Back from a business trip, I just learn that for the first time in history, two Israeli scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Two Israelis and an American won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for helping to understand how the human body gives the "kiss of death" to faulty proteins to defend itself from diseases like cancer.Israelis Aaron Ciechanover, 57, Avram Hershko, 67 - the first Israelis to win a chemistry prize - and Irwin Rose, 78, were honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their work in the 1980s that discovered one of the cell's most important cyclical processes, regulated protein degradation.
[Jerusalem Post coverage; Haaretz coverage (whence quote); announcement on Nobel Committee website]
Most fittingly, the announcement came on the eve of the day Israeli Jews celebrate the holiday of Simchat Torah, which can be translated as "rejoicing in learning". (Diaspora Jews observe it one day later.)
Aaron and Avram's magnificent achievement however does not make them the first two Jewish Nobel laureates in Chemistry: that list has twenty-four entries (this year's three included). [Not to mention the 47 in Medicine and Physiology (a.k.a. biomedical sciences), the 41 in Physics, and 17 in Economics --- the latter including expat Israeli Daniel Kahaneman. There are no Nobel Prizes for Mathematics or for Computer Science: the top awards in these fields are the Fields Medal and the ACM Turing Prize, respectively. One-third of all Fields Medal laureates are Jewish, as are one-quarter of all Turing Prize winners. The latter list includes three Israelis so far, namely Michael Rabin, Amir Pnueli, and Adi Shamir.]
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