Who Are The 2020 Nobel Prize Winners? | Summachar

Hello and welcome to another exciting video of Summachar.

In this video, we will look at laureates bestowed with the honour of the Nobel Prize this year for being recognized for their positive contributions to the society.

Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. The committee said that they had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved lives.”

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne pathogen affecting 71 million people worldwide and it can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis. It is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure.

Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez received 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for improving the understanding of the universe, including work on Black Holes.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna received 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for development of CRISPR-Cas9, a method for genome editing, that can help to cure sickle cell disease and congenital blindness.

CRISPR uses a family of genomes of prokaryotic organisms like bacteria, to detect and destroy similar bacteria during subsequent infections. Thus it can edit DNA in human cells via a petri dish.

Poet and Essayist, Louise Glück received the Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 for “her unmistakable poetic voice”. She has already won the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award, for tackling themes like childhood and family life, often reworking Greek and Roman myths.

The World Food Programme has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020, for its impressive efforts to combat food crisis in the Covid-19 pandemic. By honouring this program, the Nobel Committee has also sent a message to governments around the world, to not cut financial contributions to international humanitarian groups.

Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson have been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for 2020, for inventing new auction formats for the sale of goods and services and improving the existing auction theory.

Did you know? John Nash is the only person to be awarded both the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the Abel Prize. He was a mathematician who made fundamental contributions to Game Theory, and Differential Geometry. His theories are widely used in Economics.