Nobel Prizes Started With a Bang
The world's most famous science awards have a curious, glorious history.
Big headlines greeted three Americans on Monday after they earned the Nobel Prize in medicine. James Rothman, Randy Schekman, and Thomas Sudhof were honored for unraveling the mystery of how cells shuttle their goods around.
The chemistry prize came on Wednesday, awarded to U.S. scientists Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, along with Martin Karplus of France's Université de Strasbourg and Harvard. It will be followed by the peace, literature, and economics prizes. Headlines will celebrate each one. (There is even a traditional parody: see "2013 Ig Nobels Honor Research on Beer Goggles, Cows Ready to Be Tipped.")
Why do we care about the Nobel Prize? Since 1901, the awards have been announced annually by the Swedish Academy of Sciences
