage of hydrogen and methane, the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, and even the harvesting of water from desert air make them strong candidates for the Nobel Prize.
The company Clarivate has added eight candidates to its list of potential winners of the Nobel Prize. James J. Collins (58 years old)Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge (United States), Michael Elowitz (~54 years)Caltech, California (United States), and Stanislas Leibler (66 years old), Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton (United States), for his pioneering work in gene circuits and for the field of synthetic biology. Shankar Balasubramanian (56 years old), University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), and David Klenerman (64 years old), University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), for the invention of the new generation of genome sequencing methods that have revolutionized biology research. And Kazunori Kataoka (74 years old), University of Tokyo (Japan), Vladimir P. Torchilin (76 years old)Northeastern University, Boston (United States), and Karen L. Wooley (67)Texas A&M University, College Station (United States), for the development of innovative methods for drug and gene delivery and targeting.
Will any of my predictions be right? Who knows!
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