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Nobel Prize Conversations
Carolyn Bertozzi: Nobel Prize Conversations
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“Your purpose as a scientist is not to achieve fame or money, that is not your purpose, those might be side effects and good for you, that could be wonderful for you but it is a side effect, it is not the main goal. The main goal is to make discoveries and gift them to humanity. And those discoveries and that knowledge stays with humanity long after you are gone.” — Carolyn Bertozzi on the scientist's purpose.
Meet chemist and 2022 Nobel Prize laureate Bertozzi. In this episode she speaks about her two life-long loves: organic chemistry and music. Her love of music lead to her playing in a college rock band with Tom Morello whilst her love of organic chemistry earned her a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022. Bertozzi also speaks about her desire to create a diverse and open lab environment and how important that is for research. A true advocate of diversity, she sees clearly the advantages derived from diverse ideas and perspectives.
The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach. Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
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Barry Sharpless: Nobel Prize Conversations
29:06“If you're interested in something, you'd be amazed what interest can do.” – So says Barry Sharpless, the only living individual that has been awarded two Nobel Prizes. In this rare and uniquely wide-ranging conversation, Sharpless opens up about curiosity, creativity and how he comes up with all these new ideas. The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
Anton Zeilinger: Nobel Prize Conversations
35:50”You have to reinvent yourself every couple of years. It's absolutely important. It's necessary for me to make my life interesting. Life is too short.” – Meet physics laureate Anton Zeilinger. With an endlessly curious mind, he loves exploring new paths in the scientific field of quantum physics. He also speaks about his love of sailing and why the number 42 holds a special place in his heart. The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
Alain Aspect: Nobel Prize Conversations
41:13"I settled a debate between Bohr and Einstein – which is not bad!" – Meet physicist and 2022 Nobel Prize laureate Alain Aspect, who speaks of his respect for both of these giants of physics. He also opens up about his love of teaching and explaining difficult things and shares how his teachers as well as Jules Verne's novel L'île Misterieuse sparked his interest in science and convinced him that with science and engineering you can build a new world. The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
Ben Bernanke: Nobel Prize Conversations
42:37“As an economist, I'm looking at that number and trying to think about how it fits into a broader economic picture. But on the other hand, having grown up in a small town, not a very rich town, economically very stressed place I could think about the real families, real people that those numbers represented. That was important to me.” – Meet economist Ben Bernank, who also tells us about his childhood and how he took part in spelling competitions in school.The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
Svante Pääbo: Nobel Prize Conversations
42:01"The first thing I did to see if it at all would have a chance was to buy a piece of liver in the food store close to the Institute and just dry it in the laboratory." – In this episode, 2022 medicine laureate Svante Pääbo describes the start of his scientific career. He also speaks warmly about his mother and how she encouraged him to pursue his childhood interest, archeology. Eventually that interest would put him on the path to a Nobel Prize for sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans.The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach. Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.Through their lives and work, failures and successes – get to know the individuals who have been awarded the Nobel Prize on the Nobel Prize Conversations podcast. Find it on Acast, or wherever you listen to pods. https://shows.acast.com/nobelprizeconversations
Philip Dybvig: Nobel Prize Conversations
35:39”I was just curious about everything. Everything was interesting and I always felt like I didn't have enough time to learn all the interesting things. And I think that was a big strength that I had.” – In our newest podcast episode, economist Philip Dybvig tells us how his parents encouraged his interest in the world. He shared the 2022 economic sciences prize "for research on banks and financial crises." Together with co-laureate Douglas Diamond, he developed theoretical models that explain why banks exist, how their role in society makes them vulnerable to rumours about their impending collapse, and how society can lessen this vulnerability. These insights form the foundation of modern bank regulation. The host of this podcast is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach.Nobel Prize Conversations is produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.
Douglas Diamond: Nobel Prize Conversations
38:04“I think economics is getting closer and closer to being a respectable science. Even when we were not the most respectable science, we still needed to keep pushing forward because the topic actually matters to the planet, to the humans on the planet, and to the animals on the planet.” Douglas Diamond is a strong advocate for economics as a scientific field. His passion for economics was sparked at a young age when he accidentally took an undergraduate course in the topic. In a podcast conversation with host Adam Smith, he reflects on the working environment at University of Chicago (a work place that has become his home after working there 30 years) and how he sees more and more women enter the field of economics (something he thinks is a very positive development). He also tells us about the "No" bell that he received from Richard Thaler – a tool to helps him say no as a newly awarded laureate.
Morten Meldal: Nobel Prize Conversations
38:35“My daughter was sitting on the second or third row and I could see that she was crying. And tears actually are contagious. So I was almost crying when I had to go up and receive the prize because of that.” — This is how Morten Meldal recalled the moment he crossed the stage in Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize medal.Host Adam Smith speaks to 2022 chemistry laureate Morten Meldal, who opens up about his interests outside science, such as painting, books, music, and even building his own guitars.