The Nobel Prize has been awarded to women 36 times between 1901 and 2008. Only one woman, Marie Curie, has been honoured twice, with the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This means that 35 women in total have been awarded the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2008. This year, that number changes.
We have two more American women (and a gentleman) to add to the list in 2009 for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They are:
Elizabeth H. Blackburn (1/3 of the prize) — University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Carol W. Greider (1/3 of the prize) — John Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Jack W. Szostak (1/3 of the prize) — Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Read more about it here. And we are confident more women Nobel Laureates will be announced in 2009 and for many years to come.
Our heartfelt congratulations to all three for overcoming obstacles and persevering until they achieved their desired outcomes. What a wonderful accomplishment that will help all of us worldwide because as we understand it, their work has set the stage for research suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are studying whether drugs that block the enzyme can fight the disease.
Illustration: A conceptual diagram showing the protein component of telomerase (hTERT) in grey and the RNA component (hTR) in yellow.
Photo credits: here.
Added October 13, 2009: First woman — Elinor Ostrom — wins Nobel Prize for economics!
Posted by: Laurel Delaney
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