TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102389/10238900.005

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                                                                                NOBEL PRIZES, Page 73

Surprise, Triumph -- and Controversy


Eight new laureates are honored, and an overlooked scientist
cries foul


    Medicine

    "Anybody who says we've got this problem licked is a fool
or a knave or both." Microbiologist J. Michael Bishop was
referring to the slow, almost imperceptible progress in the
search for a cancer cure. So when Bishop, 53, and colleague
Harold E. Varmus, 49, were awakened early last Monday with word
that the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm had awarded them the
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, both were startled.
Bishop called the news "surreal" and Varmus insisted on
verifying the information. Others were less surprised. Said Dr.
David Baltimore of M.I.T.'s Whitehead Institute, who won in 1975
the prize for research in the same field: "Their work
established a new paradigm for thinking about cancer."

    In a series of experiments begun in the mid-'70s at the
University of California at San Francisco, Bishop and Varmus
resolved a spirited debate over oncogenes -- the genes, or
units of heredity, that cause cancer. Researchers had
previously theorized that cancer genes were separate entities,
unrelated to the healthy functioning of a cell. But in studies
of a cancer-causing virus in chickens, Bishop and Varmus found
that oncogenes were normal genes, vital to cell growth and
development, that had somehow gone awry -- probably as a result
of mutations induced by carcinogens such as cigarette smoke and
radiation. The team thus helped explain the role of genetic
damage in cancer development and established a common pathway
by which all cancers seem to evolve. Observed Bishop: "We have
the seeds of cancer in our own genetic dowry." Since then
researchers have identified more than 40 slightly altered genes
that cause cancer in humans. These discoveries will make it
easier for doctors to diagnose and predict the occurrence of
cancer.

    The occasion was somewhat marred by the claims of a French
researcher, Dr. Dominique Stehelin, that he deserved at least
part of the prize. Stehelin, who assisted in the UCSF study but
is now at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, called his
omission "very unfair and rotten." But others who were present
at the time of the original experiments said that Stehelin,
though a key member of the research team, nevertheless worked
under the supervision of Varmus and Bishop. The Nobel Committee
stood by its decision.

    Chemistry

    Biology students used to be taught that there was a strict
division of labor within living cells. The nucleic acids, DNA
and RNA, served as repositories of genetic information, and
certain proteins, called enzymes, did all the work. But research
conducted in the past decade by Sidney Altman of Yale University
and Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado at Boulder has
forced scientists to alter completely their ideas not only of
how cells function but also of how life on earth began. Last
week the Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to Altman and Cech, with
the citation that "many chapters in our textbooks have to be
revised" as a result of their pioneering studies.

    Working with a bacterium and a pond-dwelling protozoan,
Altman, 50, and Cech, 41, independently discovered that RNA can
act as an enzyme, a molecule that accelerates chemical reactions
a millionfold or more and makes it possible for life to exist.
Plants, for example, depend on enzymes to convert carbon
dioxide in the air to sugar and starch. An enzyme in human
saliva helps transform starch into glucose, the body's energy
source. Until RNA enzymes were identified, all enzymes were
thought to be proteins.

    Cech also found that RNA can copy itself, suggesting that
the first living organisms may not have depended solely on DNA,
the principal carrier of hereditary information in plants,
animals and bacteria. "Now that we know that RNA can both carry
genetic information and serve as a catalyst," Cech wrote last
year, "it seems possible that it was the key molecule at the
origin of life."


    Although Altman and Cech did not collaborate directly, each
benefited from the other's advances. "Like a Ping-Pong match,
the ball went from one to the other," according to Bertil
Andersson, a member of the Nobel Committee. Cech heard of the
award while in Boston accepting another prize. "I am obviously
excited about it," he said. "It was something that everyone has
been telling me would happen, but I had no way of knowing when."
What will the researchers do with their $470,000 prize? "I'll
just go back to the lab and do more work," Altman said. Cech had
other ideas. Said he: "I have two young daughters who are very
good at spending money."

    Physics

    Science does not progress through revolutionary discoveries
alone. Important advances also occur as ingenious experimenters
devise ever more clever methods for increasing the accuracy of
their observations. The Nobel Prize in Physics this year
celebrates the contributions of three scientists who have spent
their careers elevating precision measurement to a high art.
"It's nice to know that this type of work can be appreciated,"
said one of the recipients, distinguished Harvard University
physicist Norman Ramsey. Upon hearing the news, Ramsey, an
athletic 74-year-old who recently returned from a trek in Nepal,
admits that he was startled. "Are you sure?" he asked the first
reporter who called him.

    Ramsey was awarded half of the $470,000 prize for his
contributions in pioneering a method of measuring the minute
movements that occur inside atoms. Ramsey's so-called separated
oscillatory fields technique did not just become a valuable
scientific tool; it also provided the basis for modern-day
atomic clocks. Like the ticking of a pendulum in a grandfather
clock, the rapid-fire (9,192,631.770 times a second)
oscillations of cesium-atom nuclei, spinning like tops inside
a magnetic field, can be used to pace off time.

    Atomic clocks are the world's most accurate timepieces and
have important applications in navigation and communication
systems. These clocks have also been used to make direct
measurements of continental drift, coordinate astronomical
observations and test the ability of earth's gravity to slow
down time. (It does so at the rate of a second every 10,000
years.)

    Two other physicists -- Hans Dehmelt of the University of
Washington in Seattle and Wolfgang Paul of Bonn University in
West Germany -- are to split the remainder of the prize. They
were honored for devising ways of "trapping" single electrons
and charged atoms known as ions. Paul, 76, won fame for
fashioning a vastly improved ion trap. Dehmelt, 67, who studied
with Paul as an undergraduate, used such a trap to observe a
single ion. Illuminated by laser beams, the imprisoned ion
glowed "like a little blue star," he recalled.

    Dehmelt has performed other small miracles as well. By
creating an electromagnetic "cradle," he has kept a lone
electron suspended in a vacuum for months at a time. He has also
succeeded in observing the fabled quantum jump of a single
trapped atom as it absorbed energy and then emitted it in the
form of light.

    Economics

    Most winners of the Nobel Prize respond with joy and
gratitude to the singular, once-in-a-lifetime honor. But
Norway's Trygve Haavelmo bluntly criticized the award last week
after he was named the 1989 laureate in economics. Haavelmo, 77,
a modest and shy University of Oslo professor emeritus, told a
reporter, "I don't like the idea of such prizes."

    The reluctant laureate was honored for pathbreaking work in
the early 1940s that laid the foundation for econometrics,
which uses mathematical models to study the behavior of an
economy. "Every time you open a newspaper and see an analysis
of economic trends," said Assar Lindbeck, chairman of the
economics-prize committee, "it is based on Haavelmo's
econometric theories." Haavelmo's key contribution was to show
that the relationship between such factors as income and
spending was far more complex than had been thought, since those
factors affect one another and the rest of the economy. For
example, he demonstrated that an economist could not gauge the
impact of a change in tax rates on consumer spending without
using sophisticated statistical methods.

    While Haavelmo has lived for years in contented obscurity,
many prominent economists welcomed his selection. Said Lawrence
Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, who won the 1980
economics award for his work in econometrics: "Haavelmo had a
tremendous influence on me and on many other young
econometricians in the 1940s." Concurred Robert Solow of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the 1987 laureate: "It's
like giving the Nobel Prize for Physics to Thomas Edison. You
slap your forehead and wonder why they didn't do it sooner."

    In fact, Haavelmo's prize reflected a situation that is
unique to the award for economics. The Nobel Prizes were first
given in 1901, but the economics citation was not added until
1969, when it was established by Sweden's central bank. That
late start has prompted the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
to choose many older economists whose work could not be
recognized when it was first published. "They're clearing up the
backlog," says Harvard economist Zvi Griliches, who hailed this
year's choice. "They haven't got to the point of recognizing
something interesting that happened in the past five years." But
when such awards are finally made, the work of the winners may
show the influence of the feisty and reclusive Haavelmo.