STEM News: Celebrating the Nobel Prize Winners in STEM!

This month, the Nobel Prize winners for this year were announced for various categories. The Nobel Prize for Medicine was announced on 5th of October, the Nobel Prize for Physics was announced on 6th, Chemistry on 7th, Literature on 8th and the prize for Peace on 9th. The Nobel Prize for Economics will be announced on 12th of October. This year 8 people won the Nobel Prize in STEM Fields!

MEDICINE

The recipients of the prize for Physiology and Medicine are:

> Harvey J. Alter; National Institute of Health

> Michael Houghton; University of Alberta

> Charles M Rice; Rockefeller University

For the discover of the Hepatitis C virus. The discovery of the hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis B, and enabled the implementation of blood tests and new drugs, saving millions of lives.

PHYSICS

The recipients of the prize for Physics are:

> Roger Penrose; University of Oxford

> Andrea M. Ghez; UCLA

> Reinhard Genzel; University of California Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Roger Penrose: For the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.

Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel: For the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

FUN FACT: ANDREA GHEZ IS THE 4TH WOMAN TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

CHEMISTRY

The recipients of the prize for Chemistry are: > Emmanuelle Charpentier; Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens > Jennifer A. Doudna; University of California, Berkeley

For the development of a method for genome editing. Both women were pioneers in the CRISPR-CAS9 technology, which is used for gene editing.