3 awards 'Asian Nobel' 2011

As a complement to the Nobel Prize, since 2004, the $ 1 million Shaw award has been awarded for achievements in three areas of mathematics, life science - medicine and astronomy. The following is information about three Shaw Awards 2011.

Medal for Shaw Award Recipients - Photos: madrimasd.org

Made the strongest explosions in the universe

Enrico Costa

Astronomy was divided for Enrico Costa (born 1944, Italian nationality) and Gerald Fishman (1943, USA) with the gamma lightning research project. Gamma rays (denoted Y ) - a type of electromagnetic or photonic radiation that has a higher frequency than X-rays, a wavelength less than 100 picometres, often emits hard electromagnetic rays from nuclear reactions, the ejection process radiation, or interactions between particles such as electron-positron annihilation.

Gamma lightning (abbreviated GRB from the English gamma ray burst name) is the emission of abnormal gamma radiation in the sky making the strongest explosions in the universe, just after Big Bang. However, to determine the source, find measures to predict the position and time of its occurrence takes nearly 30 years of research and experimental use.

From the universe, gamma radiation does not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, it was accidentally recorded by Vela's artificial satellites in 1967 when these satellites measured the amount of roentgen and gamma rays arising from incidents. Try nuclear weapons on the surface of the Earth. Analyzing 16 gamma flashes, Los-Alamos National Laboratory experts excluded the possibility of gamma rays originating from Earth and officially published this result in 1973 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Gerald Fishman - Photo: shawprize.org

In 1991, the United States put forward the orbit of the Compton gamma monitoring station carrying BATSE - a device to measure flashes and transient events - to determine the gamma flash uniformly distributed in space, the source of gamma lightning. It has nothing to do with the Milky Way and very far away from the Galaxy system (including Earth). Gerald Fishman is the owner of the BATSE device invention.

However, the reason for the appearance of gamma flash was still obscure until 1996, when Satellites LSAX was launched into orbit.

And for the first time, in January 1997, the late light of gamma flash - due to the late light component in the remaining spectral regions such as X-ray, ultraviolet, light, infrared, micro three, radio - so the telescopes on the ground were recorded.

Subsequently, many gamma flashes were observed, allowing the exact location of gamma rays to be derived from new super explosions. Enrico Costa is the chief engineer of satellites BeppoSAX.

From the state . the fly, to the human destiny

Bruce Beutler

The medical prize was divided among three physiologists: Jules Hoffmann (1941, Luxembourg), Bruce Beutler (1957, USA) and Ruslan Medzhitov (1966, Tajikistan) on the work 'Immune immunity - possible the body's ability to fight environmental pathogens'.

The immune system is innate from ancient times and is mainly in every creature (plant, fungus, insect), until later people will know it. Mammals primarily receive foreign immunity, because vaccination is often required, so the innate immune system activity is broken, resulting in severe consequences that the body often relies on intervention. of medicine.

Observe the biological mutations that lead to the breakdown of the immune system of Drosophila melanogaster - a model organism, common in genetic research - and as a result of which the body carries the mutant gene can produce enough leukocytes to eliminate Aspergillus fumagatu.

Carrying out elaborate experiments, Jules Hoffmann found the cause: in a combination of white blood cells lacking two other white blood cells, an infection response, and a - named Toll - needed for proper placement. propriety of body parts of the embryo. Therefore, Toll leukocytes are very important for the innate immune system. What about the role of Toll leukocytes in the innate immune system of humans?

Jules Hoffmann - Photo: für Balzan mosimann

Ruslan Medzhitov solved that problem. He and his colleague Charles Janeway (1943-2003) found that in white blood cells similar to Toll and named TLR (Toll-like receptors) there are molecules that are distributed in the skin and mucosa of some cell types. blood, ensure innate immune function.

The combination of TLR with baseline groups in those cells will produce a combination of cytokine molecules that regulate proteins or glycoproteins, which can cause a reaction to control inflammation and promote a variety of activities to help the body fight. contend with pathogens.

And Bruce Beutler has found a mechanism for TLR to recognize pathogens: they reflect on certain molecules present in the skin and mucosa of microorganisms (called lipopolysaccharide - complex molecules with both Lipid and synthetic sugar components) to destroy cells from inside bacteria. In addition, Bruce Beutler used many other methods to come to the conclusion: TLR is very important in the innate immune system of humans.

Open the entrance to the "millennium problem"

Richard Hamilton - Photo: math.washington.edu

The bronze math prize was awarded to Demetrios Christodoulou (1951, Greece) and Richard Hamilton (1943, USA) for creative works using the differential differential equation in Riemann geometry and their application to the theory of relativity. wide and geometric Topo.

The work of Demetrios Christodoulou is an important contribution to spatial geometry - time and theory of differential equations. Richard Hamilton is the author of the Ricci flow theory in other forms of Riemann geometry.

Using the Ricci flow technique and overcoming the final obstacles of Hamilton's program, the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman proved the Poincaré hypothesis, showing the power of the differential geometry approach in the questions and problems of geometric Topo, while reflecting on the important role of analytical methods.

After finishing the ' millennium problem ', G. Perelman was awarded a $ 1 million prize by Clay Math Institute, but he declined mainly because the institute did not know how to value Richard Hamilton's credit for creating one. Essential theoretical basis.

It is thought that the reward is big but it is still not the main motivation for scientists who do their job just because they are interested and passionate. But the rewards are not superfluous, and more - will contribute to improving the researcher's position: they will be respected by their peers, and it is important to be approached by young, promising researchers. ask, collaborate and be successful.

The Shaw award bears the name of Run Run Shaw , the Chinese name of Thieu Dua Phu, a billionaire who heads the cinematic - TVB Hong Kong TV series and is dubbed the 'Asian Nobel'. The jury of the tournament consisted of four people, led by the Chinese-American professor of Chinese science, Yang Yang, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 as president.

The Shaw award honors individuals - regardless of race, nationality or religion - who have made great strides in scientific research or application that have a positive and profound impact on humanity.

Every year, the results are announced in June and awarded in September. To date, this award in Asia has been awarded to 43 scientists in 12 countries, however most of the awardees are nationals. America.