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Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

wondersofphysics.com

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#23
Clyde Hutchison. Worked on the wrong type of restriction enzyme (type I) which is devilishly hard because it's cutsite is stochastic (also makes it useless for bioengineering). Missed one Nobel prize there (went to his buddy Ham Smith, who worked on type ii which everybody knows and loves).

Later proposed a theoretical mechanism for site directed mutagenesis (contingent on economical DNA synthesis). When that technology rolled around, he was on the paper - apparently he did the wet experiment himself - but it was Adams that got the prize.

Missed two Nobel prizes. First one was bad luck, second one was all on the committee.

Funny thing about biology, of you ask working biologists who discovered restriction enzymes or who invented site directed mutagenesis, or who discovered gfp, they will typically not be able to tell you.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#24
post #6
post #4

You wouldn't believe how proper, non-racist and balanced this comment was before being seized upon by a mob, half of whom have deleted their messages now. Lesson to fellow Europeans: Don't ever comment on anything that involves race. The Americans are going through something special at the moment and they're lashing out at pretty much anything. I wish I could delete this comment, but alas I can not.

My comment no longer seems to have any relevance to the parent, which was edited. I do like to point out this (in)famous case though: Nate Lewis was denied the prize in Chemistry by being the most junior in a group of four (the prize can be shared at most three ways).

I think you're going to want to edit/remove that; it was tainted.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#25
post #19

Personally, I think the Nobel in Chemistry should have gone to Harry Noller (UCSC), who established that the core function of the ribosome is implemented by RNA, not proteins. After 20+ years of making his case and generally not being believed (even though he had excellent data), a competitor did a crystal structure proving him right and won the prize. https://reports.news.ucsc.edu/breakthrough/ https://www.mercuryne…

+1 for Noller. In a previous life, I worked as an undergrad in an RNA lab (remains the best job I have ever had) and we studied Noller's work closely.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#26

It is easy to look at this list and say gender and ethnicity played a role (which wouldn't be surprising particularly in that era). But five people on the list are white men. Physicists were more likely to be white men (at least in those times). So no matter what list you make of physicists, they will end up on that list. My point is, it is not possible to deduce any bias from such a list. For any coveted prize there…

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Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#29

Rosalind Franklin - X-ray crystallographer who helped decipher the structure of DNA. Carl Woese - Discoverer of the 3rd domain of life archaebacteria among other scientific accomplishments.

Rosalind Franklin definitely belongs on the list. However her not getting the prize has a simple reason. She died of ovarian cancer before the prize was awarded for DNA, so couldn't have been considered.

Ironically her cancer could well have been caused by the research that she was not publicly recognized for.

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