Nobel Prize winners to be announced
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-04 15:09

The guessing game over who will take home the world's most coveted awards ends this week with the announcement of the 2004 Nobel Prize winners.

This is a Dec. 10, 2003 file photo of Alexei A. Abrikosov, left, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, right, during a ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden. Abrikosov, of the Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA, shared the prize with Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia and Anthony J. Leggett of the USA. [AP]

The first announcement comes Monday with the physiology or medicine prize, followed by a week of announcements of winners for physics, chemistry, economics, peace and possibly literature. The committees behind the awards are notoriously tightlipped and refuse to say who has been nominated. The physiology or medicine prize includes a $1.3 million award.

There are no set guidelines for deciding who wins. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards that bear his name, simply said the winner "shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine."

The assembly that selects the medicine prize winner invites nominations from previous recipients, professors of medicine and other professionals worldwide before whittling down its choices.

One barometer of likely winners are those tapped for the annual Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation awards. Sixty-eight scientists who won those $50,000 prizes then earned Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine.

This year's Lasker award for basic research was shared by Dr. Pierre Chambon of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Strasbourg, France; Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.; and Elwood Jensen of the University of Chicago.

The three men, starting with Jensen in the 1950s and continuing with Chambon and Evans in the 1980s, opened up the field of studying proteins called nuclear hormone receptors, the foundation said. These receptors grab onto certain hormones and vitamins and migrate to the nucleus of a cell, where they regulate the activity of genes.

The Lasker award for clinical research was given posthumously to Dr. Charles Kelman, who made cataract removal an outpatient procedure. Previously, cataract operations were risky ordeals requiring more than a week of hospitalization with the patient's head immobilized by sand bags.

Last year's winners of the Nobel Prize were Briton Sir Peter Mansfield and American Paul C. Lauterbur for discoveries leading to the development of MRI, used by doctors to get a detailed look into patients' bodies.

Magnetic resonance imaging has become a routine method for medical diagnosis and treatment, especially valuable for examining the brain and spinal cord.

The award for medicine opens a week of Nobel Prizes culminating Oct. 11 with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The peace prize, the only one bestowed in Oslo, Norway, will be announced Oct. 8. The awards always are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

The physics award will be announced Tuesday and the chemistry prize will be announced Wednesday in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.

A date for the Nobel Prize in literature has not yet been set by the Swedish Academy but likely will be awarded Thursday, Nobel watchers said. Previously, the award was the first one announced.

The 18 lifetime members of the 218-year-old Swedish Academy make the annual selection in deep secrecy and, following tradition, do not reveal the date of the announcement until two days beforehand.

Danish poet Inger Christenssen frequently has been mentioned in recent years as commentators have called for the literature prize to go to a woman. The last female winner was Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.

"It would certainly be about time for a woman," said Anna Tillgren, with Bonniers Publishing house, "or Tomas Transtroemer," the Swedish poet.

The other favorites include Americans Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth, she said.

Svante Weyler, head of Norstedts Publishing House, said the Swedish Academy also may give the prize to an Arabic or Asian writer — including Lebanese poet Ali Ahmad Said, also known as Adonis.

Peruvian-born writer Mario Vargas Llosa and Germany's Hans Magnus Enzensberger also are prime candidates, Weyler said.

Last year's winner was South African writer J.M. Coetzee.

Nobel-watchers and bookmakers believe the favorites for the peace prize are people or groups leading efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, Mohamed ElBaradei; former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix; and former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., for their Cooperative Threat Reduction program intended to dismantle leftover nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union.

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