2007 Nobel Prize winners announced

The 2007 Nobel Prize winners were announced October 8th in where but Oslo, Norway. The new science Laureates follow. Hopefully, we will get a more complete writeup of their accomplishments soon.

Medicine

Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies for their work on knockout genes in mice using embryonic stem cells. This technique is now fundamental to genetic research, and has been used to discover genes for far too many traits and diseases to list, but include cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Physics

Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for their discovery of Giant Magentoresistance. This phenomenon has been used to increase the densities of magnetic storage such as hard drives by decreasing the area needed for the read head to pick up data.

Chemistry

Gerhard Ertl for his work on modern surface chemistry, which drives the development of fuel cells, artificial fertilizers and clean exhaust. He has provided a methodology to understand the complete picture of surface reactions.