1 . It is that time of the year, when a handful of world’s leading scholars, social activists and researchers are rewarded with what is often cited as the most prestigious acknowledgement of human effort-the Nobel Prize. Here’s a look at who has won the prize and for what.

Physiology or Medicine

Swedish geneticist Svante Peabo won the first Nobel of the year, for starting the field of ancient DNA studies. He is well-known for extracting, sequencing, and analyzing ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones.

Physics

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger’s work in quantum (量子) technology landed them the second Nobel Prize announced in 2022. Although Aspect is from France, Clauser from the U.S, and Zeilinger from Austria, the three separately performed “groundbreaking experiments” as one team. “Their results have cleared the way for new technology,” the committee stated.

Chemistry

The Nobel Prize for chemistry went to another trio, Carolyn R. Bertozzi from the U.S., Morten Meldal from Denmark and K. Barry Sharpless from the U.S. “for the development of click chemistry and biorthogonal chemistry,” the committee stated. Dr. Bertozzi is the eighth woman chemist to be awarded the prize, while Dr. Sharpless is the fifth scientist to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.

Economics

The Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to three American economists, Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig “for research on banks and financial crises,” the Nobel Prize committee announced on Monday. By studying the history of American economics, particularly the Great Depression of the 1930s,they improved how we understand the role of banks during times of hardship and the bank’s impact on societal functions.

3 . Women Who Changed Science Forever

Ellen Ochoa (May 10, 1958–)

Ellen Ochoa is an American engineer and retired astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, California, Ochoa was the first Latina woman to fly in space as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery in 1993. In 1990, Ochoa was selected to astronaut candidacy as part of Group 13, a group of twenty-three NASA astronauts, and became an astronaut a year later. Her first spaceflight was aboard Discovery as a mission specialist and lasted nine days, in which the five-person crew conducted scientific experiments and deployed a research satellite to study the solar corona.

Mamie Phipps Clark (April 18, 1917–August 11, 1983)

Mamie Phipps Clark was an American social psychologist, who specialized in child development in Black children. Born in Arkansas, Clark drew on her early experiences as a black child in the segregated (种族隔离) American South to help children growing up with the same inequalities. She initiated the famous Doll Test, which showed that Black children in segregated schools were more likely to prefer dolls with white complexions and yellow hair while discarding the brown dolls with black hair and assigning negative traits to them. Her husband, Kenneth, used their research to argue for school integration in the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education. This was the first time that social science was used in a Supreme Court case.

Katsuko Saruhashi (March 22, 1920–September 29, 2007)

Geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi was born in Tokyo on 22 March,1920. She developed Saruhashi’s Table, a method for measuring CO₂ using pH, temperature, and chlorinity, which has become a global standard. Saruhashi broke new ground in her study of ocean-borne nuclear contamination following the nuclear weapons test the United States undertook on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Saruhashi’s research played an important role in limiting nuclear proliferation (扩散) around the world, thanks to the signing of the 1963 treaty.

World leaders, representatives and experts have been mourning (悼念) the death of Chinese scientist Yuan Longping,     1     academician (院士) with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, whose lifelong research in high-yield rice     2    (variety) helps feed people around the world.     3     (fortunate), he passed away at 91 years old due to illness. His passing is a great loss to humanity and the Chinese people feel     4    (depress).

Born in Beijing in 1930, Dr. Yuan graduated from Southwest Agricultural College in 1953. Finding ways to grow more rice     5    (be) his life goal by the end of the day he died.     6    , his spirit with his mission to end hunger lives on.

Yuan succeeded in increasing the world’s first high-yield hybrid rice strain in 1973 and has helped China become a great wonder — feeding nearly one-fifth of the world's population with     7    (little) than 9 percent of the world’s total land. Spending money on himself or     8    (lead) a comfortable life means very little to him. He believes     9     a person with too much money has more rather than fewer troubles, so he gives millions of yuan to equip others for their research in agriculture. Without his contribution, more people would have suffered     10    hunger in the world.