Nice Guys Finish Second!

It never sat right with George Whipple when he won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1934 for his invention of dual ply toilet paper. Even though he shared the prize with two other doctors, he knew in his heart that his assistant Bill Charmen was the man who really invented it when he was caught short one day in the lab and was forced to use two pieces of typing paper that were stuck together. Mr. Whipple stole the idea and patented it and licensed it for millions of dollars.

Whipple was celebrated for his contributions to human hygiene, won the Nobel prize for medicine and became rich and famous while his assistant died alone and penniless. Whipple later named his company after his erstwhile friend and paid tribute to him in a series of commercials that are repeated to this day.

Unfortunately Mr Charmen's contributions have been wiped from the history books. So to speak.

(Nice Guys Finish Second, Men who Lost the Nobel Prize, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Playboy Press, 1998

"What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security"

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.

So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’

‘The King of Sweden.’

‘Why did he give this to you?’

‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’
At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”

Zero Hedge: "Vladimir Putin Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize"

"It would appear the Norwegian Nobel Institute is starting to lose it. Just a few years after President Obama won the Peace Prize (while mired in overseas wars), the director of the prestigious entity announced today that Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused of invading Ukraine - suspiciously un-peaceful action - has been nominated for the Peace Prize. Putin joins NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai as a nominee for the award to be announced in October." read more

I thought this was some kind of early April fools. It is not. It appears to be very real.

2013 Chemistry Nobel: Theory Guides, Experiment Decides

The 2013 Chemistry Nobel Prize went to three men, allegedly for "taking chemistry to cyberspace," in other words, understanding and predicting chemistry using computer simulation, or doing chemistry in silico as compared to in vivo and in vitro (I prefer in vino myself). By analogy, call the climate the real world and its modeling in silico. The modelers know,  just as the climate modelers do, that it's possible in theory to solve for all the variables; it's just a question of putting the right ones into the calculations.

The Nobel Prize In Physics Has Gravitas

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider" link

Now one of you geniuses please explain the Higgs Boson to us.

Chemistry is announced tomorrow. I'll get back to you. Carl Djerassi is someone I've long thought should get it but he probably never will.

Added: Lem links an animated lesson:



Lem Learning Gravitas

Nobel prize winners as artists

Nobel prize winners are asked to draw the thing that they were awarded the Nobel Prize. To convey to us regular people what they are talking about. Show us please.

They had no idea they would be asked to do such a thing, no preparation at all, just spring it on them. They were veritably accosted for a spontaneous interview at a gathering of like-minded people, taken to a small room with a board and asked to draw their ideas, and they kindly oblige.

smithsonianmag