October 8, September 9 and Louis Brus

Let me explain. October 8 11:45 am is the time when 2008 Nobel Chemistry Prize will be announced. September 9 is when the award ceremony of Kavli Prize in Nanoscience will take place. Louis Brus (whom I predicted before to receive the 2008 Nobel Chemistry prize) is receiving it. Now that I gave it another thought, listened to the mockingbirds, Brus may not get the Nobel at all. I know there are awards like the Saudi King Faisal Award that usually goes to the people on the Nobel short list such as Steve Chu (he received King Faisal award in 1993 and he later got the Nobel in 1997). But this one is different. Kavli prize is given in Norway by an imitation Nobel ceremonia sort of fulfilling the job of making the Nobel left outs happy. This is useful, especially in a world where there is only one Nobel prize and people are known to lobby for it.

What I take it is that Louis Brus will not get a Nobel so Kavli was given to him so that other nano giants can summon it. I might be wrong but the same mockingbirds also told me that it was the same reason Iijima (the carbon nanotube guy) got the Kavli, Nobel was not going to be given to carbon based nano something again. They simply don't like to re-award the same area twice, at least in a decade apart.


Now that I got it off my chest, I would like to narrow my list and name (guess) 3 folks that will receive the 2008 Nobel Chemistry prize:

George M. Whitesides (This one is almost certain. He is on top of the hirsch index)
Akihisa Inoue (This material scientist has over 1500 papers and a trillion citations and makes perfect sense to show that Nobel prize honors diversity: he is Japanese!)
Galen D. Stucky (OK. this is not as certain. He is my post doc boss. I sort of want him to win. But he has over 600 papers and citation trophies. His problem is though he is not as greedy to go after the prize. Everyone at UCSB talks about why he should win, except him and his students.)

Since Louis Brus dropped out of the list, this trio became more realistic to me. But don't get too excited, the Nobel committee is known to like Biochemists and 2008 is another perfect year to award those enzymatic miracles.