It’s that time of year again where the Nobel prizes are announced. The Nobel prizes mark an annual recognition of a person’s (or persons) contribution to the benefit of humankind in the preceding year. They fall into five categories: literature, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine and peace. In 1968, Sweden’s Central bank established an additional prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics Science, in memory of Alfred Nobel, the entrepreneur and businessman, who left his fortune in 1895 to the establishment of the prizes.
SSRN, Elsevier’s preprint and early research sharing platform is very honoured that among this year’s Nobel laureates are 2 SSRN authors: Drew Weissman, (Penn Institute for RNA Innovations, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA) wins jointly with Katalin Karikó (Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA) in the category of physiology or medicine for discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Their collaborative work reportedly started after a chance meeting at a photocopier in 1997. We’re all familiar with the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, their (seemingly superhuman) rapid development and roll out globally and the relief that it brought in allowing lockdowns to be lifted and our emergence from the pandemic. Dr Weissman has posted a number of papers on SSRN including one that investigated the broad neutralising effects of a nanoparticle vaccine against various SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus) variants, including Omicron.
Claudia Goldin, a prolific SSRN author, wins the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for her formative work in advancing our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.
SSRN congratulates all winners in all categories; we celebrate the benefits to humankind that these gifted individuals have brought. And finally, no Nobel blog could be complete without revisiting the most heartwarming and brilliant reaction from Doris Lessing on winning the Literature Prize in 2007.
Images Credit: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach