The Economics Nobel for 2019 has been won by Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee. He shares the prize with two other economists Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. Mumbai-born Banerjee, who studied in Kolkata and New Delhi, Duflo and Kremer were awarded “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty," the prize committee said. Banerjee became an American citizen in 2017. Duflo is the second woman and the youngest to be chosen for the Economics Nobel. The three came up with a new approach to studying the problems of the poor. While earlier, these were reduced to numbers and percentages, the approach of the Nobel winners is based on the first-hand study of how poor people live, how they spend money and what motivates them. They also came up with the idea of control-based trials in which new programs for the poor are tested by applying them for one group and not applying them for a second group (this is called the control group). The impact of the program can be seen in the difference in what happens in the two groups.
Where have their methods been used?
The methods of the trio have been used to improve the efficiency of government-run programmes in India. Delhi government, for instance, used their ideas in the Chunauti scheme launched in 2016 to lower drop-out rates in government schools and to improve education quality, especially for the weakest students. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the new methods had helped a lot of school children and changed the way teaching was done in classrooms. The same methods are also being used in a pollution control project in Surat, Gujarat.
Medicine: The oxygen game
The Nobel Prize in medicine for 2019 has been awarded to three physician-scientists from the United States (US) and BritainWilliam G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza-“for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”
Working independently, the three have helped humans understand how the body responds to different oxygen levels and adapt accordingly. For example, when the air is thin (oxygen poor), the body generates more red blood cells to carry more oxygen. As oxygen is necessary for the body to breathe, burn energy, digest food and do work, ensuring a regular supply of oxygen is a critical function. The Nobel was awarded to the three scientists as they have been able to explain how the body does this.
The work that won the Nobel has its roots in research done by Semenza in the 1990s when he identified the gene that swung into action when oxygen levels ran low. Genes themselves are proteins found within body cells and they instruct the cells on what they have to do. Semenza found that the genes got the body to increase the production of erythropoietin (EPO), a protein that increases the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, when oxygen ran low. Each red blood cell molecule (the tiny particles that make up a substance) can carry four molecules of oxygen, so more red blood cells means that the body gets extra oxygen supply.
The discoveries of Kaelin, Ratcliffe and Semenza are helping us find new cures for anemia (a condition caused by low levels of red blood cells), cancer and other diseases.
Literature Nobel
The Literature Nobel for 2019 has been awarded to Austrian author Peter Handke while the 2018 prize has been given to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. The 2018 prize could not be announced last year, so both prizes will be given away in December 2019.
Physics: Big Bang Theory
One half of this year’s Nobel prize in physics went to American James Peebles for his work in explaining what the universe is made up of. Peebles studied radiation, which is a wave of invisible energy left over from the time of the Big Bang when the universe was formed. What he found out that that the visible universe that we see around us-the stars, planets etc.-make up just 5% of the universe. The rest is dark matter and dark energy which works opposite to gravity, the force that keeps us grounded to Earth. Dark energy pulls things part and it is stretching the distances between objects in space as time goes by, leading to an ever expanding universe.
Discovery of Exoplanets
The other half of the prize is being shared by two Swiss scientistsMichel Mayor and Didier Queloz. They were responsible for discovering the first Earth-like plane orbiting a star outside the solar system, also known as exoplanets.
Almost 25 years ago, they were studying a star in the Milky Way called the D51 Pegasi. They were looking for a wobble as that would show the existence of a planet circling it. When planets circle a star, the exert a force of attraction on the star, which causes it to wobble. This happens to our Sun too due to the eight planets that orbit it. When Mayor and Queloz looked for the planet circling D51 Pegasi, they found one the size of Jupiter that was orbiting quite close to the star. The size of the planet and its closeness to the Sun, which made it much hotter than our own Jupiter, was very surprising. Discovery of this first ‘hot Jupiter’ and many others like it has completely changed our view of the universe. The work of Mayor and Queloz has led to the discovery of many more exoplanets, and the search is on for one that, like Earth, support life.
Chemistry: The battery that changed it all
This year’s Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three scientists who invented something that we all carry in our pockets. We are speaking of the lithium-ion re-chargeable battery which powers everything from mobile phone batteries to electric cars. John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the prize for their work on these rechargeable devices. Both Goodenough and Whittingham work in the United States while Yoshino lives in Japan.
At the age of 97, Professor Goodenough is the oldest ever Nobel laureate. The work on the battery began in the 1970s when a shortage of oil led scientists to work on energy technologies that did not rely on fossil fuels. Whittingham build a battery from an energy-rich material called titanium disulphide and lithium. Goodenough replaced the titanium disulphide with cobalt oxide to improve the battery’s power. Building on this, Yoshino built the first widely useable lithium ion battery in 1985 and the first such batteries were put on sale by Sony in 1991.
In addition to their use in electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries can also be used to store energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power.