Economics
Paul Krugman of Princeton University was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in economic sciences for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity. "By having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity, his ideas have given rise to an extensive reorientation of the research on these issues," noted the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in announcing his award. Krugman's selection marks a dozen consecutive years in which NSF grantees have received this prestigious distinction in economics.
>> NSF-Supported Economics Laureates
Physics
Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago shared the prize in physics for his "discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics." (Mokoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa jointly earned the award for their "discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.") Nambu is at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. NSF funded his work extensively until 1999. He is the 56th researcher funded by NSF to earn a Nobel Prize in Physics.
>> NSF-Supported Physics Laureates
Chemistry
Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien jointly earned a Nobel Prize "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP." Shimomura first isolated GFP from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which drifts with the currents off the west coast of North America. He discovered that this protein glowed bright green under ultraviolet light. He is professor emeritus at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University's Medical School. He has had extensive interaction with NSF starting in the late 1970s and lasting until his retirement. Martin Chalfie, professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, demonstrated the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for various biological phenomena. Roger Y. Tsien contributed to the general understanding of how GFP fluoresces. A professor at the University of California at San Diego, he also extended the color palette beyond green allowing researchers to give various proteins and cells different colors. Tsien received NSF funding in 1987 and 1988 to establish a center for the study of cell morphology and function, when he was at the University of California at Berkeley.
