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Tag: Nobel Prize

  • Off-Grid, Asleep or Unreachable: When Nobel Prize Winners Miss the Call of a Lifetime

    Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann addresses journalists in front of a screen displaying the portraits of (L-R) Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi during a press conference on Oct. 6, 2025. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

    As the 2025 Nobel Prize announcements rolled out last week, one of this year’s new laureates was blissfully unaware that his life had just changed. American immunologist Fred Ramsdell didn’t learn he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine until several days after the announcement because he was camping off the grid, with no cell signal and his phone on airplane mode.

    In an interview with the Nobel Committee afterward, Ramsdell recounted that he had been camping in the wilds of Wyoming with his wife when the news broke. As they drove through a small town, his wife’s phone suddenly lit up with notifications, prompting her to scream. At first, he thought a grizzly bear was nearby. Instead, she was reacting to the news that he had just won the Nobel Prize.

    It would still take an hour before Ramsdell could confirm the news. “We had to drive another hour to get to where I could get cell service and WiFi,” he said. “We checked into a little hotel in southern Montana, and I got online and started making phone calls.”

    Ramsdell’s co-winner, Mary E. Brunkow, also missed her moment—though for a more modern reason. She ignored the call from Sweden, assuming it was spam. “My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well, that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep,” Brunkow told the committee. She only learned of her award hours later when an Associated Press reporter showed up at her door asking for an interview.

    The Nobel Committee’s strict confidentiality rules—and the time difference between Stockholm and the rest of the world—have long made reaching winners a logistical headache. Each year, the committee scrambles to deliver the news before the announcement goes public, but as history shows, success is hardly guaranteed.

    2021 Chemistry Laureate David MacMillan dismissed the big call as a prank.

    In 2021, David MacMillan, one of the Chemistry laureates, also brushed off his first contact from Stockholm. “I got a text from someone in Stockholm where my name was wrong, and I assumed it was a prank,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of mischievous ex-co-workers over the years, so I just went back to sleep.”

    When his co-winner Benjamin List called to tell him they’d both won, MacMillan still didn’t buy it and even bet $1,000 that the news was fake. (Naturally, he lost.)

    2020 Economics laureate Paul Milgrom learned of his win from a knock at his door.

    Paul Milgrom, who shared the Nobel Prize in Economics, missed his call altogether after turning off his phone for the night. “Even though I knew it was the night of the prize announcement, even though people had been talking to me about it, I said, ‘I’m just going to do what I always do every night,’” Milgrom told the committee. “I turned off my phone because that’s who I am.”

    Luckily, his Stanford colleague and co-winner, Robert Wilson, lived nearby and took matters into his own hands. “Not only did he wake me up, he rang the doorbell and said, ‘Paul, they’re trying to call you from Stockholm. You have won the Nobel Prize,’” Milgrom said. It was two o’clock in the morning, and Wilson forgot to mention that they’d won the prize together.

    2021 Literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah hung up on the Nobel Committee.

    When Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Tanzanian-born British novelist, received the call informing him he had won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, he assumed it was a cold call and initially responded with disbelief. He wasn’t fully convinced until he read the announcement on The Swedish Academy’s website.

    In his conversation with the Nobel Committee afterward, Gurnah admitted he was completely unprepared for the news. “I was just thinking, ‘I wonder who’ll get it. I thought it was a prank, I really did,” he said.

    In 2016, Bob Dylan didn’t return the Nobel Committee’s calls for days.

    When Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, the committee struggled to reach him for nearly a week. Emails went unanswered, calls weren’t returned, and even his representatives couldn’t immediately confirm he was aware of the news. “I have called and sent emails to his closest collaborator and received very friendly replies,” one Nobel official told reporters at the time.

    Dylan made no public comment for several days, leaving the committee and the press to wonder if he would ever respond. When he finally did, he described the award as “amazing, incredible,” and said the news had left him “speechless.”

    2013 Physics laureate Peter Higgs deliberately avoided the spotlight.

    When Peter Higgs, the British physicist whose work helped confirm the existence of the Higgs boson particle, was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. But the Nobel Committee couldn’t find him. Higgs had gone out for a walk in Edinburgh, intentionally avoiding his home phone and the barrage of attention he knew might follow.

    Because Higgs didn’t own a cellphone or use email, there was no way to reach him directly. The committee eventually went ahead with the public announcement, hoping the news would reach him through media reports. When journalists finally tracked him down, Higgs said he had only learned of the award after a neighbor congratulated him on the street.

    Off-Grid, Asleep or Unreachable: When Nobel Prize Winners Miss the Call of a Lifetime

    Rachel Curry

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  • This Scientist Thinks an A.I. Could Win a Nobel Prize by 2050

    Hiroaki Kitano launched the Nobel Turing Challenge back in 2016. Courtesy Sony Computer Science Laboratories

    For more than a century, early October has marked the arrival of Nobel Prize announcements recognizing achievements across sciences, literature and peace. Recipients vary by nationality, age and gender but share one thing in common: they’re human. That could change in the coming decades if the team behind the Nobel Turing Challenge succeeds.

    Launched in 2016 by Japanese scientist Hiroaki Kitano, the challenge aims to spur the creation of an autonomous A.I. system capable of making a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery by 2050. Kitano was inspired to start the endeavor after concluding that progress in complex fields like systems biology might eventually require an A.I. scientist or A.I.-human hybrid. “After 30 years of research, I realized that biological systems may be too complex and vast and overwhelm human cognitive capabilities,” Kitano told Observer.

    Kitano has long worked at the intersection of science and machine learning. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he researched A.I. systems at Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, he served as the chief technology officer of Sony Group Corporation from 2022 to 2024 and now holds the title of chief technology fellow. He’s also CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, a unit focused on cutting-edge research.

    The broader science community initially greeted the Nobel Turing Challenge with a mix of excitement and skepticism. This didn’t faze Kitano, who faced similar reactions in 1993 when he co-founded RoboCup, an international robotics competition challenging developers to build a robotic football team capable of defeating the best human players by 2050.

    “Any grand challenge will face such mixed reactions,” he said. “Otherwise, it is not challenging enough.”

    Today, Kitano’s goal seems less far-fetched. A.I. already plays a growing role in the work of recent Nobel Prize winners—albeit with human oversight. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to A.I. researchers Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield for their contributions to neural network training. Two of last year’s Chemistry laureates, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, were recognized for developing AlphaFold, an A.I. model that predicts protein structures.

    The Nobel Turing Challenge has two main objectives. First, an A.I. system must autonomously handle every stage of scientific research: defining questions, generating hypotheses, planning and executing experiments, and forming new questions based on the results. Second, in a nod to the Turing test, the challenge aims to see whether such an A.I. scientist could perform so convincingly that peers—and even the Nobel Prize selection committee—would not realize it’s a machine.

    Kitano believes A.I. is most likely to earn a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, chemistry, or physics, but he admits there’s still a long way to go despite rapid progress in recent years. Creating a system capable of generating large-scale hypotheses and running fully automated robotic experiments remains a formidable challenge. “We are in the early stage of the game,” he said.

    Still, the challenge’s stated goal—to have an A.I. win a Nobel Prize—isn’t technically possible. The awards, established in 1895 through the will of inventor Alfred Nobel, can only be granted to a living person, organization or institution. Even so, Kitano hopes his initiative might eventually influence how the Nobel committees make decisions.

    “I think if [the] Nobel committee created an internal rule to check if the candidate is human or A.I. before the award decision, that would be our win.”

    This Scientist Thinks an A.I. Could Win a Nobel Prize by 2050

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • The Surprising Secret of Success, from Nobel Laureates: Move Around More

    Have you ever wondered where most Nobel Laureates are from? If so, the Nobel organization website helpfully provides both their birthplaces and academic affiliations at the time of their awards. If you start browsing, you may notice a pattern. The world’s most revered scientists are an incredibly mobile bunch. 

    Most of us have heard the story of Polish born Marie Curie’s move to France or Einstein fleeing Europe for the United States. But they are only the most famous of the many, many Nobel laureates who moved from country to country and institution to institution. One analysis of 21st-century Nobel winners showed a full 40 percent of laureates who did their prizewinning work in the U.S. were born abroad. 

    Does this just reflect that the best and the brightest can work where they please? Or do the mobile lives of Nobel laureates have anything to teach the rest of us about how to be more creative and successful? 

    A new study into these questions and came to a fascinating conclusion: if you want to come up with more and better ideas, you should probably move more.  

    More moves leads to quicker success 

    Ohio State University labor economist Bruce Weinberg has spent much of his career studying innovation. Where do important ideas come from? How do they spread? And how can we encourage more of them? If these are your questions, Nobel laureates are an excellent group to study. 

    And not just because they’re the source of some of the most impactful ideas. They’re also famous. Which means it’s possible to dig up detailed information on their lives. 

    Which is just what Weinberg and his colleagues, John Ham, a professor of economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and Brian Quistorff of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis did for a recent study published in the journal International Economic Review.

    Reconstructing the biographies of Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine and physics from 1901 to 2003 yielded an interesting pattern. The more these scientists moved from place to place, the earlier they came up with the groundbreaking ideas that won them the Nobel.  

    If, for instance, a scientist changed location every two years, they started their Nobel-worthy work an average of two years earlier. Time and place were irrelevant. The pattern held whether they were a chemist in 1916 or a medical doctor in 2001. 

    “For someone who might have taken ten years to begin their prizewinning research if they stayed in one place, moving every two years could reduce that time by nearly a quarter. That is substantially accelerating their innovations,” Weinberg commented. 

    Why new places lead to new ideas

    As anyone who has ever changed jobs can tell you, settling into a new role in a new place is difficult and time-consuming. At first your productivity suffers. So why did moving around make Nobel laureates more successful, more quickly? 

    The researchers believe switching locations does have costs. But it also comes with a huge compensatory benefit. In each new location scientists are exposed to new people and new ideas that can advance and inspire their work. 

    “Really interesting work happens when people combine ideas in novel ways,” Weinberg explained on the Curious by Nature podcast. If a young scientist moves from Boston to New York or London, say, “they’re going to be exposed to a different set of ideas than the ones they already have.” 

    That means they “can mix them up in a novel way relative to other people who hadn’t just made that transition.” 

    Does this work for nongeniuses too? 

    Which is fascinating, but what does it have to do with us nongeniuses who aren’t regularly being invited to CERN for research collaborations? Is it likely these findings apply beyond the rarified world of Nobel Laureates? 

    Weinberg and his collaborators believe they do (more on exactly how later). Plus, theirs is not the only research suggesting that physically moving can have a much bigger effect on our life trajectories than we think. 

    National Geographic journalist Dan Buettner studied the world’s happiest places for 15 years for his book The Blue Zones of Happiness. His conclusion: “There’s no other intervention anybody can tell me about that has that dependable and lasting impact on happiness than your geography.” 

    Similarly, where a child grows up has a surprisingly large impact on how their life turns out. When data scientist and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz analyzed research on the biggest factors influencing kids’ life outcomes, he found, “the best cities can increase a child’s future income by about 12 percent.” 

    That’s not just because parents in some neighborhoods have more resources than in others. The same family tends to have substantially different outcomes in different places. “I have estimated that some 25 percent–and possibly more–of the overall effects of a parent are driven by where that parent raises their child,” he reports in the Atlantic. 

    Can’t move? Nobel laureates can still teach you a lesson.

    Where you live matters an incredible amount for how your life turns out no matter who you are. 

    But that being said, Weinberg acknowledges, “most people just aren’t going to move, uproot their family and [say] ‘honey, pack up the boxes and pack up the kids and let’s go somewhere completely new.’”

    But you can still use his study of Nobel laureates to nudge you towards new ideas and greater success. Moving around accelerates innovation because it exposes people to fresh ideas and contacts. “Exposing yourself to novel combinations of ideas, novel sets of ideas, ideas that other people aren’t getting exposed to is really the key,” Weinberg underlines. 

    Moving is one way to do that. But there are alternative ways to bring fresh inspiration into your life: 

    “Reading something that you wouldn’t ordinarily read, talking to a different set of people than you would ordinarily talk to, going to see a lecture or a movie or a piece of art that you wouldn’t necessarily expose yourself to is a way of seeing things and learning things that you wouldn’t naturally have come across.” 

    Be like Nobel laureates: seek novelty

    University of Chicago economist Stephen Levitt once set up an unusual experiment. He solicited people on the internet who were struggling with a decision to let him decide with a random coin toss. 

    Surprisingly, 20,000 people agreed to leave a big life decision to chance. When Levitt followed up to see how things turned out, he discovered people were much happier when the coin flip had told them to do something new — to quit that job, start that venture, or get that tattoo. 

    “I believe that people are too cautious when it comes to making a change,” Levitt concluded. 

    Which is the practical takeaway of this new study of Nobel laureates too. If your life is such that a new adventure in a new place is just a U-haul drive away. Then by all means, start packing. The lives of celebrated scientists suggest you will be more creative and successful if you move more. 

    But if you have kids in school, a mortgage to pay, or a business to think of and can’t go to a new place, you can still up your chances of having breakthrough ideas. Just add more new people and new ideas to your life. That will almost certainly increase your odds of success no matter who you are or what you’re aiming for. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jessica Stillman

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  • How 3 Nobel Prize Winners’ Could Make ‘Dune’ Tech a Reality

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.

    The chairperson of the committee that made the award compared the structures called metal-organic frameworks to the seemingly bottomless magical handbag carried by Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series. Another example might be Mary Poppins’ enchanted carpet bag. These containers look small from the outside but are able to hold surprisingly large quantities within.

    The committee said Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi were honored for “groundbreaking discoveries” that “may contribute to solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges,” from pollution to water scarcity.

    Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia. Kitagawa, 74, is with Japan’s Kyoto University, and Yaghi, 60, is with the University of California, Berkeley.

    The work that won the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry

    The chemists worked separately but added to each other’s breakthroughs over decades, beginning with Robson’s work in the 1980s.

    The scientists were able to devise stable atomic structures that preserved holes of specific sizes that allowed gas or liquid to flow in and out. The holes can be customized to match the size of specific molecules that scientists or engineers want to hold in place, such as water, carbon dioxide or methane.

    “That level of control is quite rare in chemistry,” said Kim Jelfs, a computational chemist at Imperial College London. “It’s really efficient for storing gases.”

    A relatively small amount of the structure — which combines metal nodes and organic rods, somewhat like the interchangeable building pieces in Tinker Toys — creates many organized holes and a huge amount of surface area inside.
    For instance, Jelfs said, a few grams of molecular organic framework may have as much surface area as a soccer field, all of which can be used to lock gas molecules in place.

    “If you can store toxic gases,” said American Chemical Society President Dorothy Phillips, “it can help address global challenges.”

    Why the work matters

    Today researchers around the world are exploring possibilities that include using the frameworks to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and pollution from industrial sites. Another possibility is to use them to harvest moisture from desert air, perhaps to one day provide clean drinking water in arid environments.
    Scientists are also investigating using the structures for targeted drug delivery. The idea is to load them with medicine that may be slowly released inside the body.

    “It could be a better way to deliver low doses continually,” as with cancer drugs, said David Pugh, a chemist at King’s College London.

    The research “could be really, really valuable” in many industries, he said. But “there are still challenges when you translate that from the lab to the real world.” For example, many of the structures store the most gas and liquid in very low-temperature, high-pressure environments, he said.

    Today, metal-organic frameworks are already being used in some surprising ways, including as part of packing material to keep fruit fresh over long shipping routes, by gradually releasing chemicals that slow down the ripening process.

    The winners’ reactions

    Yaghi learned that he had won while traveling from San Francisco to Brussels. As he grabbed his luggage and prepared to change flights in Frankfurt, his phone started buzzing with a call from Sweden.

    “You cannot prepare for a moment like that,” he said at a news conference. “The feeling is indescribable, but it’s absolutely thrilling.”

    When his phone rang, Kitagawa was at first skeptical. He said he answered “rather bluntly,” thinking it must be a telemarketing call.

    “It was such a big prize so I thought, ‘Is it really true?’” he recalled during a news conference at Kyoto University. “When one of the experts came on the phone and congratulated me, I finally thought it was real and felt relaxed.”

    Kitagawa said the research has been widely recognized in the world of chemistry, but “it is very difficult to gain understanding by the ordinary people, and I’m delighted to be recognized.”

    The 88-year-old Robson, in a phone call with The Associated Press from his home in Melbourne, Australia, said he was “very pleased of course and a bit stunned as well.”
    “This is a major thing that happens late in life when I’m not really in a condition to withstand it all,” he said. “But here we are.”

    Nobel history and other 2025 prizes

    The 2024 chemistry prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London.

    The three were awarded for discovering powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins, the building blocks of life. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and held the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made.

    The first Nobel of 2025 was announced Monday. The prize in medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

    Tuesday’s physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for their research on the weird world of subatomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.

    This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics prize on Monday.

    The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.

    Dazio reported from Berlin, and Larson reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.

    AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

    Associated Press

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  • How 3 Nobel Prize Winners Are Shaping Quantum Physics

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for research on the strange behavior of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling that enabled the ultra-sensitive measurements achieved by MRI machines and laid the groundwork for better cellphones and faster computers.

    The work by John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, who work at American universities, took the seeming contradictions of the subatomic world — where light can be both a wave and a particle and parts of atoms can tunnel through seemingly impenetrable barriers — and applied them in the more traditional physics of digital devices. The results of their findings are just starting to appear in advanced technology and could pave the way for the development of supercharged computing.

    The prizewinning research in the mid-1980s took the subatomic “weirdness of quantum mechanics” and found how those tiny interactions can have real-world applications, said Jonathan Bagger, CEO of the American Physical Society. The experiments were a crucial building block in the fast-developing world of quantum mechanics.

    Speaking from his cellphone, Clarke, who spearheaded the research team, said: “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.”
    When quantum mechanics first came to light in 1926, a prominent physicist sought to illustrate its many paradoxes with the example of a cat in a box that was both alive and dead at the same time. The three Nobel winners showed that science can put such principles to work, said Physics Today Editor-in-Chief Richard Fitzgerald, who was in a competing research group in the 1990s.

    “They didn’t take it that far, but they showed that it can be done,” Fitzgerald said.
    The winning physicists took “the scale of something that we can’t see, we can’t touch, we can’t feel” and brought it “up to the scale of something recognizable” and made it “something you can build upon,” Fitzgerald said.

    Clarke, 83, conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley. Martinis, 67, worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Devoret, 72, is at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    How the winners reacted

    Martinis’ wife, Jean, told Associated Press reporters who called at his home hours after the announcement that he was still asleep and did not yet know. In the past, she said, they stayed up on the night of the physics award, but at some point they decided that sleep was more important.

    When his wife woke him and told him about the journalists seeking an interview, the new Nobel laureate remembered that the prizes were being announced this week. He opened his computer, looked at the announcement and saw his picture along with the other winners.

    “So I was kind of in shock,” he said.

    Clarke said it never occurred to him that he would win a Nobel Prize.
    “I practically collapsed,” Clarke told AP. “I was completely stunned. I mean, it’s something that I had never, ever dreamed of in my entire life.”

    Why the work matters

    Martinis — who was a senior Google scientist working toward quantum computing before co-founding his own company, Qolab — said the big future goal is quantum computing, which would be a giant leap in speed and sophistication by relying on the power of the contradictory states in that subatomic world.

    That is still eight to 10 years away. But he said the team’s experiments showed “a computer could be much, much more powerful.”

    Devoret is now chief scientist for Google’s quantum computing efforts.
    Quantum computers are “one very sort of obvious use,” but the research could also help develop sensors that detect and measure faint phenomena, such as magnetic fields, and advance cryptography to encode information, said Mark Pearce, a professor of astrophysics and Nobel physics committee member.
    And through better understanding of precision chemistry, it could develop better materials for daily living and even give an added boost to artificial intelligence, Martinis said.

    Before the work at Berkeley, scientists knew single electrons or pairs of tiny electrons could tunnel through an impenetrable barrier. What Clarke said his team learned was “if you design the circuity properly, you could actually have tunneling” of objects larger and more useful than just a couple of electrons.
    That discovery “can be used to make very sophisticated things that would not otherwise be able to work out,” Clarke said at a news conference, mentioning his iPhone and quantum computers.

    He also criticized the Trump administration for its deep cuts to science funding, saying they would “cripple science.”

    “If this continues … it may take a decade to get back to where we were half a year ago,” Clarke said.

    Martinis, Bagger and Fitzgerald said it’s a bit of a stretch to say cellphones now use the breakthrough made by Clarke and colleagues. But ultra-sensitive measuring devices rely on the team’s work, including MRI machines, which would be far less useful without their advances, Bagger said.

    “Quantum mechanics is everywhere in everything we do, from the cellphone to the satellite communications that are connected to the cellphones, to the screens on which we watch our videos on our cellphones,” Bagger said.

    Nobel history and other 2025 prizes

    Tuesday’s award was the 119th time the prize has been given. Last year, artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.

    On Monday, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies.

    Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday followed by the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics on Monday.

    The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.

    The prizes carry priceless prestige and a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).

    Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Borenstein from Washington. Associated Press journalist Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Associated Press

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  • What is the Nobel Peace Prize and could Donald Trump get it? What to know about the international honor.

    Barack Obama. Jimmy Carter. Woodrow Wilson. Teddy Roosevelt. Al Gore. And Donald Trump?

    President Trump hopes to join the exclusive list of presidents and vice presidents who have received one of the world’s most prestigious honors: the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced Friday. 

    The international award honors people or organizations whose work makes the world a more peaceful place. Nominees aren’t made public by the Nobel Committee, but some individuals publicly share who they nominate. World leaders, humanitarians and international organizations have received the peace prize since it was first given out in the early 20th century.

    Here’s what to know about the Nobel Peace Prize and if Mr. Trump could receive it: 

    When is the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded?

    The 2025 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, Oct. 10 at 5 a.m. ET. It will be awarded on Dec. 10 at a formal ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

    What is the Nobel Peace Prize? 

    The Nobel Prize was established by a Swedish businessman named Alfred Nobel. In his will, he said that his fortune was to be used to establish a fund that could distribute prizes “to those who … shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” according to the Nobel Peace Prize’s website. 

    Nobel’s will specified that it be given “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses,” but many different kinds of work have been honored, including efforts to combat climate change and promote democracy. 

    An official Nobel Peace Prize gold medal is seen at the exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, on December 8, 2023.

    Sergei Gapon/Anadolu via Getty Images


    The award has been given to politicians who sought international peace, people who have worked for arms control and nuclear disarmament, and international human rights agencies. Other Nobel prizes are awarded for achievements in medicine, literature and other fields.

    Winners receive a medal, diploma and monetary prize, according to the award’s website. The 6.6-centimeter gold medal shows a portrait of Nobel, with his name, birth year and year of death engraved on the edge. The back of the medal shows three men embracing, to symbolize international fraternity, and is engraved with the phrase “For peace and fraternity among peoples” in Latin. 

    How is the Nobel Peace Prize awarded? 

    According to the prize’s website, the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who has done the most to advance peace in the world. It is awarded by a committee selected by Norway’s parliament. The other Nobel prizes are awarded in Sweden. 

    Any person or organization can be nominated by any eligible nominators, according to the prize’s website. Eligible nominators include members of national assemblies, members of governments, members of bodies like the International Court of Justice, college professors or directors and former prizewinners or members of the Nobel Committee. The nomination deadline is Jan. 31. Over 330 candidates were submitted for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. 

    The nominations aren’t vetted before the nomination deadline, according to the prize’s website, so nominations are not endorsements from the committee. The committee does not publicly comment on nominees. The names of nominees and nominating committee can’t be announced for 50 years. 

    Nobel Peace Center

    Passers-by in front of the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. 

    Steffen Trumpf/picture alliance via Getty Images


    Once the deadline passes, the Nobel Committee looks at the nominees and creates a shortlist of “the most interesting and worthy candidates.” Those shortlisted nominees then undergo “assessments and examinations” from committee members, according to the prize’s website. 

    The committee then decides on the winner or winners of the Nobel Peace Prize at its last meeting before the prize winners are announced in early October. The decision is made by majority vote, according to the prize website, but the committee attempts to make a unanimous decision on the winner. 

    Who has won the Nobel Peace Prize? 

    The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 105 times since 1901, according to the prize’s website. One hundred and thirty-nine laureates have been awarded, including 92 men, 19 women and 28 organizations. 

    The prize’s first recipients were French scientist and politician Frédéric Passy and Jean Henry Durant, a Swiss businessman and co-founder of the Red Cross. Passy was honored for his “lifelong work for international peace conferences, diplomacy and arbitration,” while Durant received the award for his “humanitarian efforts to help wounded soldiers and create international understanding,” according to the prize’s website. 

    Other notable prizewinners have included Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai in 2014 and former President Barack Obama in 2009. Obama’s win, for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” was considered a surprise, as he had been in office for less than a year.

    Former President Jimmy Carter received the honor in 2002. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, and Bishop Desmond Tutu, who worked to end apartheid in South Africa, received it in 1984. 

    456999376.jpg

    Malala Yousafzai holds a bouquet of flowers during a press conference at the Library of Birmingham after being announced as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, on October 10, 2014 in Birmingham, England.

    Christopher Furlong, Getty Images


    Organizations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize include the United Nations’ World Food Program and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. 

    Could Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize? 

    Mr. Trump has touted himself as the “president of peace” and has said he ended six or seven wars during his second term, including conflicts between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan and Thailand and Cambodia. Not all of the conflicts have been fully settled, and it’s not clear if the United States’ actions or influence were decisive in all of them, foreign policy experts previously told CBS News. Mr. Trump has also proposed a peace plan for Israel and Gaza, and spoken with world leaders about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

    Mr. Trump told reporters in June that the Nobel Committee “should give” him the Nobel Peace Prize, and that he “should have gotten it four or five times.” In September, Mr. Trump told United Nations delegates that “everyone says” he should get the award. He made similar comments when military generals gathered in Virginia last week. Still, he told CBS News in September 2025 that he is not seeking the prize. 

    President Trump Signs Executive Order In Oval Office

    President Donald Trump speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. 

    Win McNamee / Getty Images


    “I have nothing to say about it,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “All I can do is put out wars.” He added, “I don’t seek attention. I just want to save lives.”

    Mr. Trump was nominated for the prize by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July and by the government of Pakistan in June. This week, the Israeli Hostages Families Forum called on the Nobel Prize committee to give the peace prize to Mr. Trump for his “unwavering commitment and extraordinary leadership” in seeking a deal to bring home the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. But these efforts have come past the deadline for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Trump was also nominated for the prize during his first term. 

    Experts told The Associated Press the Nobel Committee is unlikely to award Mr. Trump the prize for his second-term achievements so far. However, former President Obama was awarded the prize without having secured any peace agreements in his first year in the White House. 

    The committee tends to focus on “the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals,” the AP reported. The committee also likely does not want to be seen as caving to political pressure, one expert told the AP.

    Kerry Breen

    Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.

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  • Nobel Prize in physics goes to trio of researchers for discoveries in quantum mechanics

    The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists – a Briton, a Frenchman and an American – for their ground-breaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics.John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis will share the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” the Nobel Committee announced Tuesday at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.The committee praised the laureates for demonstrating that the “bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand.”Clarke, taking questions at a news conference, said he was “completely stunned” to learn he had won the award.“We had not realized in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize,” Clarke said of their research in the 1980s at the University of California, Berkeley.Quantum mechanics, which describes how matter and energy behaves at or below the scale of an atom, allows a particle to pass straight through a barrier, in a process called “tunnelling.”But when a larger number of particles are involved, these quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. What is true at the microscopic level was not thought to be true at the macroscopic level. For instance, while a single atom could pass through a barrier, a tennis ball – made up of a huge amount of particles – cannot.However, the trio of researchers conducted experiments to show that quantum tunnelling can also be observed on a macroscopic scale.In 1984 and 1985, the trio developed a superconducting electrical system that could pass from one physical state to another, as if a tennis ball could move straight through a barrier and not bounce back.Anthony Leggett, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003, compared the laureates’ work on how quantum mechanics functions on a larger scale to the famous thought experiment of Erwin Schrödinger, another physics laureate.To show the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger imagined a cat in a sealed box with a device that releases poison when a radioactive source decays. Because there is no way to observe whether the cat is dead or alive, Schrödinger posited that the cat was both dead and alive simultaneously – just as, in quantum mechanics, a system can exist in multiple states at once until measured.Schrödinger’s thought experiment aimed to show the absurdity of this situation, because quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense on the scale of everyday objects, such as a cat.Leggett argued, however, that the experiments conducted by Clarke, Devoret and Martinis showed that there are phenomena on larger scales that behave just as quantum mechanics predicts.Clarke said their research had helped pave the way for technological advances, such as the creation of the cell phone.“There is no advanced technology used today that does not rely on quantum mechanics, including mobile phones, cameras… and fiber optic cables,” said the Nobel committee.Last year, the prize was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton – often called the “Godfather of AI” – and John Hopfield, for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.In 2023, the prize went to a trio of European scientists who used lasers to understand the rapid movement of electrons, which were previously thought impossible to follow.The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

    STOCKHOLM —

    The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists – a Briton, a Frenchman and an American – for their ground-breaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics.

    John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis will share the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” the Nobel Committee announced Tuesday at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.

    The committee praised the laureates for demonstrating that the “bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand.”

    Clarke, taking questions at a news conference, said he was “completely stunned” to learn he had won the award.

    “We had not realized in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize,” Clarke said of their research in the 1980s at the University of California, Berkeley.

    Quantum mechanics, which describes how matter and energy behaves at or below the scale of an atom, allows a particle to pass straight through a barrier, in a process called “tunnelling.”

    But when a larger number of particles are involved, these quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. What is true at the microscopic level was not thought to be true at the macroscopic level. For instance, while a single atom could pass through a barrier, a tennis ball – made up of a huge amount of particles – cannot.

    However, the trio of researchers conducted experiments to show that quantum tunnelling can also be observed on a macroscopic scale.

    In 1984 and 1985, the trio developed a superconducting electrical system that could pass from one physical state to another, as if a tennis ball could move straight through a barrier and not bounce back.

    Anthony Leggett, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003, compared the laureates’ work on how quantum mechanics functions on a larger scale to the famous thought experiment of Erwin Schrödinger, another physics laureate.

    To show the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger imagined a cat in a sealed box with a device that releases poison when a radioactive source decays. Because there is no way to observe whether the cat is dead or alive, Schrödinger posited that the cat was both dead and alive simultaneously – just as, in quantum mechanics, a system can exist in multiple states at once until measured.

    Schrödinger’s thought experiment aimed to show the absurdity of this situation, because quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense on the scale of everyday objects, such as a cat.

    Leggett argued, however, that the experiments conducted by Clarke, Devoret and Martinis showed that there are phenomena on larger scales that behave just as quantum mechanics predicts.

    Clarke said their research had helped pave the way for technological advances, such as the creation of the cell phone.

    “There is no advanced technology used today that does not rely on quantum mechanics, including mobile phones, cameras… and fiber optic cables,” said the Nobel committee.

    Last year, the prize was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton – often called the “Godfather of AI” – and John Hopfield, for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.

    In 2023, the prize went to a trio of European scientists who used lasers to understand the rapid movement of electrons, which were previously thought impossible to follow.

    The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

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  • 3 Nobel Prize Winners Discovered This Key Cause of Cancer

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

    Brunkow, 64, is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Ramsdell, 64, is a scientific adviser for Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. Sakaguchi, 74, is a distinguished professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University in Japan.

    “Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee, said.

    The award, officially known as the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is the first of the 2025 Nobel Prize announcements and was announced by a panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

    The physics prize will be announced on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics Oct. 13.

    The award ceremony will be Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.

    The trio will share prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).

    The work that won the 2025 Nobel Prize in medicine

    The immune system has many overlapping systems to detect and fight bacteria, viruses and other intruders. Key immune warriors such as T cells get trained on how to spot bad actors. If some instead go awry in a way that might trigger autoimmune diseases, they’re supposed to be eliminated in the thymus — a process called central tolerance.

    The Nobel winners unraveled an additional way the body keeps the system in check.

    The Nobel Committee said it started with Sakaguchi’s discovery in 1995 of a previously unknown T cell subtype now known as regulatory T cells or T-regs.

    Then in 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered a culprit mutation in a gene named Foxp3, a gene that also plays a role in a rare human autoimmune disease.
    Brunkow said she and Ramsdell were working together at a biotech company, investigating why a particular strain of mice had an over-active immune system.

    They had to work with brand-new techniques to find the mouse gene behind the problem — but quickly realized it could be a major player in human health, too.
    “From a DNA level, it was a really small alteration that caused this massive change to how the immune system works,” she told AP.

    Two years later, Sakaguchi linked the discoveries to show that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of those T-regs — which in turn act as a security guard to find and curb other forms of T cells that overreact.

    Why this work matters

    The work opened a new field of immunology, said Karolinska Institute rheumatology professor Marie Wahren-Herlenius. Researchers around the world now are working to use regulatory T cells to develop treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

    Dr. Jonathan Schneck, a pathology professor at Johns Hopkins University, is among those who study T cells. He said that until the trio’s research published, immunologists didn’t understand the complexity of how the body differentiates foreign cells from its own and how it can tamp down an overreaction.

    The discoveries haven’t yet led to new therapies, Schneck cautioned. But “it’s incredibly important to emphasize, this work started back in 1995 and we’re reaping the benefits but yet have many more benefits we can reap” as scientists build on their work.

    How Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi reacted

    Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Committee, said he was only able to reach Sakaguchi by phone Monday morning.

    “I got hold of him at his lab and he sounded incredibly grateful, expressed that it was a fantastic honor. He was quite taken by the news,” Perlmann said. He added that he left voicemails for Brunkow and Ramsdell.

    At a news conference hours later, Sakaguchi called his win “a happy surprise.” He said he expected he’d have to wait a bit longer until the research makes more contributions in clinical science.

    In the beginning, he said the area of his research was not very popular and he had to struggle at times to earn research funding. But there were other scientists who were also interested in the same area of research and their cooperation led to the achievement, he said, thanking his fellow researchers.

    “There are many illnesses that need further research and treatment, and I hope there will be further progress in those areas so that findings will lead to prevention of diseases. That’s what our research is for,” he said.

    Sakaguchi’s news conference was interrupted by a call from Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who congratulated the scientist and asked him about the time frame for the research to be clinically applied to, for example, cancer treatment.

    “Hopefully we can reach that stage in about 20 years, though I’m not sure if will still be around,” Sakaguchi told the prime minister. “But science will advance and by that time cancer will no longer be scary but treatable.”

    Brunkow, meanwhile, got the news of her prize from an AP photographer who came to her Seattle home in the early hours of the morning.

    She said she had ignored the earlier call from the Nobel Committee. “My phone rang and I saw a number from Sweden and thought: ‘That’s just, that’s spam of some sort.’”

    “When I told Mary she won, she said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’” said her husband, Ross Colquhoun.

    The AP could not immediately reach Ramsdell.

    Wasson reported from Seattle and Neergaard from Washington. Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Stefanie Dazio and David Keyton in Berlin contributed.

    AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

     Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Associated Press

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  • The CRISPR Era Is Here

    The CRISPR Era Is Here

    When Victoria Gray was still a baby, she started howling so inconsolably during a bath that she was rushed to the emergency room. The diagnosis was sickle-cell disease, a genetic condition that causes bouts of excruciating pain—“worse than a broken leg, worse than childbirth,” one doctor told me. Like lightning crackling in her body is how Gray, now 38, has described the pain. For most of her life, she lived in fear that it could strike at any moment, forcing her to drop everything to rush, once again, to the hospital.

    After a particularly long and debilitating hospitalization in college, Gray was so weak that she had to relearn how to stand, how to use a spoon. She dropped out of school. She gave up on her dream of becoming a nurse.

    Four years ago, she joined a groundbreaking clinical trial that would change her life. She became the first sickle-cell patient to be treated with the gene-editing technology CRISPR—and one of the first humans to be treated with CRISPR, period. CRISPR at that point had been hugely hyped, but had largely been used only to tinker with cells in a lab. When Gray got her experimental infusion, scientists did not know whether it would cure her disease or go terribly awry inside her. The therapy worked—better than anyone dared to hope. With her gene-edited cells, Gray now lives virtually symptom-free. Twenty-nine of 30 eligible patients in the trial went from multiple pain crises every year to zero in 12 months following treatment.

    The results are so astounding that this therapy, from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, became the first CRISPR medicine ever approved, with U.K. regulators giving the green light earlier this month; the FDA appears prepared to follow suit in the next two weeks. No one yet knows the long-term effects of the therapy, but today Gray is healthy enough to work full-time and take care of her four children. “Now I’ll be there to help my daughters pick out their wedding dresses. And we’ll be able to take family vacations,” she told NPR a year after her treatment. “And they’ll have their mom every step of the way.”

    The approval is a landmark for CRISPR gene editing, which was just an idea in an academic paper a little more than a decade ago—albeit one already expected to cure incurable diseases and change the world. But how, specifically? Not long after publishing her seminal research, Jennifer Doudna, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier for their pioneering CRISPR work, met with a doctor on a trip to Boston. CRISPR could cure sickle-cell disease, he told her. On his computer, he scrolled through DNA sequences of cells from a sickle-cell patient that his lab had already edited with CRISPR. “That, for me, personally, was one of those watershed moments,” Doudna told me. “Okay, this is going to happen.” And now, it has happened. Gray and patients like her are living proof of gene-editing power. Sickle-cell disease is the first disease—and unlikely the last—to be transformed by CRISPR.

    All of sickle-cell disease’s debilitating and ultimately deadly effects originate from a single genetic typo. A small misspelling in Gray’s DNA—an A that erroneously became a T—caused the oxygen-binding hemoglobin protein in her blood to clump together. This in turn made her red blood cells rigid, sticky, and characteristically sickle shaped, prone to obstructing blood vessels. Where oxygen cannot reach, tissue begins to die. Imagine “if you put a tourniquet on and walked away, or if you were having a heart attack all the time,” says Lewis Hsu, a pediatric hematologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. These obstructions are immensely painful, and repeated bouts cause cumulative damage to the body, which is why people with sickle cell die some 20 years younger on average.

    Not everyone with the sickle-cell mutation gets quite so sick. As far back as the 1940s, a doctor noticed that the blood of newborns with sickle-cell disease did not, surprisingly, sickle very much. Babies in the womb actually make a fetal version of the hemoglobin protein, whose higher affinity for oxygen pulls the molecule out of their mother’s blood. At birth, a gene that encodes fetal hemoglobin begins to turn off. But adults do sometimes still make varying amounts of fetal hemoglobin, and the more they make, scientists observed, the milder their sickle-cell disease, as though fetal hemoglobin had stepped in to replace the faulty adult version. Geneticists eventually figured out the exact series of switches our cells use to turn fetal hemoglobin on and off. But there, they remained stuck: They had no way to flip the switch themselves.

    Then came CRISPR. The basic technology is a pair of genetic scissors that makes fairly precise cuts to DNA. CRISPR is not currently capable of fixing the A-to-T typo responsible for sickle cell, but it can be programmed to disable the switch suppressing fetal hemoglobin, turning it back on. Snip snip snip in billions of blood cells, and the result is blood that behaves like typical blood.

    Sickle cell was a “very obvious” target for CRISPR from the start, says Haydar Frangoul, a hematologist at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, who treated Gray in the trial. Scientists already knew the genetic edits necessary to reverse the disease. Sickle cell also has the advantage of affecting blood cells, which can be selectively removed from the body and gene-edited in the controlled environment of a lab. Patients, meanwhile, receive chemotherapy to kill the blood-producing cells in their bone marrow before the CRISPR-edited ones are infused back into their body, where they slowly take root and replicate over many months.

    It is a long, grueling process, akin to a bone-marrow transplant with one’s own edited cells. A bone-marrow transplant from a donor is the one way doctors can currently cure sickle-cell disease, but it comes with the challenge of finding a matched donor and the risks of an immune complication called graft-versus-host disease. Using CRISPR to edit a patient’s own cells eliminates both obstacles. (A second gene-based therapy, using a more traditional engineered-virus technique to insert a modified adult hemoglobin gene into DNA semi-randomly, is also expected to receive FDA approval  for sickle-cell disease soon. It seems to be equally effective at preventing pain crises so far, but development of the CRISPR therapy took much less time.)

    In another way, though, sickle-cell disease is an unexpected front-runner in the race to commercialize CRISPR. Despite being one of the most common genetic diseases in the world, it has long been overlooked because of whom it affects: Globally, the overwhelming majority of sickle-cell patients live in sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., about 90 percent are of African descent, a group that faces discrimination in health care. When Gray, who is Black, needed powerful painkillers, she would be dismissed as an addict seeking drugs rather than a patient in crisis—a common story among sickle-cell patients.

    For decades, treatment for the disease lagged too. Sickle-cell disease has been known to Western medicine since 1910, but the first drug did not become available until 1998, points out Vence Bonham, a researcher at the National Human Genome Research Institute who studies health disparities. In 2017, Bonham began convening focus groups to ask sickle-cell patients about CRISPR. Many were hopeful, but some had misgivings because of the history of experimentation on Black people in the U.S. Gray, for her part, has said she never would have agreed to the experimental protocol had she been offered it at one of the hospitals that had treated her poorly. Several researchers told me they hoped the sickle-cell therapy would make a different kind of history: A community that has been marginalized in medicine is the first in line to benefit from CRISPR.

    Doctors aren’t willing to call it an outright “cure” yet. The long-term durability and safety of gene editing are still unknown, and although the therapy virtually eliminated pain crises, Hsu says that organ damage can accumulate even without acute pain. Does gene editing prevent all that organ damage too? Vertex, the company that makes the therapy, plans to monitor patients for 15 years.

    Still, the short-term impact on patients’ lives is profound. “We wouldn’t have dreamed about this even five, 10 years ago,” says Martin Steinberg, a hematologist at Boston University who also sits on the steering committee for Vertex. He thought it might ameliorate the pain crises, but to eliminate them almost entirely? It looks pretty damn close to a cure.

    In the future, however, Steinberg suspects that this currently cutting-edge therapy will seem like only a “crude attempt.” The long, painful process necessary to kill unedited blood cells makes it inaccessible for patients who cannot take months out of their life to move near the limited number of transplant centers in the U.S.—and inaccessible to patients living with sickle-cell disease in developing countries. The field is already looking at techniques that can edit cells right inside the body, a milestone recently achieved in the liver during a CRISPR trial to lower cholesterol. Scientists are also developing versions of CRISPR that are more sophisticated than a pair of genetic scissors—for example, ones that can paste sequences of DNA or edit a single letter at a time. Doctors could one day correct the underlying mutation that causes sickle-cell disease directly.

    Such breakthroughs would open CRISPR up to treating diseases that are out of reach today, either because we can’t get CRISPR into the necessary cells or because the edit is too complex. “I get emails now daily from families all over the world asking, ‘My son or my loved one has this disease. Can CRISPR fix it?’” says Frangoul, who has become known as the first doctor to infuse a sickle-cell patient in a CRISPR trial. The answer, usually, is not yet. But clinical trials are already under way to test CRISPR in treating cancer, diabetes, HIV, urinary tract infections, hereditary angioedema, and more. We have opened the book on CRISPR gene editing, Frangoul told me, but this is not the final chapter. We may still be writing the very first.

    Sarah Zhang

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  • Nobel Prize in economics goes to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin for research on workplace gender gap

    Nobel Prize in economics goes to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin for research on workplace gender gap

    The Nobel economics prize was awarded Monday to Harvard University professor Claudia Goldin for research that has advanced the understanding of the gender gap in the labor market.

    The announcement went a tiny step to closing the Nobel committee’s own gender gap: Goldin is just the third woman to win the prize out of 93 economics laureates.

    She has studied 200 years of women’s participation in the workplace, showing that despite continued economic growth, women’s pay did not continuously catch up to men’s and a divide still exists despite women gaining higher levels of education than men.

    “Understanding women’s role in the labor market is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future,” said Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.

    Claudia Goldin, winner of 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics
    Claudia Goldin poses for a photographer in her home in Cambridge, Mass. after learning that she received the Nobel Prize in Economics, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023.

    Josh Reynolds / AP


    Goldin does not offer solutions, but her research allows policymakers to tackle the entrenched problem, said economist Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the prize committee.

    “She explains the source of the gap, and how it’s changed over time and how it varies with the stage of development. And therefore, there is no single policy,” Hjalmarsson said. “So it’s a complicated policy question because if you don’t know the underlying reason, a certain policy won’t work.”

    However, “by finally understanding the problem and calling it by the right name, we will be able to pave a better route forward,” Hjalmarsson said.

    Goldin had to become a data sleuth as she sought to fill in missing data for her research, Hjalmarsson said. For parts of history, systematic labor market records did not exist, and, if they did, information about women was missing.

    “So how did Claudia Goldin overcome this missing data challenge? She had to be a detective to dig through the archives to find novel data sources and creative ways to use them to measure these unknowns,” Hjalmarsson said.

    In Goldin’s analysis, a woman’s role in the job market and the pay she receives aren’t influenced just by broad social and economic changes. They also are determined partly by her individual decisions about, for example, how much education to get.

    Often young girls make decisions about future work by looking at their own mother’s participation, each generation “learning from the successes and failures of the preceding generation,” Hjalmarsson said.

    The process of evaluating prospects as times change “helps explain why change in labor market gender gaps has been so slow,” she said.

    Of receiving the Nobel, Goldin, 77, “was surprised and very, very glad,” Ellegren said.

    Her award follows the awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace that were announced last week.

    The economics award was created in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank and is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

    Last year’s winners were former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape America’s aggressive response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

    Only two of the 92 previous economics laureates honored have been women.

    A week ago, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work leading to the development of mRNA vaccines. The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz.

    U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov won the chemistry prize on Wednesday. They were followed by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who was awarded the prize for literature. 

    And on Friday, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize.

    The prizes are handed out at awards ceremonies in December in Oslo and Stockholm. They carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma.

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  • 3 announced as winners of Nobel chemistry prize after their names were leaked

    3 announced as winners of Nobel chemistry prize after their names were leaked

    Stockholm — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on tiny quantum dots.

    Moungi Bawendi, of MIT, Louis Brus, of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov, of Nanocrystals Technology Inc., were honored for their work with the tiny particles that are just a few atoms in diameter and whose electrons have constrained movement. This effects how they absorb and release visible light, allowing for very bright colors. They’re used in many electronics, such as LED displays.

    “These tiny particles have unique properties and now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps. They catalyze chemical reactions and their clear light can illuminate tumor tissue for a surgeon,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the award in Stockholm.

    Nobel Physics
    This combo of pictures taken Oct. 3, 2023 shows from left, French scientist Pierre Agostini posing in his apartment in Paris, scientist Ferenc Krausz speaking during a presentation at the Max-Plank-Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, and French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier talking to journalists at Lund University, Sweden. 

    AP


    In a highly unusual turn of events, Swedish media reported the names of the winners before the prize was announced.

    Public broadcaster SVT said the academy sent a press release by mistake early Wednesday that contained the names of the winners.

    “Unfortunately, I cannot comment on what has been published yet. What is important to know is that the Academy of Sciences has not yet met and there is no decision on who will be awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry,” academy spokeswoman Eva Nevelius said in an email.

    Heiner Linke, an expert on the Nobel Committee for chemistry, told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that no decision had been made Wednesday morning and that if a press release had gone out it would “definitely” have been a mistake.

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the physics, chemistry and economics prizes, asks for nominations a year in advance from thousands of university professors and other scholars around the world.

    A committee for each prize then discusses candidates in a series of meetings throughout the year. At the end of the process, the committee presents one or more proposals to the full academy for a vote. The deliberations, including the names of nominees other than the winners, are kept confidential for 50 years.

    On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for producing the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons.

    The tiny part of each atom races around the center and is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.

    On Monday, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

    Last year, Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a way of ” snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more precisely.

    The chemistry prize means Nobel season has reached its halfway stage. The prizes in literature, peace and economics follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.

    The Nobel Foundation raised the prize money by 10% this year to 11 million kronor (about $1 million). In addition to the money, winners receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.

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  • Nobel Prize awarded for discovery of quantum dots that changed everything from TV displays to cancer imaging | CNN

    Nobel Prize awarded for discovery of quantum dots that changed everything from TV displays to cancer imaging | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to a trio of scientists who worked to discover and develop quantum dots, used in LED lights and TV screens, as well as by surgeons when removing cancer tissue.

    The prize was won by Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov, the Nobel committee for chemistry announced in Stockholm on Wednesday.

    “For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles. But this year’s laureates succeeded,” said Johan Aqvist, chair of the committee.

    The scientists were lauded as “pioneers in the exploration of the nanoworld” – in which matter starts to be measured in millionths of a millimeter. At this level, strange phenomena start to occur called “quantum effects.”

    Quantum dots consist of just a few thousand atoms. In terms of size, one quantum dot is to a soccer ball as a soccer ball is to the Earth.

    When light is passed through quantum dots they emit a specific color. This can be finely tuned and is determined by the size of the dots. The bigger dots glow red, while the smallest glow green or blue.

    The slightest of changes in the size of the particle can change its hue right across the spectrum of the color wheel.

    “We can tune these dots to fluoresce at any color that a given application requires,” Michael Edelman, CEO of UK-based quantum manufacturer Nanoco, told CNN.

    The laureates’ work has allowed scientists to capitalize on some of the properties of the nanoworld, and quantum dots are now found in living rooms and operating theaters across the world.

    They are now widely used in TVs and have several advantages over traditional LCD panels, creating more vibrant and accurate colors, as well as requiring less energy to operate.

    The dots are also widely used in medical diagnostics. Doctors use them to illuminate molecules that can bind themselves to cancer tumors, allowing the surgeon to distinguish the healthy tissue from the diseased.

    The Nobel committee explained how the scientists’ work had helped develop quantum dots.

    In the 1980s, Ekimov created size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. “The color came from nanoparticles of copper chloride and Ekimov demonstrated that the particle size affected the color of the glass via quantum effects,” the committee said.

    A few years later, Brus became the first scientist to prove size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in a liquid.

    In 1993, Bawendi then changed the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in what the committee called “almost perfect particles.” This development allowed the dots to be used in applications.

    Bawendi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Brus, professor emeritus at Columbia University, are American. Ekimov is Russian and works for Nanocrystals Technology Inc.

    The deliberations of the Nobel committee are usually shrouded in total secrecy. No shortlists for the Nobel prizes are revealed and the winners are called shortly before the official announcement.

    But the chemistry committee inadvertently published the name of the winning trio before the official announcement on Wednesday.

    Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a copy of an email it said was from the academy, Reuters reported. Aqvist told Reuters ahead of the announcement that the email had been a “mistake” and stressed that a final decision had not been made. But hours later, the leaked names were confirmed as laureates.

    “Let me say that this is of course, very unfortunate. We deeply regret what happened for sure,” Hans Ellegren, secretary general of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said at the announcement ceremony.

    “There was a press release sent out for still unknown reasons. We have been very active this morning to trying to find out what actually happened but at this place, we don’t know that. we deeply regret that this happened. The important thing is that it did not affect the awarding of the prize.”

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  • Nobel Prize in physics goes to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for research into electrons in flashes of light | CNN

    Nobel Prize in physics goes to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for research into electrons in flashes of light | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for creating “flashes of light that are short enough to take snapshots of electrons’ extremely rapid movements,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm on Tuesday.

    Electrons move so quickly that their movements were previously thought impossible to follow.

    But the three physicists “have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy,” the committee said.

    It praised the laureates for giving “humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules.”

    This is a breaking news story, more to follow.

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  • 3 Scientists Win Nobel Prize In Physics For New Way Of Studying Electrons

    3 Scientists Win Nobel Prize In Physics For New Way Of Studying Electrons

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to three scientists who look at electrons in atoms during the tiniest of split seconds.

    Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the U.S.; Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany; and Anne L’Huillier of Lund University in Sweden won the award.

    Their experiments “have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the prize in Stockholm. They “have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”

    At the moment, this science is about understanding our universe rather than practical applications, but the hope is that it will eventually lead to better electronics and disease diagnosis.

    “Attosecond science allows us to address fundamental questions such as the time scale of the photoelectric effect for which Einstein, Albert Einstein, received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921,” according to Eva Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

    The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

    Last year, three scientists jointly won the physics prize for proving that tiny particles could retain a connection with each other even when separated. The phenomenon was once doubted but is now being explored for potential real-world applications such as encrypting information.

    The physics prize comes a day after Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

    Nobel announcements will continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Oct. 9.

    The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The prestigious peace prize is handed out in Oslo, according to his wishes, while the other award ceremony is held in Stockholm.

    Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • Nobel Prize chiefs spark backlash by inviting Russia to award ceremony

    Nobel Prize chiefs spark backlash by inviting Russia to award ceremony

    The Nobel Foundation’s decision to invite Russian ambassadors to this year’s Nobel Prize award ceremonies triggered fierce criticism from Swedish and Ukrainian politicians.

    The Nobel Foundation announced Thursday it would invite ambassadors from all countries that are diplomatically represented in Sweden and Norway, where award ceremonies are to be held in December. This includes Russia and Belarus, which last year were excluded following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation Vidar Helgesen said in a statement that this decision was made to counter a tendency in which “dialogue between those with differing views is being reduced.”

    But the announcement sparked strong reactions in Sweden, with many politicians announcing they would boycott the event. Center Party leader Muharrem Demirok, Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar and Green Party co-spokesperson Märta Stenevi all announced on X, formerly Twitter, they would not attend the ceremonies.

    Johan Pehrson, leader of the Liberal Party, said he “will not sit and toast the Russian ambassador while Putin’s disgusting and bloody war of aggression continues in Ukraine.”

    Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson reportedly said he was “greatly surprised” to see Russia invited and he would not have made the same decision.

    Andrii Plakhotniuk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Sweden, also criticized the Nobel Foundation’s announcement, urging the foundation to reconsider their decision, while Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, said the decision will likely increase the Kremlin’s “sense of impunity and new crimes” and asked the Nobel Foundation to “support international efforts to isolate Russia and Belarus.”

    Claudia Chiappa

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  • Malala Yousafzai has playful

    Malala Yousafzai has playful

    Malala Yousafzai has playful “Barbie” moment with husband – CBS News


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    Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai had some fun with a “Barbie”-inspired social media post. The renowned women’s rights activist shared a photo showing her and her husband, Asser Malik, striking a pose inside a life-size Barbie box. In her caption, she humorously wrote, “This Barbie has a Nobel Prize — he’s just Ken.” Malik joined in the fun by responding with a movie reference: “I’m Kenough.”

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  • ‘I honestly don’t know if this is the last time’ — America’s great peacemaker returns to Belfast

    ‘I honestly don’t know if this is the last time’ — America’s great peacemaker returns to Belfast

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    BELFAST — He fought for peace in Northern Ireland — and now George Mitchell is fighting for his life.

    The former U.S. Senate majority leader from Maine, who became a diplomatic superhero in Northern Ireland after leading years of painstaking talks to produce the Good Friday Agreement, may be visiting his adopted homeland for the final time.

    He hopes not. But, as Mitchell reflected in an interview with POLITICO, he simply cannot know.

    Welcomed by well-wishers young and old this week as he returned to Belfast and to Queen’s University, where he served as chancellor for a decade following his peacemaking triumph in 1998, Mitchell opened a conference marking the accord’s 25th anniversary.

    For nearly 45 minutes, Mitchell argued passionately for the power of compromise, his message leavened with well-timed jokes poking fun at the entrenched attitudes — and tough-to-decipher vowels — that tested him in Northern Ireland.

    You’d never have known that Mitchell, 89, was making his first public speech in three years — nor that he had only recently ended years of chemotherapy in a battle with leukemia that came close to killing him.

    “This is a gift by the grace of God to be able to come back here. I’ve had a rough couple of years,” he said.

    “I retired from my law firm at the end of 2019, planning with my wife a life of travel and doing a lot of things that we hadn’t done. Then COVID hit and I was almost immediately diagnosed with acute leukemia. So I’ve been pretty sick. I haven’t been able to do very much.

    “Initially I underwent intensive chemotherapy, which was very severe. I didn’t read a newspaper, I didn’t watch a minute of television. I was bedridden and very, very sick for about three months. Then I was on chemo for about two-and-a-half years,” he said. “The doctors said to me: ‘There’s a limit to how much chemotherapy you can take. We have to take you off.’ The disease may return. It may be six months, it may be two years — or who knows.”

    ‘Nothing in politics is impossible’

    Mitchell now describes himself as pain-free and in remission.

    He spoke in a Queen’s office overlooking the university’s entrance, where a bronze bust honoring him has just been unveiled by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the former British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. In April 1998, the two premiers joined Mitchell for the intensive final days of the talks in Belfast, while Clinton cajoled Northern Ireland’s polarized politicians by phone from the White House.

    Several other figures who helped deliver that breakthrough are no longer alive, including Northern Ireland’s joint Nobel Peace Prize laureates from 1998, John Hume and David Trimble, both of whom have died since the last Good Friday commemorations five years ago.

    George Mitchell (C) attends a gala marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement | Pool photo by Charles McQuillan/AFP via Getty Images

    In his speech, Mitchell paid equal tribute to Hume, the moderate Irish nationalist leader who opposed Irish Republican Army violence and laid the intellectual architecture for the Good Friday deal; and Trimble, the prickly legal scholar who risked splitting his Ulster Unionist Party by accepting a deal that allowed IRA prisoners to walk free and ex-IRA chiefs to join a new cross-community government without clear-cut guarantees the outlawed group would disarm.

    “Without John Hume, there would not have been a peace process. Without David Trimble, there would not have been a peace agreement,” Mitchell said to thunderous applause from the crowd, among them most of today’s crop of British unionist, Irish nationalist and middle-ground leaders.

    Left unsaid was that others wanted to see Mitchell himself share that same Nobel prize, given his central role in sustaining hope in the talks after what U.S. President Joe Biden last week described as “700 days of failure.”

    Indeed, it has been a common refrain this week among those now seeking to revive Northern Ireland’s shuttered regional government — the centerpiece of a much broader Good Friday package that included police reform, prisoner releases and paramilitary disarmament — that they wish Mitchell was still in the market for one more Belfast mission.

    Mitchell offered only raised eyebrows and a wry smile when asked if he’d like to lead one more round of talks at Stormont, the government complex overlooking Belfast.

    But he expressed unreserved optimism that the Democratic Unionists — the party that physically tried to block him from taking his chair when the talks began in June 1996, and spent years condemning the peace process as a sellout to IRA terror — will find a way to return to a cross-community government with the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin.

    The DUP has refused to revive the coalition government since May 2022 elections, citing its opposition to post-Brexit trade rules that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K.

    Mitchell thinks Northern Ireland’s political fundamentals have evolved since he wrote, in his 1999 book “Making Peace,” that the Good Friday Agreement became possible only because the DUP had abandoned the talks the year before.

    “Times and circumstances change,” he said. “Nothing in politics is impossible.

    “Political parties change and evolve. Does the Republican Party in the United States today reflect the views of the Republican Party of 20 or even 10 years ago? Does the Democratic Party? The challenge of leadership is to recognize that and to deal with change, all in the broader public interest.”

    He also rejected any notion that blame for the current Stormont impasse lies entirely with the DUP. “There isn’t any one villain,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to do what they think is best. The question is: What is best?”

    Mitchell stressed that “100 percenters” — people who see “any compromise as weakness” — exist in pretty much every political party on earth, including his own Democrats. And he said no American politician should criticize the depth of political division in Northern Ireland given that, today, the divide in U.S. politics has grown arguably even more noxious.

    Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and George Mitchell shake hands during a photocall at the BBC studios, in Belfast in 2008 | Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images

    Leaders in any democracy, he said, must be ready to absorb criticism from within their own ranks and keep striving for common ground.

    “You can’t let the first ‘no’ be the final answer,” he said. “Or the second ‘no,’ or the seventh ‘no.’ You just have to treat everyone with respect and keep at it.”

    A final goodbye

    Mitchell came face to face with his own mortality during Monday’s unveiling of his bronze bust, drawing big laughs from the crowd as he observed: “When you’re looking at a statue of yourself, you know the end is near.”

    But the reality of living with leukemia, which makes him more vulnerable to infections and other threats, draws his mind back to one of his great regrets from the Stormont talks.

    “We were at a critical early moment in the talks in the summer of 1996. I was trying to get them going, to adopt a set of rules. It was very complicated, unnecessarily complicated,” he recalled.

    With a vote on the rules due that coming Monday, he received an unexpected phone call from Maine. His brother Robbie, who had been fighting leukemia for five years, was close to death. If Mitchell hopped on to the next flight, he might make it back to his hometown of Waterville by Friday night — but he’d risk having the talks fall at their first hurdle.

    Mitchell called his brother’s doctor, oncologist Richard Stone at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to be told that although Robbie’s health was deteriorating and it was impossible to be certain, he might well survive for several weeks longer. Wanting to get the first step of the peace talks banked before negotiations broke for the summer, Mitchell chose to stay in the U.K. over the weekend.

    That Saturday night, another call from Waterville confirmed that his older brother had just died.

    “I came back to Belfast on Monday and we got those rules adopted. I made it home in time to speak at Robbie’s funeral. But I didn’t see him before he passed away. That’s one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made,” Mitchell said.

    A quarter-century later, the same Dr. Stone is now treating the younger Mitchell brother for the same disease. Mitchell has been told that if the cancer returns, his advanced age means chemotherapy must be kept to a bare minimum.

    “Medical science has advanced very rapidly in the curing of leukemia. But as the doctors explained to me, chemotherapy is poison and if you take enough of that, that will kill you,” he said. “The doctor also explained to me that, on the other hand, I might go a few years and die of something else.”

    Bill Clinton shakes hands with George Mitchell in the Oval Office at the White House after naming the retiring senator to be a special advisor for economic initiatives in Ireland | Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

    Mitchell estimates he’s already flown back and forth to Belfast at least 100 times since 1995. He and his wife, Heather, have approached this trip as if it could be his last — that this week might represent his final goodbye to a vexatious land he’s come to love.

    “I honestly don’t know if this is the last time I’ll ever be in Northern Ireland. But my wife and I accept the possibility that it is,” he said. “I told Heather on the way over, we’ve really got to enjoy this and take in the sights and sounds of this beautiful place and the people. My fervent hope is that I’ll be able to come back again.”

    Shawn Pogatchnik

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  • $599 limited editions of Bob Dylan’s new book were “guaranteed to be personally hand-signed.” They weren’t.

    $599 limited editions of Bob Dylan’s new book were “guaranteed to be personally hand-signed.” They weren’t.

    For about $600, people could buy limited editions of Bob Dylan’s new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” with the promise of the book being hand-signed by the famed musician himself. Now, the book and its publisher are under fire as buyers revealed that the supposed hand signature was actually a replica. 

    screen-shot-2022-11-23-at-8-38-33-am.png
    Publisher Simon & Schuster offered a $599 version of Bob Dylan’s new book “guaranteed” to include his handwritten signature. 

    Simon & Schuster/Wayback Machine


    A now-erased webpage for Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, offers an “exclusive edition” of the book “guaranteed to be personally hand-signed by Bob Dylan.” The listing price for the book was $599, final sale, with no returns accepted. Meanwhile, the unsigned copy of the book is listed by the publisher for $45.

    Simon & Schuster is a division of Paramount Global, as is CBS News.

    The book even came with a letter from the publisher’s president and CEO, Jonathan Karp, dated November 15, that further guarantees the signature’s authenticity. 

    “You hold in your hands something very special, one of just 900 copies available in the US of The Philosophy of Modern Song signed by Bob Dylan. This is Bob’s first book of new writing since Chronicles, Volume One, published in 2004, and since winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016,” the letter states, ending with a simple promise, “This letter is confirmation that the copy of the book you hold has been hand-signed by Bob Dylan.”

    But when buyers of these limited editions got their copies, they were shocked to find that the signature was not hand-signed. It was a computer-printed replica.

    The revelations of the replica signature emerged a month ago, before many people received their books. One YouTuber popular for promoting fan mail and autograph collecting posted a video on October 21 that showed a signed copy of the book that someone had acquired through Canadian bookseller Indigo. 

    “It was painfully clear that it was never signed by Bob,” the YouTuber says, saying it was clearly made by a machine for a number of reasons. “…It just doesn’t look like Bob’s signature. Secondly, the lines are 100% uniform and have distinctive starting and stopping points.” 

    And finally, he said, “at 81 years old, you would expect to see some shake in his signature.”

    “If you ordered a copy, now’s your time to cancel,” he warned. 

    One person who purchased the book said on Reddit that it looks like it had been signed with an “auto-pen,” a machine that reproduces someone’s signature. 

    “Definitely NOT a real signature,” another person tweeted this week after getting their copy of the book. “I have 3 actual Bob autos that look nothing like this. Anyway, glad I’m getting my money back. The letter is a complete joke.”

    Simon & Schuster publicly addressed the situation on Sunday, issuing an apology to those who purchased the supposedly hand-signed book. 

    “As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in penned replica form,” the statement says. “We are addressing this immediately by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.” 

    Dylan has not publicly commented on the signature snafu. 

    The book was originally announced in March for a November 8 publication. It’s the legendary singer and songwriter’s first book of new writing since his 2004 book “Chronicles, Volume One.” In it are more than 60 of Dylan’s essays about music and songs, in which he breaks down their rhymes and syllables and shows how genres are intertwined – even bluegrass and heavy metal.  

    Li Cohen


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    Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending reporter for CBS News, focusing on social justice issues.

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  • Ben Bernanke awarded the Nobel Prize | 60 Minutes

    Ben Bernanke awarded the Nobel Prize | 60 Minutes

    Ben Bernanke awarded the Nobel Prize | 60 Minutes – CBS News


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    On Monday, former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
    In 2009, Bernanke told 60 Minutes, “The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.”

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  • 10/16/2022: The Lost Souls of Bucha, The Power of Grimsby, Coach Prime

    10/16/2022: The Lost Souls of Bucha, The Power of Grimsby, Coach Prime

    10/16/2022: The Lost Souls of Bucha, The Power of Grimsby, Coach Prime – CBS News


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    Stories of civilians killed in Bucha, Ukraine; The largest offshore wind farm in the world; How Deion Sanders is changing the future of college football at Jackson State.

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