Not very long after James Watson finished his Nobel Prize–winning work on the structure of DNA in 1953, he started firing off some eyebrow-raising comments about his fellow man: that fat people don't get hired because they lack ambition; how sunlight is the source of the "Latin lover" libido; what he found distasteful in the appearance of his female research collaborator, Rosalind Franklin. But as the great geneticist slunk back to the U.S. on Friday — his ...

In a tragic place scented by tropical blooms, it was the simplest of gestures. On Nov. 13, as Aung San Suu Kyi peered out of the crumbling villa complex where she has been confined for much of the past two decades, one of the thousands of well-wishers gathered to mark her moment of freedom handed her a nosegay of flowers. Smiling, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate received the fragrant benediction and tucked the blossoms in her hair. "We haven't seen ...

In Stockholm last week a committee of Swedish doctors was deciding whether to give the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine to: 1> Biochemist Ibert Szent-Gyrgyi of the Hungarian University of Szeged who discovered that a certain acid in the adrenal glands of healthy men and animals had the same beneficial effect as Vitamin C contained in oranges and lemons; 2> Biochemist Walter Norman Haworth of Birmingham University, who analyzed the chemical structures of Vitamin C and the ...

A $5 million prize to reward good leadership in Africa was dramatically awarded Monday to ... nobody. It was the first time in the three-year history of the Mo Ibrahim Prize that the committee did not name a winner. "The Prize Committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the Prize Committee could not select a winner," the committee said in a statement. Democratically elected African presidents and prime ministers who have left office within the ...

Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel Prize for economics for work on how community institutions can prevent conflict, the Nobel Committee announced Monday. Ostrom becomes the first woman to win the prize in its 40-year history. The award was a "great surprise... I'm still a little bit in shock," she said by phone at the news conference announcing the prize. Ostrom, a professor of political science at Indiana University, was praised "for ...

President Barack Obama made time for a brief statement about his Nobel Peace Prize award on Friday, before heading in to a more pressing engagement — a high-powered White House strategy session on the next phase of his war in Afghanistan. That was just one indication that this year's peace prize was, as Obama himself put it, honoring aspiration rather than achievement. President Obama, after all, is the Commander in Chief of American forces at war ...

Usually, when a president wins the Nobel Peace Prize, it is uniformly seen as a positive development for America and for the world. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Usually, when a president wins the Nobel Peace Prize, it is uniformly seen as a positive development for America and for the world. Both opponents and allies tend to celebrate the fact that an American president actually got recognized by a bunch of Norwegians for something he achieved. But with Barack Obama, who surprisingly ...

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the most powerful platforms in the world. Winners get immediate global attention and the chance to meet and influence leaders and governments everywhere. Think of it as a megaphone through which worthy, but very often obscure, activists or politicians or environmentalists can shout their message to a gathered crowd. That's just one of the reasons the Nobel Committee's decision to award this year's Peace Prize to Barack Obama is such a ...

The Committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize likes springing surprises. When Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai won in 2004, the Committee explicitly linked peace with concerns about the state of our planet's ecology, a concept that was familiar in environmental circles but which was rarely discussed elsewhere. Bangladeshi banker and economist Muhammad Yunus won in 2006 for his efforts to alleviate poverty — and therefore promote peace — through the use of microcredit schemes. Now the Prize has gone ...

It wasn't Barack Obama's fault that the Nobel committee awarded him the Peace Prize, and it needs little imagination — looking at the first reactions to the honor in the U.S., which were hardly positive — to believe that the award was one that he would rather not have had granted. But granted it was, and Obama had to say something about it. Without being showy or dynamic, his brief speech in the White House rose garden did the ...