nobel

so wat's up with all these nobel talk?

for the whole month of Sep, Prof Pulleyblank has been giving us his 'nobel' lecture of the history of nobels, from the first discovery of nucleotide base all the way to Gilbert & Sanger (he could've dragged it on for infinity if not for his session is up). And he sure has lots tiny bits of stories to tell, whether tabloids of the famous or his own personal gruffs and learnings of harsh reality.

Chem prof was announcing the new chemistry nobel last lec. Said it was a Swiss(?) guy who studied alkene. Alkene? he said! See, you can turn the most dismissed subject into some world sensation. That rings a bell coz one of Prof. Pulleyblank's most famous quotes runs like this - How can you get yourself a Nobel? You have to pick up a totally hopeless project and turn it into something the world will bow its head to. He was referring to Khorana at that time, an Indian scientist who had no choice but to work on cheap Salmon sperms and in the end came up with a method to synthesise short oligonucleotides.

and i just saw on Tree's msn display: wait till my boss gets a Nobel ... hmf. Whatever it means.

Nobel, Nobel, Nobel.

visit http://www.nobel.org for this year's winners
-> as advised by our chem prof.