Nobel Prize

A phone ringing at 5:30 a.m. can rattle anyone, even a professor immersed in the universe's mysterious dark energy. Adam Riess, an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University, learned in an early morning call from Stockholm Tuesday that he was one of three scientists to share the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. Riess, a 41-year-old astronomy professor at the university in Baltimore and scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, shares the $1.49 million prize with fellow American Saul Perlmutter and U.S.-Australian citizen Brian Schmidt.

The Sun's editorial board commits the same sin they attribute to conservatives: selective editing of Dr. Ben Carson's speech and the reaction thereto ("The Carson Monologue" Feb 12). Did not Cal Thomas, a conservative icon, come out with a demand that Dr. Carson apologize to the president? The Sun piece made no mention. To quote from the great doctor's speech: "Enough said. " Did not Dr. Carson himself establish that six doctors signed the Declaration of Independence? The Sun piece made no mention.

I told some friends that Tomas Tranströmer had won the Nobel Prize. Some responded, "Who?" and others said that it was cool that someone in Baltimore had won the Nobel. This latter group, of course, had heard the local hubbub and were thinking about Adam Riess at the Johns Hopkins University, who (along with two other physicists) was awarded the Nobel in physics for showing that the universe is still expanding. Mr. Riess was able to infer this by observing close by and further away supernovae.

I told some friends that Tomas Tranströmer had won the Nobel Prize. Some responded, "Who?" and others said that it was cool that someone in Baltimore had won the Nobel. This latter group, of course, had heard the local hubbub and were thinking about Adam Riess at the Johns Hopkins University, who (along with two other physicists) was awarded the Nobel in physics for showing that the universe is still expanding. Mr. Riess was able to infer this by observing close by and further away supernovae.

Few understand the club that Adam Riess joined Tuesday when he received a 5:30 a.m. phone call from Sweden. But Carol Greider received the same call two years ago, and soon she'll sit with her Johns Hopkins University colleague and tell him what it's like to become a Nobel laureate. "It's going to be a complete whirlwind at first," the molecular biologist said after a news conference for Riess. "First it's the press, but then it's the academic community. I was getting 200 to 300 emails a day after I won. " A Nobel victory creates many ripples.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for a theory he developed at an age when most people haven't even picked a college major, died Monday after a heart attack in Chicago. He was 84.Mr. Chandrasekhar, a native of Lahore, India, joined the University of Chicago in 1937 and was a professor emeritus at his death.Mr. Chandrasekhar was 19 and preparing for postgraduate study at Cambridge University in Britain when he developed his theory about stars. It challenged the notion of the 1930s that all stars, after burning up their fuel, become faint planet-size remnants known as white dwarfs.

Christian B. Anfinsen, a winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in chemistry and a professor of biology at the Johns Hopkins University since 1982, died Sunday after an apparent heart attack at his home in Pikesville. He was 79.Dr. Anfinsen was chief of the laboratory of chemical biology at what is now the National Institute of Arthritis and Digestive Diseases in Bethesda when he shared the Nobel prize with two other U.S. scientists.All three were studying ribonuclease, an enzyme affecting chemical changes in living cells, and his work described how it folds into its functional structure.

He calls himself a "Baltimoron."Yesterday, he won a Nobel Prize.Dr. Martin Rodbell, a 68-year-old graduate of City College and the Johns Hopkins University, shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in medicine with Dr. Alfred G. Gilman, 53, of the University of Texas. Working separately, the two scientists discovered and studied chemical signals called "G-proteins" that dictate the way living cells grow, change, communicate and respond to each other.Dr. Rodbell spent his career as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

Uneasy lies the crown when you're a Nobel laureate. Derek Walcott can attest to that.Mr. Walcott, the Caribbean-born poet/playwright/painter, was in Baltimore last Friday to attend a showing of one of his plays, "Pantomime," at Villa Julie College, and also to give two talks to students there.But although he was by all accounts a smash hit with students and faculty alike, showing a genuine humility and disarming sense of humor, the winner of the most recent Nobel Prize in literature acknowledged the honor can bring out strange responses from others.

THE economists who won a Nobel prize Monday did what economists often do: state the blindingly obvious in the form of algebra. Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott argued that -- this is the English version -- the best solution to today's problems might not be the best solution tomorrow, but that frequent policy fiddling to reap short-term benefits can cause its own problems. You or I, pointing this out to our spouse at dinner, will get, "Sure, hon. Pass the sprouts." Kydland and Prescott got the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel, as it is officially known, plus $1.3 million to share.

Some may remember Republican U.S House candidate Andy Harris' fliers excoriating his Democratic opponent, Rep. Frank Kratovil, for voting to fund research into fruit fly and ant life processes. Well, the other day the Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to two doctors for discovering we have two immune systems - a basic system that reacts immediately and another one that learns to protect us against new viruses. And it all came out of research using fruit flies and ants. Yet Congressman Harris is a physician who claims to support life.

Tuesday's announcement that Hopkins astronomer Adam G. Riess will share this year's Nobel Prize in physics acknowledges his huge contribution to scientific knowledge. From the study of giant exploding stars millions of light-years from Earth, Mr. Riess and his colleagues, Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University in Australia, deduced the astonishing hypothesis that our universe is being violently blown apart by an immensely powerful, previously unsuspected force.

More than anything else, in the wake of the elation and tumult accompanying Tuesday's announcement that he'd won a share of the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Riess wants to get back to work. "I really want to keep doing the research I do, and not just supervise people doing research," a fate that sometimes befalls Nobel laureates, he said. His discovery of dark energy, and the accelerating expansion of the universe was, after all, something he accomplished in 1998 at the University of California Berkeley - at the age of 28. Since then, he has moved to Hopkins and used powerful instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to push even farther toward the edge of the visible universe, and toward unraveling the mystery of dark energy.

Few understand the club that Adam Riess joined Tuesday when he received a 5:30 a.m. phone call from Sweden. But Carol Greider received the same call two years ago, and soon she'll sit with her Johns Hopkins University colleague and tell him what it's like to become a Nobel laureate. "It's going to be a complete whirlwind at first," the molecular biologist said after a news conference for Riess. "First it's the press, but then it's the academic community. I was getting 200 to 300 emails a day after I won. " A Nobel victory creates many ripples.

- President Barack Obama plans to donate the $1.4 million from his Nobel Peace Prize to help students, veterans' families and survivors of Haiti's earthquake, among others, drawing attention to organizations that he said "do extraordinary work." Obama is giving a total of $750,000 to six groups that help kids go to college. Fisher House, which provides housing for families with relatives at Veterans Administration hospitals, will receive $250,000, the White House said Thursday. And the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, for which two former presidents are raising money to rebuild earthquake-ravaged Haiti, will receive $200,000.

Carol W. Greider, who on Monday became the 33rd person associated with the Johns Hopkins University to win the Nobel Prize, is a triathlete, a mother of two and a methodical and modest genetic researcher who colleagues say shuns publicity in favor of pursuing her passion: fundamental, curiosity-driven science. Greider's breakthrough that won the ultimate scientific honor dates back two decades. During that time she has been catapulted to the top of her field - showered with grants, accolades and coveted prizes.

A decade ago, Best Buy, a then-regional electronics chain based in Minneapolis, threw all the chips on the table. As the underdog in a fight against Circuit City, Best Buy announced it would build stores in virtually every major U.S. market, including Baltimore-Washington, whatever the cost. Best Buy borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars, overpaid for real estate, cut prices to the marrow and by early 1997 had seen its stock price fall by half. Crazy? Not if you consider work by Thomas C. Schelling, the University of Maryland emeritus professor who was announced Monday as a co-recipient of the Nobel prize in economics.

JEAN DAUSSET, 92 Nobel Prize winner Jean Dausset, a Nobel Prize-winning French immunologist and pioneer behind organ transplants and mapping of the human genome, died of natural causes June 6 in a hospital on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the French Health Ministry said. Dr. Dausset's discovery in 1958 of the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) tissue system allowed doctors to verify compatibility between donor and receiver for an organ transplant. Dr. Dausset was born in Toulouse on Oct. 19, 1916.