in the interest of full disclosure, i should point out that harry noller was my post-doc adviser at uc-santa cruz. that said, i do not have any doubt that this award was given for political reasons, because of lobbying and smearing efforts, in an attempt to avoid repeating past controversies, and without adequate understanding of the contributions of these people to the field. unbelievable!
harry noller is a great and worthy scientist, and a wonderful human being who has been unjustly snubbed today. congratulations to professors ramakrishnan, steitz, and yonath. all those who study the ribosome owe someone a great deal of thanks.
5 comments:
Casey and I were wondering this morning how you would react to the news. I guess that was about what CAsey thought you would say.
just to be clear, the winners are all very deserving of accolades for their achievements. they have made huge contributions to the field. they may all be deserving of a nobel prize. however, the prize can only be given to 3 people, and i don't see how you can do the math on this thing and end up with harry being the odd man out.
If you could subtract the all publications from the Steitz, Ramakrishnan, and Yonath labs individually our understanding of the ribosome would not change all that much.
However, if you subtracted out the contributions from Harry's lab our understanding of the structure and function of the ribosome would be significantly different.
(one example: How would we know that crystal structures are functionally relevant except for the chemical probing papers? )
now THAT is some ribosomal drama!
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