Nobel Prize Award 2017

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. The announcement marked the start of this year’s Nobel season. It is the 108th time the prize has been awarded.

The medicine prize will be followed by the physics prize announcement on Tuesday. The honour could also go to the discovery of exoplanets by Swiss astrophysicians Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.

The 2017 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three US scientists for the detection of gravitational waves. The coveted award has been conferred jointly upon Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for their “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.” Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity but only first detected in 2015, gravitational waves are 'ripples' in the fabric of space-time caused by violent processes in the Universe, such as colliding black holes or the collapse of stellar cores. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the LIGO detector in the US.

The chemistry prize committee will announce a winner in its field on Wednesday. A recurring favourite for the prize is John Goodenough, a 95-year old electrochemist whose pioneering work led to the invention of rechargeable lithium-ion battery present in cell phones, computers and electric cars.