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American Jew is the oldest recipient of a Nobel Prize

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PROFESSOR ROY SHIRES

These laser tweezers can trap and manipulate tiny particles such as cells and atoms, and has been applied especially to corrective eye surgery.

Ashkin’s family emigrated from the Ukraine to New York, where he was born. His father ran a dental laboratory on Delancey Street.

He was educated at Columbia and Cornell universities, and spent most of his working life at Bell Laboratories. Now “retired”, he still experiments in his home laboratory, and writes scientific papers.

Ashkin shared the physics prize with two other laureates.

The previous oldest Nobel Laureate was Leonid Hurvicz, who received the economic sciences prize at the age of 90 years in 2007.

The prize for economic sciences was shared this year by William Nordhaus, whose father was Jewish. It was awarded for “integrating climate change into long-term macroeconomic analysis”.

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish philanthropist and inventor of dynamite, bequeathed his fortune in 1895 to establish the Nobel Prizes in the five areas of chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and peace “for the greatest benefit to mankind”. Nobel died on 10 December 1896, and in memory of that date, all the prizes except for the peace prize are awarded on 10 December each year in Stockholm. The peace prize ceremony takes place in Oslo on 11 December. The first prizes were awarded in 1901.

The prize for economic sciences was established only in 1968 by the Sverige Riksbank (Swedish Central Bank) in the name of Alfred Nobel, and first awarded the next year. The first Jew to be awarded the economics prize was Paul Samuelson, probably the most famous economics scientist of the 20th century, who wrote the textbook Economics used by millions of economics students. That textbook is now authored by Nordhaus.

Samuelson is renowned for his quotes. His most famous, and a favourite economic joke, was that, “Commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.”

To date, 935 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. Any prize can be shared, but not by more than three people. Of these, 911 awards have gone to individuals. On 24 occasions, the peace prize was awarded to an organisation. Jews, including recipients where only the father is Jewish, have received the Nobel 203 times, translating into 22% of all individual prizes.

Considering that Jews comprise a mere 0.2% of the world population, that is 110 times more than on a proportionate basis, or 11 000% of the predicted number. However, for a number of reasons, including the proliferation of Chinese, Japanese, and scientists from other countries, that proportion is likely to be unsustainable.

  • Roy Shires is Professor of Medicine in the endocrinology division at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and the University of Witwatersrand.

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