WoW Blog

This year a record five women were awarded Nobel Prizes.

The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious awards one can receive. Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and a cash award.¹ Often the previously unheralded winners of the prize find themselves celebrities, never quite the same.

The Women who won a Nobel Prize this year include:

Elizabeth H Blackburn (left) and Carol W. Greider (right) were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Each received 1/3 of the prize as did Jack W. Szostak.

Ada E. Yonath was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. Yonath shared the award with Thomas A. Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.

Herta Müller was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature who "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

Elinor Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. Ostrom shared the award with Oliver E. Williamson.

_{1. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/}