*Drumroll please* Here are the 2016 Nobel Prize winners
As you may know, it’s an amazing week for science, because we’re in the midst of the 2016 Nobel Prize winners being announced! Not only is this something *positive* to focus on in this super stressful time (like, come on, 2016, can we get some good news, please?!), but it’s something to celebrate. Because why not celebrate major strides in science?
According to Live Science, The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel in 1895. The goal seeks to highlight achievements in the sciences and the ah-mazingly talented folks who make those achievements happen.
And here are the winners!
Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology: Yoshinori Ohsumi
Yoshinori Ohsumi made incredible strides in helping us understand certain diseases like cancer as well as neurological disorders like Parkinson’s. Ohsumi drew new understanding to autophagy, which essentially, Live Science explains, “allows cells to destroy their own guts and essentially recycle them.” Yum. As weird as it sounds, this process, called “self-eating,” may help us out with the diseases listed above. Yay!
Nobel Prize in Physics: David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz
Three people actually jointly won the prize in Physics this year, proving that we’ve got some majorly impressive stuff happening these days. David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz were awarded the award for “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter,” Live Science says. What’s amazing about their work is that they figured out that matter can exist in an entirely different way than we’d previously thought. Like, woah.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa
Another joint award, this went out “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.” As a group, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa developed the tiniest machines, which, according to a statement, has “taken chemistry to a new dimension.”
Nobel Peace Prize: Juan Manuel Santos
Probably the one we’re most acquainted with, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize went out to Juan Manuel Santos. He’s being recognized “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to 6 million people,” according to a statement by the Nobel Foundation.
