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Nobel Prize to Name Winners Awards Presented Dec. 10

Posted on: Monday, 4 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - In a tradition that has become as venerable as the 103-year-old Nobel Prizes themselves, the guessing game over who will take home the world's most coveted awards this week has entered full swing.

The first announcement of 2004 winners comes today with the physiology or medicine prize, followed by a week of announcements of winners for physics, chemistry, economics, peace and possibly literature. The committees behind the awards are notoriously tightlipped and refuse to say who was nominated, and candidates are not revealed publicly for 50 years.

The physiology or medicine prize includes a $1.3 million award.

There are no set guidelines for deciding who wins. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards that bear his name, simply said the winner "shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine."

The assembly that selects the medicine prize winner invites nominations from previous recipients, professors of medicine and other professionals worldwide before whittling down its choices.

One barometer of likely winners are those tapped for the annual Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation awards. Sixty-eight scientists who won those $50,000 prizes then earned Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine.

This year's Lasker award for basic research was shared by Dr. Pierre Chambon of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Strasbourg, France; Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.; and Elwood Jensen of the University of Chicago.

The three men, starting with Jensen in the 1950s and continuing with Chambon and Evans in the 1980s, opened up the field of studying proteins called nuclear hormone receptors, the foundation said. These receptors grab onto certain hormones and vitamins and migrate to the nucleus of a cell, where they regulate the activity of genes.

The Lasker award for clinical research was given posthumously to Dr. Charles Kelman, who made cataract removal an outpatient procedure. Previously, cataract operations were risky ordeals requiring more than a week of hospitalization with the patient's head immobilized by sand bags.

Last year's winners of the Nobel Prize were Briton Sir Peter Mansfield and American Paul C. Lauterbur for discoveries leading to the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, used by doctors to get a detailed look into patients' bodies.

MRI has become a routine method for medical diagnosis and treatment, especially valuable for examining the brain and spinal cord.

The award for medicine opens a week of Nobel Prizes culminating Oct. 11 with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The peace prize, the only one bestowed in Oslo, Norway, will be announced Oct. 8.

The awards always are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. PRIZE DATES

All winners except for the peace prize will be announced in Stockholm, Sweden. The peace prize will be announced in Oslo, Norway. The Swedish Academy has not yet announced the date of the literature prize.

Today: Physiology or medicine.

Tuesday: Physics.

Wednesday: Chemistry.

Friday: Peace.

Oct. 11: Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

On the Internet: Nobel Foundation: http://www.nobelprize.org/

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