Nobel Prize

The Prize in Economic Sciences 2007 Buyers and sellers sometimes haggle too hard and therefore fail to trade. Desirable joint projects are sometimes not undertaken because the projects’ beneficiaries fail to agree how the costs should be shared. Sickness insurance, for example, is typically criticized either for offering too little coverage or for inviting misuse.…

The Prize in Economic Sciences 2022 The Great Depression of the 1930s paralysed the world’s economies for many years and had vast societal consequences. However, we have managed subsequent financial crises better thanks to research insights from this year’s laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig. They have demonstrated the…

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 Sometimes simple answers are the best. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 because they brought chemistry into the era of functionalism and laid the foundations of click chemistry. They share the prize with Carolyn Bertozzi, who took click chemistry to a new…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 Using groundbreaking experiments, Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have demonstrated the potential to investigate and control particles that are in entangled states. What happens to one particle in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other, even if they are really too far apart to affect…

The Prize in Economic Sciences 2021 This year’s Laureates – David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens – have shown that natural experiments can be used to answer central questions for society, such as how minimum wages and immigration affect the labour market. They have also clarified exactly which conclusions about cause and effect can…

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 Chemists can create new molecules by linking together small chemical building blocks, but controlling invisible substances so they bond in the desired way is difficult. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 for their development of a new and ingenious tool for molecule…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of complex phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered and…

The Prize in Economic Sciences 2020 Every day, auctions distribute astronomical values between buyers and sellers. This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have improved auction theory and invented new auction formats, benefitting sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world. The quest for the perfect auction Auctions have a long history. In Ancient Rome,…

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 for discovering one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Researchers can use these to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. This technology has revolutionised the molecular life…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole. Roger Penrose showed that black holes are a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that an…