TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/102389/10238900.005

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 10KB | 179 lines

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.