Nobel Prizes 2015: a territory of changes and development

The names of Nobel Prize 2015 winners in the sciences – physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry – have been announced. It is already possible to draw some preliminary conclusions on the last “Nobel year” in the context of global scientific development.

PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 was divided, one half jointly to William C. Campbell (US, Irish-born) and Satoshi Omura (Japan) “for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites” and the other half to Youyou Tu (China) “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria.”

According to the Nobel Prize Committee, this year’s winners have developed ground-breaking methods of treating the most dangerous parasitic diseases. Campbell and Omura invented the medicine Avermectin, an effective remedy against onchocerciasis (“river blindness,” which is characterized by the formation of subcutaneous nodules and the lesion of the skin and eyes), elephantiasis (a gross enlargement of any part of the body due to a morbid growth of the skin and the subcutaneous cellular tissue), and other parasitic diseases.

The preparation was developed on the basis of bioactive components drawn from the bacteria that live in the ground. “I humbly accept the award. I wonder if I deserve it. I’ve learned so much from and depended on microorganisms that I would give the Nobel Prize to them,” Professor Omura said in an interview. Incidentally, this discovery was possible owing to the successful application of microbiology in veterinary medicine, where Omura worked for a long time.

Experimenting with extracts of the traditional Chinese wormwood tincture as long ago as in the early 1980s, Youyou Tu developed Artemisinin, a preparation that reduces malaria mortality rate by 20 to 30 percent. In 2011 Youyou Tu was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, still remaining the only successful researcher who was not a member of official academies. The preparation developed on the basis of her research is today an integral part of therapy in all the malaria-affected regions.

The discovery of anti-parasite preparations for the regions impaired by certain diseases is comparable to the discovery of antibiotics. The price of the question is over 670,000 and up to 250,000 deaths from malaria and other parasitic infections, respectively, i.e. about an annual million victims. Another 2.5 million annually suffer from these diseases. The WHO estimates that the total number of those affected by the consequences of malaria and parasitic diseases is 300 million. For many decades, this has posed an incomparably greater threat to humankind than, for example, the Ebola fever to which the global media’s attention was riveted very recently.

PHYSICS

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 was awarded jointly to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.” The neutrino is one of the basic particles our Universe is full of. To study and know its properties means to come closer to knowing the fundamental properties of the surrounding world.

It was believed previously that neutrinos have no mass and move at the speed of light. But there was a thing to be clarified. There are three – electron, muon, and tau – types of neutrinos, which we find in equal parts in the coming radiation. Deep inside the Sun, beta decay reactions bring forth electron neutrinos only. This means there should be a mechanism that lets neutrinos change their type. Oscillation is this very mechanism. To bring it into play, neutrinos should have a non-zero mass. The research by this year’s laureates has proved that neutrinos have mass and oscillations.

The Nobel Committee has announced that they were awarded the prize “for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.”

Around the turn of the millennium, Takaaki Kajita presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch between two identities on their way to the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan. Meanwhile, the research group in Canada led by Arthur B. McDonald could demonstrate that the neutrinos from the Sun were not disappearing on their way to Earth. Instead they were captured with a different identity when arriving at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

Anne L’Huillier, professor of atomic physics, chairperson of the Nobel Committee for Physics, thus explained the essence of this discovery in her interview: “These elementary particles are the second most abundant in the universe, next to the photons… They are created in nuclear reactions, for example, in the sun, in stars. They interact very little with the environment… There are three kinds of neutrinos… This year’s prize is awarded to the experimental discovery that neutrinos can change identity... They oscillate.” The discovery of neutrino oscillation should be considered a landmark in elementary particle physics.

Today’s achievement is a development of the ideas of previous Nobel Prize winners, such as Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Fermi, Frederick Reines, Clyde Cowan, Pavel Cherenkov, Igor Tamm, Ilya Frank, as well as of Bruno Pontecorvo who, albeit not a winner of this prize, made an important theoretical contribution. Incidentally, the latter put forward a theory of neutrino oscillations as long ago as 1957 on the basis of Reines and Cowan’s experiments in 1956.

Interestingly, elementary particle physics is the field where Nobel Prizes are awarded most often. Incidentally, this confirms that the great German physicist and mathematician, as well as a great pain-in-the-neck, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was right when he said: “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” This should be a good rule for scientists as well as politicians who are bursting “to manage science.”

CHEMISTRY

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 was awarded jointly to Tomas Lindahl, a Swedish researcher who works in the UK; and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar from the US “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.”

The Nobel Committee points out that the laureates “mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information.”

Repair – a cell’s ability to “repair” a DNA molecule damaged by chemical or physical agents and thus restore the partly lost genetic information – is the most important cellular function for the survival and development of the living species.

A few decades ago, achievements in molecular biology and physical chemistry cast doubt on the belief that the DNA molecule is stable. It turned out that this molecule could easily disintegrate under the influence of many external factors. This called into question our idea of not only the development of life on the planet, but also of our survival in the surrounding world. Lindahl’s research into the DNA molecule decay speed allowed identifying, back in the mid-1970s, the molecular mechanisms that hinder this process. In the mid-1990s he managed to reproduce the DNA fermentative repair in laboratory conditions.

Sancar and Modrich explored the mechanisms that tend to correct errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. In particular, Sancar explored this mechanism on UV-damaged cells.

Further research into repair mechanism will perhaps allow us to effectively offset injurious effects on the organism, correct mutations, and tackle the problems of treating many diseases, which are considered to be hard-to-cure or totally incurable now.

In the light of the Nobel Committee’s decisions, it is interesting to note another important fact – a growing number of Novel laureates from China and Japan. This tendency runs counter to our, and traditional Western, view of Eastern culture as one that is secondary and based on copying somebody else’s achievements, buying out patents, and implementing Western inventions. Was it a long time ago that Western snobbish scientists scoffed at the Japanese for “devouring patents,” as many of us are still mocking disdainfully at the Chinese?

Of course, it was so until a certain moment, but an adequate long-term policy in education and research management has begun to bear fruits.

Since 1957, Chinese scientists have been awarded nine Nobel Prizes, including five in the sciences (four in physics and one in physiology or medicine). And the achievements of the Japanese have been even more remarkable since 1949 – 24 awards, including 21 in the sciences, two in literature, and one peace prize.

Thus, in terms of world-level scientific achievements, Japan has outstripped such countries with centuries-long scientific traditions as Russia, Canada, Austria, Italy, and even Israel in the past 65 years, while China has been trying in the past 60 years to run abreast with Denmark, Norway, Spain, and Ireland.

Yet culture experts claim, not without a reason, that historical, cultural, and civilizational differences between Japanese and Chinese societies are so striking that we should not expect Chinese scientists to achieve the results comparable to those of their Japanese counterparts. However, from the angle of the impact of social reforms on the effectiveness of research, comparisons by some formal indicators are quite possible.

USEFUL EXPERIENCE FOR UKRAINE

The Asian experience is quite useful for us. Systematic and streamlined reforms in education on the basis of world experience, years-long hard work, and harmonious development of both fundamental and applied sciences is the right road to success.

The key to successful reforms is a comprehensive and multilevel integration of national scientific research and education into the global scientific process. Instead, Ukrainian scientists have been fighting for many years for the cancellation of a mindless governmental instruction that they can go abroad to meet their foreign colleagues at international conferences and forums, and for advanced studies, by special permission of the Cabinet of Ministers only.

It is not a paradox, it is absurdity. Science is supposed to pave the way from the area of absurdity to that of reason. Essentially, we are all striving for this, aren’t we?

Yurii Kostiuchenko is an academic, a specialist in satellite observations, geoinformatics, statistics, security, and risks; a senior research associate at the Scientific Center of Aerospace Studies, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine