We no longer dominate the international basketball, golf, or yacht racing but Americans continue to kick Nobel Prize ass.
Columbia University’s Edmund S. Phelps today won the prize for economics, “the sixth American to win a Nobel this year, meaning that every prize except for the literature and peace awards, which are yet to be announced, have gone to Americans.” And those are the two namby-pamby ones, so who cares?
- Last week, the Nobel medicine prize went to Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes.
- John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the physics prize for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created.
- American Roger D. Kornberg won the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins, a process that could provide insight into defeating cancer and advancing stem cell research.
Boo-yah!
I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek here but the continued dominance of the United States in the sciences and economic theory is a testament to the quality of our universities, the vibrancy of our economy, and our liberty. Indeed, a not insignificant number of the “American” winners in past years have been immigrants lured by those advantages to do their work here.
