I’m not a betting woman, but I have friends who are. And they wager on a variety of things, including who will win the annual Nobel awards. Yesterday, the prize for medical research was awarded, and while they might have had the inside track, I was totally surprised and thrilled to learn that two American women (and their British-born male colleague) were honored for their work on telomerase, an enzyme that may help cancer cells proliferate.
Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Dr. Carol W. Grieder, and Dr. Jack W. Szostak were jointly awarded the Nobel for their work from nearly 30 years ago, which may lead to new cancer therapies. Blackburn and Grieder, who discovered telomerase in 1984, when Greider was still a graduate student, had a mentor/mentee relationship, which adds an extra level of awesome. All three continue to work at American research universities, and will split the honors and the prize money among them.
The Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually since 1901, and in the fields of medicine, physics, and chemisty, fewer than 3% of awardees have been female. This year’s award for medicine is the first that honors two women at once.
You can read about a number of other Nobel-winning women in Sharon Bertsch McGrayne’s Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles and Momentous Discoveries (now in a 2nd Edition), or look into the history of the Nobel at its website. For a little more info on telomerase, go here. The prize for chemistry was announced today; those for Peace and Literature will come later this week. Place your bets now.
Congrats to Drs. Blackburn, Greider and Szostak!
Hem-hem. I just donated (a year or so ago) money to my all-girls high school because they were adding on new kick-ass up to the minute science facilities. The project was entitled “Celebrating Women in Science.” Here’s to even more women winning the Nobel in science related fields!
Awesome! Hooray for women in science. My best friend just got her degree in biochemistry and I am so proud of her.
Hi there,
Dr Elizabeth Blackburn is Australian born, I have no idea about her current citizenship status, so in Australia we too are celebrating her Nobel prize win as the first Australian woman to have been awarded the Nobel prize and the 11th Australian overall.
(http://www.theage.com.au/national/nobel-crusader-for-women-in-science-20091006-glh3.html)
Its a fantastic win, and its great that we can share such a fantastic and gifted woman.
Right you are, Rebecca–I originally saw video clips, heard her charming accent, and was puzzled that Reuters and others kept saying that she was American. So I looked around, and it turns out that Dr. Blackburn holds dual citizenship: AUS and USA. I’m proud enough for two whole continents!
It’s worth noting that 1) Greider was Blackburn’s grad student but Blackburn shared the glory (unlike several male recipients) and 2) Blackburn was the scientist who got fired from the Bush “bioethics panel” for daring to inject some reality into the stem cell debate.