The 2023 Nobel prizes honour work that touched millions of lives
Besides mRNA vaccines, they celebrate ultra-fast lasers and tiny prisons for light
THE COMMITTEES which award the Nobel prizes are hard to second-guess. Last year, for instance, the prize in physiology or medicine went to Svante Paabo, a pioneer of the study of fossil DNA, which has shed much light on human evolution.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Nobel pursuits”
From the October 7th 2023 edition
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AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics
The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA
These tiny molecules regulate genes and control how cells develop and behave
AI offers an intriguing new way to diagnose mental-health conditions
Models look for sound patterns undetectable by the human ear
Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work
Better tools are needed to analyse their effects
Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases
The isolation can be geographic or cultural
An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow
For now, it is the most sophisticated connectome ever made