SUMMARY: More than 700 million people across the globe live on extremely low wages. This year, a trio of economists won the Nobel Prize for their work on addressing global poverty, using randomized control trials to test and improve social policy. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to two of those winners, husband-and-wife duo Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, about their work.
SUMMARY: A trio of scientists won this year's Nobel prize, including Canada's Donna Strickland--the third female recipient in history and the first in 55 years. Amna Nawaz speaks with Strickland about her research in laser amplification, what she would tell young people interested in a physics career and how she plans to celebrate her landmark achievement.
SUMMARY: Cancer treatment was for years dominated by just four techniques. But there is now a fifth category -- immunotherapy -- thanks to the revolutionary research of Jim Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday. Allison joins Nick Schifrin to discuss his research and his personal connection to fighting the disease.
SUMMARY: Astronomers witnessed for the first time ever a rare collision of two dense neutron stars. The discovery began with an instrument called LIGO, which won this year's Nobel Prize for its discovery of gravitational waves once predicted by Albert Einstein. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Hari Sreenivasan to explain how the collision was detected and what it reveals about the universe.
He's gotten a presidential honor and performed for a pope. Now musician Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in literature.
When naming Dylan as the recipient on Thursday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said he was granted the award “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Dylan, 75, has performed his unique blend of guitar, insightful lyrics and what some might consider inscrutable vocals for more than 50 years.
“He is a great poet in the English-speaking tradition and he is a wonderful sampler, he embodies the tradition. And for 54 years he's been at it and constantly reinventing himself,” said Sara Danius, permanent secretary at the Swedish Academy, after the announcement. Watch her full interview, where she compares Dylan to the ancient Greek poets.
Dylan's early songs such as “Blowing in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin” represented the civil rights era of the 1960s. He famously switched to performing on electric guitar, one of the first among the nation's leading folk musicians, at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
“It's a pivotal moment in rock ‘n' roll history,” said Elyse Luray of PBS' History Detectives, which explored the whereabouts of Dylan's guitar, in a 2012 PBS NewsHour interview. “After Dylan plugs in and goes electric, we start seeing the movement of blues coming into rock ‘n' roll. And at the same time he's changing, we have the Rolling Stones coming in and changing, we have Hendrix changing.”
Dylan writings include an experimental prose poetry collection called “Tarantula,” published in 1971.
In 1988, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio. In addition to 11 Grammy Awards for his music, Dylan won an Academy Award in 2000 and Golden Globe the following year for best original song “Things Have Changed” from the movie “Wonder Boys.”
He is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993.
SUMMARY: By any measure, Bob Dylan is one of the most important and influential popular songwriters of his era. Now he's also a Nobel laureate in literature, a choice that came as a surprise. Jeffrey Brown talks to singer/songwriter James Taylor and others about the way Dylan's writing helped so many navigate a changing world.
SUMMARY: A trio of scientists won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating some of the world's tiniest machines. Their nanorobots use extremely controlled movements to perform tasks that the creators hope will one day be useful in the world of medicine. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss these mini machines and the other science and medicine Nobels awarded this week.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The latest winners are in the field of chemistry, and the Nobel went to a trio of scientists who helped pioneer tiny molecular machines in the world of Nanotechnology. These are specially designed molecules that can produce controlled movements. And there's talk they could some day be useful in the world of medicine.
Our science correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is here to walk us through the significance of this and the other Nobels awarded this week. He joins us tonight from San Diego.
Miles; Drs. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard Feringa, for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. How small are we talking?
MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour): Well, think of a nanometer.
A nanometer is — well, there are 80,000 of them in a human hair. That will give you an idea. We're talking very small. Imagine machines at the molecular level that can do work, and some of the applications that we're thinking about are potentially drug delivery inside our system, and many others where tiny machines can pack a punch.
Another application they're looking at potentially, Hari, is creating computer storage capability at the atomic level. Well, if you're storing things at the atomic level, you basically need a processor that is at the molecular model.
And so nanomachines are potentially revolutionary. We're still very early on, though, in that game.
HARI SREENIVASAN: How do you build something that small?
MILES O'BRIEN: It's basically a chemical process that you engage with, and that is part of their insight.
And, you know, basically, the researchers are saying that we're kind of like the Wright Brothers at this point. We built a flying machine, but how could you possibly have conceived of the 747 at the time that occurred?
These mechanisms, these tiny nanomachines, have the capability of revolutionizing medicine, revolutionizing computer storage, and really who knows what, because we can't imagine that 747.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, let's shift to physics.
The Nobel was given to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz for something called topological phase transitions and phases of matter. I need an advanced degree just to understand what the prize was for.
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, yes, it's — this is a tough one. It's a lot of mathematics and physics. And it's difficult, frankly. It's tough sledding.
But it is a very human moment involved. There is a very human moment involved. Dr. Kosterlitz got the word in his car. Listen to his response.
QUESTION: We run the official Web site for the Nobel Prize. Have you already heard the news of the announcements to the physics…
DR. MICHAEL KOSTERLITZ, Nobel Prize Winner: No, haven't heard anything. I'm talking from an underground car park in Helsinki, Finland, right now. So, I can barely hear you.
SUMMARY: Israel's Shimon Peres had a political career that extended for nearly five decades. A protege of Israel's very first prime minister, he went from top defense jobs to prime minister, taking a conciliatory approach toward Palestinians that lead to the Oslo Accords and a Nobel Peace Prize. Peres died at 93 years old. William Brangham gets an assessment from Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): One of Israel's founding fathers died last night. Shimon Peres was present at the country's very beginning, and served in just about every high-level office in the Jewish state.
William Brangham has this remembrance.
We invite Shimon Peres to come up.
MAN: Shimon Peres to come to the rostrum to receive the gold medal.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): It was a moment of great promise, Shimon Peres, then the Israeli Foreign Minister, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Peres had helped negotiate the so-called Oslo Accords. And, accepting the award, he spoke of his hopes for a new Middle East.
SHIMON PERES, Israeli Foreign Minister: A Middle East without wars, without enemies, without ballistic missiles, without nuclear warheads.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Born in present-day Belarus, Shimon Peres was a boy when his family emigrated to Tel Aviv in 1934. He joined the Jewish resistance in the 1948 war of independence, and became a protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's very first Prime Minister.
He went on to hold numerous top defense jobs, helping build the Jewish state's military and its top-secret nuclear weapons program. With Ben-Gurion's backing, Peres won a seat in the Israeli Parliament in 1959, launching a political career that extended for over five decades.
As defense minister under prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, he oversaw the dramatic 1976 rescue of Israeli hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Peres himself went on to serve as prime minister, first in 1977, and again as part of a unity government in 1984.
He took a conciliatory stance toward the Palestinians, and later, with Rabin back in power, he conducted the Oslo negotiations in secret. The resulting deal, signed in 1993 in Washington, aimed at establishing mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinians and setting them on a path toward peace.
SHIMON PERES: From this green, promising lawn of the White House, let's say together in the language of our Bible, 'peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near.'
SUMMARY: The funeral of Shimon Peres, who passed away Wednesday at 93, brought together delegations from 75 countries -- even those with a bitter history of war. After shaking hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eulogized his former rival as a "great man." Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also spoke of Peres' legacy. William Brangham reports.
SUMMARY: In our NewsHour Shares moment of the day, the Nobel Prize Foundation released the full audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1964 Peace Prize acceptance speech.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally, our NewsHour Shares of the day, something that caught our eye that we thought might be of interest to you too.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Nobel Prize Foundation released the full audio recording of his 1964 Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Here is an excerpt:
VOICE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices,
And in the hearts of men, we will come to that great and glad day when men all over the world will be able to join hands, black and men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Hindus and Muslims, and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last. Thank God all mighty, we are free at last.
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
THORBJOERN JAGLAND, Chairman, The Norwegian Nobel Committee: The Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For Malala, the announcement in Oslo, Norway, came two years and a day since a Taliban attack propelled her to prominence. She’d begun advocating education for girls at age 11.
In a 2009 documentary, New York Times correspondent Adam Ellick profiled Malala struggling in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where her school was shut down by the Taliban.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI: In the world, girls are going to their schools freely. And there is no fear. But in Swat, when we go to our schools, we are very afraid of Taliban. He will kill us. He will throw acid on our face. And he can do anything.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Taliban threats turned to action on October 9, 2012, when masked gunmen boarded Malala’s school bus and shot her in the head.
She was flown to Birmingham, England, for multiple operations, but she eventually made a full recovery and with her family settled there. Last month, she told the NewsHour she has no regrets about the choice she made to speak out.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI: And at that time, I had really two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And then the second was to speak up and then be killed. And I chose the second one, because I didn’t want to face the terrorism forever.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Ironically, the attack that was meant to silence Malala thrust her into a global spotlight. In the two years since, she’s campaigned for women’s rights and universal access to education, penned her own memoir and created her own charity.
She also delivered an impassioned appeal to a youth assembly at the United Nations.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI: Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Today, in Pakistan, people from all walks of life celebrated news of the Peace Prize.
SUMMARY: One's a global icon. The other is largely unknown, even in his home country. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, have been leading advocates for the rights of children on issues like child slavery and universal education. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Gayle Tzemach Lemmon of the Council on Foreign Relations about the significance of their activism.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The Nobel Prize in Physics is often awarded to work that can be tough to explain to anyone who isn’t actually a physicist. But this year’s winners, announced earlier today, won for research that actually affects our everyday lives.
Jeffrey Brown has the story.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): A trio of scientists won for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes, often referred to as LEDs.
The blue LEDs, first created in the early 90s, paved the way for brighter and more energy-efficient white lights, the kind now seen on the screens of phones, TVs and computers, even signs on the subway.
Two of the scientists were from Japan, one from the U.S.
Our science correspondent, Miles O’Brien, joins me now from Boston to tell us about it.
So, Miles, the invention of blue light-emitting diodes, what exactly does that mean?
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): Well, we had red and we had green, and we needed blue the take it over the top.
Let’s step back for a little bit. Back in the ’60s, when they created the first light-emitting diodes, red was the first one because it was the easiest to make. The semiconducting material that makes that particular color was much easier to make in an efficient way. Then came green. And you can think about the first calculator you got, which was always with a red light emitting diode. And eventually we got into green.
But blue was difficult because the material that creates that particular color, that wavelength, was hard to work with. Gallium nitride was the tricky thing that was difficult for scientists and engineers to efficiently turn into the crystals to mass produce.
But once you have red, green and blue, put them together, you have white light, and that’s created a revolution.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, that’s the word that the Nobel committee used, revolutionizing lighting. So it has seeped into all facets of life.
MILES O’BRIEN: Well, think about the incandescent lightbulb, which is just a hot, glowing filament in a vacuum tube. Then we went to fluorescent lights, much more efficient.
And now we’re in the world of LEDs, which if you go back to the incandescent bulb, comparing it, 20 times more efficient, and lasts much longer. You know, a quarter of the energy on our planet is spent in creating light. And in order to reduce all of our need for energy and our carbon footprint, LEDs make a huge, significant impact.
SUMMARY: The 27-nation European Union won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, for the "advancement of peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe." This award stands in contrast with increasingly deep rifts and tensions in the Eurozone over issues like the debt crisis, high unemployment and austerity measures. Jeff Brown reports.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded today. Because it went to a Chinese writer, it stirred unusual interest and reaction.
The official announcement came in Stockholm, Sweden.
PETER ENGLUND, Permanent Secretary, Swedish Academy: The Nobel Prize in literature for 2012 is awarded to the Chinese writer Mo Yan, who, with hallucinatory realism, merges folktales, history and the contemporary.
JEFFREY BROWN: The 57-year-old Mo was recognized for popular short stories and novels based on life in rural China, including "Red Sorghum" and "The Garlic Ballads."
Many ordinary Chinese hailed the choice.
ZHENG QINGCHENG, China (through translator): I am proud of him as Chinese. I saw the news just now. The Nobel Prize is a world-class prize. He is great. I am so happy for him.
JEFFREY BROWN: And the selection was a hit with the Chinese government, too. In a rare move, state-run television broke away from its newscast to announce the Nobel Prize.
The regime had shunned two previous Chinese laureates, jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Peace Prize in 2010, and Gao Xingjian, a critic of Beijing's policies who'd become a French citizen, won the literature prize in 2000.
In a turnabout, the selection of Mo drew fire from some dissidents, including the artist Ai Weiwei, who accused him of being too close to China's Communist Party. He said in a statement, "I think the Nobel organizers have removed themselves from reality by awarding this prize."
The Swedish Academy said it based its decision on literary merit alone and didn't consider reaction in the winner's homeland.
SUMMARY: Jeffrey Brown talks to Charles Laughlin of the University of Virginia and Xiao Qiang at the University of California, Berkeley about prolific writer and Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, whose detractors cite a cozy relationship with Chinese state media and a savviness about staying away from topics sensitive to the Communist government.
SUMMARY: England's Sir John Gurdon and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka from Japan share the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine for work on stem cells, revealing that mature cells can be reverted into primitive cells. Ray Suarez talks to Harvard Stem Cell Institute's Dr. David Scadden, who explains the implications and applications for stem cell medicine.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now our changing understanding of the cosmos and what it has to do with the Nobel Prize in physics.
The prize was awarded to three U.S. scientists today: Brian Schmidt, of Australian National University, Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley. That research found the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
Perlmutter was recently profiled on "Quest," a science program produced by KQED San Francisco. Here's part of that story. It's narrated by Andrea Kissack.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): In the words of the Nobel Committee, the three laureates have revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation.
American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann won for their discovery of the mechanism that triggers innate immune responses. Canadian Ralph Steinman, who taught for many years at Rockefeller University in New York, shared the prize for discovering the trigger for so-called adaptive immune responses.
Shortly after the prize was announced, news also came that Dr. Steinman had died this past Friday. And while the prize is generally not awarded posthumously, the Nobel Foundation announced that, in this case, its decision would stand.
JIM LEHRER (Editor Newshour): More now on China, on this day when a jailed Chinese dissident was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia. China had warned of diplomatic consequences for countries that sent representatives to the ceremony in Oslo.
Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia on Friday in an award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, where his absence will be marked by an empty chair.
Liu is in jail, serving an 11-year sentence for writing online essays and a manifesto demanding political reforms, human rights and an independent judicial system. China regards the choice as a Western attempt to undermine the ruling Chinese Communist Party and has urged countries to skip the award ceremony.
"We will not change because of some wind blowing the grass and because of the interference of some clowns who are anti-China," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, according to Reuters.
Nineteen countries have said they will not go. Besides China, they are Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. The BBC has a chart breaking down the various reasons given.
Forty-four of 65 embassies have accepted the invitation, according to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
Sasha Gong, a historian, columnist and former Chinese dissident who now lives in the United States, said the international recognition of Liu helped give the dissident community in China a mental boost.
Gong was a political activist in the 1970s and '80s and was jailed for a year. Back then, "even though you were in jail, you knew you were right," she said. Now, the dissident movement is much more depressed, she added, but the award shows them the world is with them.
Because of the global recession, countries might not feel like they have much leverage to press China on human rights, but those economic conditions won't last, said Gong. And the Chinese government may in time realize that human freedom is the ultimate economic engine, she said.
CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times: Basically, that refers to research about markets where buyers and sellers don't automatically find each other.
And that really refers to almost all markets, except for things like commodities. So, in the job market, that means, why does it take so long for people who are unemployed to find jobs, even when there are job openings available?
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): All right, so that's a particularly relevant question right now. What -- tell us what the research suggests about the situation as these economists studied it, but also as it applies to what we're looking at now.
CATHERINE RAMPELL: Well, basically, they were interested in, again, why does it take so long for people to be matched to jobs?
And their conclusion had a lot to do with the fact that people are not interchangeable units. You know, different people have different skills. They have different weaknesses. They have different strengths. And jobs, for that matter, are also not identical, cookie-cutter things.
So, what happens is, it takes time for the right person to be matched to the right job. And, beyond that, there are government policies that at times can make the search process less efficient.
So, when we're talking about what's going on now, a lot of that has to do with the demand picture, but it can also have are to do with the fact that it takes time for people to be matched to the right job, because they're unwilling to move, if their house is underwater, for example.
Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his activism, has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is serving an 11-year term on subversion charges, in a cell 300 miles from Beijing, and remains unknown to most Chinese.
He is one of three people to have received the prize while incarcerated by their own governments, after the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, and the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935.
By awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has provided an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and a spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.
The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose deeply political work vividly examines the perils of power and corruption in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
Mr. Vargas Llosa, 74, is one of the most celebrated writers of the Spanish-speaking world, an anti-totalitarian intellectual whose work covers the range of human experience, whether it is ideology or eros. He is frequently mentioned with his contemporary Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, who won the literature Nobel in 1982, the last South American to do so. Mr. Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 works of nonfiction, plays and novels, including “The Feast of the Goat” and “The War of the End of the World.”
The prize is the first for a writer in the Spanish language in two decades, after Octavio Paz of Mexico won in 1990. It renews attention on the Latin American writers who gained renown in the 1960s, like Julio Cortázar of Argentina and Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, who formed the region’s “boom generation.”
During a news conference at the Instituto Cervantes in Manhattan on Thursday, Mr. Vargas Llosa, an elegant, dashing figure with silvery hair, appeared in front of a crowd of giddy journalists, mostly Spanish-speaking, and Alejandro Toledo, the former president of Peru, who sat in the front row. Mr. Vargas Llosa is currently spending the semester in the United States, teaching Latin American studies at Princeton.
