Nobel Laureates and Limitations: The Perils of Unearned Omniscience

All accounts balanced

James Watson, who died at the age of 97 on November 6, 2025, was a DNA pioneer who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 jointly with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins at the age of 34.

When I received news of his death, I remembered that I might have written something about him. That was back in 2007, when, during a book launch, he veered from the science of genetics to the pseudoscience of eugenics by suggesting that intelligence could be genetically differentiated by race.

There was swift retribution for that aired opinion: a suspension followed by a resignation. The controversy became the benchmark by which Dr Watson was judged, rather than on his more significant work with DNA.

Intelligent monkey talk

I had also forgotten that in writing my first blog in October 2007, I recounted a story of someone suggesting I was a monkey and how I was blessed with the wit to respond, not out of offence, but with a willingness to engage. If I were a monkey, I would have become so intelligent that I could communicate with human beings; alternatively, my interlocutor would have acquired the ability to cavort with simians.

An apology followed, of course, but the damage had been done. Way back in innocent 2007, Dr Watson was cancelled, ostracised, and consigned to a scrapheap of ignominy. His groundbreaking work in discovering the double helix structure of DNA at the age of 25 and subsequently winning the Nobel Prize was overshadowed by controversy. His eugenics remarks created a dual legacy of brilliant scientist versus reprehensible public intellectual.

Dr Craig Venter, known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome, had this to say at that time: "Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social concept, not a scientific one. There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of intelligence."

The folly of universal expertise

The Nobel Prize is a high accolade, but it does not confer polymath status on the recipient. Upon being named, laureates do not suddenly become omniscient or experts in every imaginable field outside the sphere of their expertise. They should also possess the self-awareness and presence of mind to dismiss questions that seek their opinions on issues beyond where they have been accorded due recognition.

Contrasting Dr Watson with Dr Arthur Kornberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959, for his work on RNA & DNA, and died around the same time as the 2007 controversy, one sees that Dr Watson could have learnt how to carry oneself and manage one's opinions when conferred with the Nobel Prize. There should be a resounding memento mori in the ears of a Nobel laureate, for in the mortality of man lies the enduring power of memory.

Though he paid a heavy price for his indiscretion, the work he accomplished was worthy of celebration and commendation. May his soul rest in peace.

References

Blog - Doctor Neutralises Africans [October 2007]

Blog - Happy Retirement, Dr Watson [October 2007]

Blog - Arthur Kornberg - DNA Pioneer, dies [October 2007]

It is jab and go

Come on over

For the past month, I have been pestered by messages and alerts to go for my seasonal COVID-19 vaccine as the health authorities have considered there is a strain of concern about, a spike in infections leading to hospitalisations, and the danger it poses to those in a vulnerable cohort.

When I took my last booster in June, I left it well over a month from the first notification before I relented. I suppose the other issue is since the autumn of last year, there have been no nearby locations or walk-in centres to obtain the vaccine or booster.

Outskirts for jabs

The nearest locations are at least 2 kilometres and over a mile and a half away. It could easily be walked, though in finding those locations, it might be best to use public transport and then walk back home.

Why they have decided to move all the vaccination locations out of the city centre, I cannot understand, and this activity is no more at GP surgeries or dedicated facilities, but at chemists and pharmacies where it seems spare and probably medically unqualified hands are assigned the more onerous duty of registration with the rather trivial act of jabbing you in the arm.

Following the advice

What I have also found out is less people in the vulnerable cohort are keen on the booster, I have been advised by many unqualified people to shun the booster, but I will only act on sound medical advice. I was chatting to someone about it the other day and they volunteered that the booster knocked them out for almost a week.

In my case, I have tolerated the vaccine quite well, I was pleased that the sterling work by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman that went into creating the mRNA-type vaccine put out by Pfizer and Moderna was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Commending the science

On the counts, I have now had 2 main vaccines and 5 boosters, all mainly Pfizer-BioNTech or Pfizer, except the fourth which was the Moderna vaccine. Just over a day and a half of pain in the area of the injection, a little discomfort but no need for an analgesic.

What has surprised me is we are no longer required to wait around for about 15 minutes to gauge the patient’s reaction to the vaccine. You are jabbed and you leave, complications inadvertently handed off to the emergency services. It did not bother me; I took the time to walk back home through strange alleyways and backstreets.

Manchester keeps giving up new secrets about places, people, and buildings. 10 years here and still there is quite a lot to see. 

2013 Nobel Prize Week

Nobel excitement

The second working week in October is always quite exciting for me; it is the Nobel Prize announcement week.

Today, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists James Rothman and Randy Schekman of the United States and Thomas Sudhof of Germany, “for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.”

The people and the detail

Professor Göran K. Hansson, the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine made the announcement at 9:30 GMT impressively and flawlessly in 5 different languages.

After the announcement, Professor Juleen Zierath the chair of the committee explained the rationale behind the award of the prize and science behind it; I could not help but notice her American accent.

The BBC website attempts to break down the science into digestible detail, stating it is discovering how cells precisely transport material, that it is crucial for the way the brain communicates, the release of hormones and parts of the immune system and that a defective vesicle transport system is implicated in diabetes and brain disorders.

Nomination cycle

The process of nomination starts in September of the year before the award is made, in February the nomination process is closed, then consultation, reports and recommendations are made through to the first week in September. The laureate(s) are then chosen the day before the announcement during which time they are contacted and informed of the honour before the public announcement we heard today.

Names of the nominees and all related nomination material are kept secret for 50 years after the award is made.

This means anyone who is interested can now ask for information about other nominees, when the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine of 1963 was awarded to Sir John Carew Eccles (Australia), Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (UK) and Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley (UK); for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane. [Wikipedia][Nobel Foundation]

The 2013 Nobel Prize Announcements

You can join the Twitter discussion by following NobelPrize_Org and using the #NobelPrize or #NobelPeacePrize hashtags.

The announcements can be viewed on the Nobel Prize YouTube Channel, each scheduled as shown below:

Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Monday 7 October, 11:30 a.m. CET at the earliest

Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics - Tuesday 8 October, 11:45 a.m. CET at the earliest

Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Wednesday 9 October, 11:45 a.m. CET at the earliest

Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature - Thursday 10 October, 1:00 p.m. CET

Announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize - Friday 11 October, 11:00 a.m. CET

Announcement of the Prize in Economic Sciences - Monday 14 October, 1:00 p.m. CET at the earliest

 

Nigeria: A Literary source of Nobel Prize impressions

The impressionistic Nigeria

Nigeria creates such great impressions on people and one can say those who have been gifted to write about Nigeria have written articles, books or blogs of great interest and regaled us with intriguing views of Nigeria.

It is becoming evident that many who have drawn their inspiration from Nigeria have gone on to win literary prizes around the world including the Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 [1] which went to Professor Wole Soyinka [2].

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 [3] went to a mind seemingly inspired by Nigeria but living in a French citizen - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio [4] whose French father was a doctor in the British Army in Nigeria during the Second World War.

An enduring impression

At the age of 8, Jean-Marie and his family moved to Nigeria and though from the records we read of his life, he was only there for 2 years till they returned to Nice, France in 1950, one can only imagine what an impression living in Nigeria had on the young boy.

As it goes, it was during the month-long voyage to Nigeria that he started his literary career with Un long voyage and Oradi noir but it is amazing that 41 years after leaving Nigeria, in 1991, he writes Onitsha [5, 6], in French which was later translated to English in 1997 for Bison Books, which from the synopsis appears to be autobiographical about his youthful appreciation of the horrors of racism and the cultural differences between the locals and their colonial masters.

Impressions of Onitsha

Onitsha [6] is quite significant in many ways and though I have never visited the town, I learn a lot about the place from reading Chike and the River [7] by Chinua Achebe [8] (He is probably quite deserving of a Nobel Prize) in secondary school and it is supposed to be across the River Niger [9] from Asaba [10], the old colonial capital of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria.

Beyond that, Onitsha has a literary past where stories were published in pamphlets, books and other publications and sold at the Onitsha main market, in the 1950s and 1960s and though the names are not that well known, the Indiana University has an archive of about 170 pamphlets in what is known as Onitsha Market Literature [11].

More impressions to be made of Nigeria

However, the core point here is not so much about the Nobel Prize in Literature but the fact that Nigeria offers an amazing array of very rich inspirational sources for writers, in my case, I still remember quite fondly [12] my youthful days in Kaduna and Jos in Northern Nigeria and like Chxta writes today in False Literacy [13], we find ourselves trying to learn commonsense from self-help books that make successes of the writers and affirmed fools of the readers when there is more to reading and expanding ones knowledge in reading other material.

In some ways, I have been rebuked, but in all, it appears one has to dust off those old Nigerian books and novels as well as review a few of the contemporary material, there might not be a Booker Prize or a Nobel Prize in it for us, but there would definitely be a greater appreciation of Nigeria – we need that more than anything if we are to change that great country for the better.

Sources

[1] The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 – Nobelprize.org

[2] Wole Soyinka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 – Nobelprize.org

[4] Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Onitsha, J. M. G. Le Clezio, Book - Barnes & Noble

[6] Onitsha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Amazon.com: Chike and the River: Chinua Achebe: Books

[8] Chinua Achebe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] Google Maps view of the area between Onitsha and Asaba

[10] Asaba, Nigeria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[11] Onitsha Market Literature – Indiana University

[12] Blogs about my childhood memories

[13] Chxta's World: False literacy

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | And the winner is... who?

Luc Montagnier takes the Nobel Prize for isolating HIV

It is Nobel week

This week is Nobel Prize week and the first one has already been named for Physiology or Medicine 2008 [1].

In what can only be the recognition of peers and retribution of the gods, one name stuck out in the list of winners, the prize is shared by three persons, but for me, the name I can remember is Luc Montagnier.

What causes AIDS?

Professor Luc Montagnier [2] was a pioneer at the world renowned Pasteur Institute [3] in Paris whose work has been acknowledged and feted in the search for the causative agent of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Just like the arms race between the West and the Soviet Union, there was a virus race between America and France to isolate the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

As history would have it, there was an acrimonious dispute about who first isolated HIV and the reckoning that now accepts that it was first isolated by the French but the glory was snatched away with a rushed announcement by the Americans under the genius abilities of Dr. Robert C. Gallo [4].

The work of others

Now, this is not to discount [5] the ground-breaking work of Dr. Gallo because Prof. Montagnier discovered the virus and Dr. Gallo showed that the virus caused the disease, he also went on to create a blood test which has a shared patent between the French and the Americans.

Laughing last

But today, for all the work and in recognition of a man who at times looked wronged, was once frustrated and trumped by the ascendancy of publicity over the once respectable endeavour of scientific research for the good of humanity; he takes the prize, just a quarter of it, but the Nobel Prize is the Nobel Prize whatever the share. Some might record this event as controversial and did I forget to mention that Professor Luc Montagnier sharesone half og the prize with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi [6], a lady, with whom he shares the work for which he is honoured.

Congratulations! Professor Montagnier and thank you very much.

Sources

[1] The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008

[2] Luc Montagnier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Pasteur Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Robert Gallo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] The sound and fury of HIV - US News and World Report

Luc Montagnier – From Internet FAQ Archives

Robert C. Gallo – From Internet FAQ Archives

Nigeria: Abusing the Honours System

Honoured for service

A few years ago, my father was honoured with a chieftaincy title by the king of our hometown; when I heard of the news, I was certainly pleased for him knowing that he had been conferred this honour by reason of his work and commitment towards the development of our town.

Of his generation, he stood out as one who gathered the people, engaged his peers and encouraged the powerful to raise the profile of the town. Titles like these are primarily the means by which clans and tribes are able to honour leaders in their communities.

The electrification project, the building of the cathedral, the refurbishment of the primary school, the building of the secondary school, the mentoring of the younger generation – they were hallmarks of his service – work of over 40 years rewarded by a grateful people and their king.

The patriot that he is, I am definitely not and if he bore his traditional title in formal address, I would not begrudge him.

Dishonouring honour

However, I worry about the way titles and honours get dished out by whim or caprice by any traditional leader of the hut, hamlet, village, great city, tribal land or kingdom.

Everyone gets conferred with a chieftaincy title such that we are probably running out of people to give modernistic irrelevant but trendy titles that the pets might begin to feature in these ceremonies.

Ológìní of Gbókítí (Cat of Tumbler) or Ajáọba of Mẹ́ranyìí (King’s Dog of catch the goat) – The imaginary places could easily be your homestead.

People go out of their way to flatter and aggrandise themselves before traditional leaders who in turn are captivated and entranced by the show of wealth that could be used to buttress wanton excesses in the throne-room.

Honours by the basketful

This all for the sake of being addressed as chief with the most prized title being Otunba (Right-hand man of the king), though, I rarely see anyone interested in being the left-hand man of the king. You wonder if the king has lost a hand in battle.

I remember when Gbenga Daniel, the governor of my home state, Ogun State ran for election in 2003, he had already bagged about 50 chieftaincy titles from literally every named habitation in Ogun State and more from other states.

He is formally addressed as Otunba Gbenga Daniel; his wife currently holds the fanciful title of Yeye Aare Ajibosin of Owu kingdom and is addressed as Yeye Olufunke Daniel. Yeye being a synonym for mother in Yoruba.

Honours from anywhere

You then have people who seethe with religious addiction and superstitious stupidity whilst in the bondage of subjectivity that gives more credence to evil than good conferred with church or mosque titles.

Reverend, Canon, Venerable, Imam we know, but how would one handle titles which have become the formal style of introduction as Deacon, Senior Assistant Evangelist, Prophet, Apostle, Pastor, Senior Prophetess, Mother-in-Israel or Iya Adinni to mention a few?

This has become the raison d’être of the Nigerian elite, you are nothing if you are not titled, even if the title is conferred by some backwater king who has a wicker stool for a throne and nothing more than loincloth to retain his decency.

Bastardisation of Nigerian honours

A more recent development grates me, after the hairdresser hair-singe of Madam Etteh the erstwhile Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, the new 38-year old Speaker was conferred with the national civic honour of Commander of the Federal Republic.

Members of the House have taken umbrage about the class of honour and remonstrated that as the fourth citizen of the country, she should have received a higher honour because of her status and especially where the Chief Justice of the Federation who is lower in the order of precedence (seventh) has received a higher honour.

I am afraid; this clearly shows that our representatives are clueless about how honours systems work. This is not some conferment that comes by reason of office; it should come by reason of having a track record; a history of service. News of those honoured.

Two Ts short of a citation

Mr Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker, who has not yet been subsumed into the chieftaincy morass of Yoruba culture happens to be the son of a high-chief in Egbaland who goes by the chieftaincy title of Seriki Jagunmolu of Egbaland so, some of those titles might be on the way. I would not be surprised if people are not already needling some backwater king to make him Chief Chatterbox of Backwaterland.

It would go without saying that Mr Bankole’s political base stems from the influence his father exercises and the failed political forays into seeking popular electoral office; it could well be that coming from the same city as the last President (Olusegun Obasanjo) is a coincidence.

I am not convinced that Mr Bankole has the track record or body of work in service of Nigeria to be conferred a national honour at all, we only have to see what the Chief Justice of the Federation brings to the table.

Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, was called to the bar at The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn on the 20^th of July 1965 and he enrolled at the Nigerian Law School on the 22^nd of July 1966 (I have records of all lawyers registered in Nigeria up until mid-1990 since I worked on publishing a Legal Desk Book for 1991), he became a High Court judge in 1976 and was appointed to the Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in 1992, then became Chief Justice in 2007.

I think this citation would read for minutes and would attract deserving applause without having to consider the fact that he has been elevated to the post of Chief Justice.

The embarrassing thing about Mr Speaker’s national honour would have been the way the citation would have been bloviated with verbosity and filled in to justify the act after just 4 months of becoming the Speaker for a term that should last 4 years, although he has been a representative since 2003 - the key fascinating fact would really be his age, for which many clapped; everything else is par for the course.

Honour should come after service

However, one only has to see examples in the United Kingdom where Tony Blair was Prime Minister for 10 years and quite visibly a world leader for most of that time – he was not conferred with honours during his term and having left office he might not be conferred with honours for another year or so.

This does not mean he does not deserve honouring; at least a knighthood, but the case in Nigeria might well be compared with giving a Nobel Prize in some science to someone we anticipate would come up with a ground-breaking idea because he is a scientist rather than because of the work that has been done that has served humanity.

In the end, if people are honoured long before they should be with honours way beyond what recognition they should get, the whole exercise is cheapened, and it is made it worthless in the face of many other Nigerians who have no political influence but are even worthier and more deserving of accolade and honour.

The honour should not have been conferred at all, at least not at this time; but until we have objective representatives who are not caught up in the tide of emotion, we can expect such idiocy to grab the headlines.

Arthur Kornberg - DNA Pioneer, dies

Another DNA genius in the news

Arthur Kornberg and Severo Ochoa shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 1959 “for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid.”

I looked for other explanations of this citation beyond the fact that they had done some pioneering work with DNA, which has been in the news and my blogs quite prominently lately.

According to Wikipedia, he was experimenting with enzymes that created DNA. In 1956, he isolated the first DNA polymerising enzyme, now known as DNA polymerase I, for which he won the Nobel Prize.

That still looked like a big chunk till I found bite-sized bits I could digest with this – “Kornberg discovered the chemical mechanism that demonstrated how DNA - the blueprint of heredity - gets constructed in the cell.”

These studies laid the foundation for genetic engineering and the techniques used in creating certain drugs for cancer and viral infections. This area of discovery differs from Dr. Watson’s area of research, which won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1962. Although James Watson and Francis Crick had proposed a formal model of how DNA is replicated in the early ’50s, Kornberg discovered the actual chemical mechanism by which the huge amount of DNA that comprises a chromosome gets constructed in the cell.

An exemplary legacy

Dr. Arthur Kornberg died yesterday at the age of 89 after respiratory failure at Stanford Hospital and he was said to be working literally up to the time of his death.

In 1959, he took his 12-year-old son to Stockholm to collect his prize. What great father’s pride he would have had when his son Roger won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006 outright, “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.” To which he said, “I have felt for some time that he richly deserved it, his work has been awesome.” That work was essentially a continuation of his father's work on enzymes.

They both returned to Stockholm, 47 years after his award, to attend the one for his son. However, I note that in all the tributes paid to this great scientist, there is no mention of any controversy or the legendary Nobel Syndrome that has ravaged the persona of Dr Watson to an advanced stage of debilitation.

Unpretentious

Spyros Andreopoulos who in 1963 became the director of the Office of News and Public Affairs at the Stanford University Medical Center said this of him, when he was to meet the Nobel laureate the first time, “I was scared. Someone had warned me that Nobel laureates behaved like God-like princes, to my surprise, he was entirely unpretentious. Our first meeting was the beginning of an enduring friendship in which he let me share his challenges and triumphs.”

If he had survived, he would have been promoting his latest book which is scheduled for release on November 15 called Germ Stories, a book for children telling of the essence and wonder of bacteria in stories.

I must not fail to add that Sylvy Ruth Levy Kornberg his wife of 43 years who died in 1986 worked full-time in Dr Kornberg’s laboratory contributing to his DNA research, and was heard to say. “I was robbed!” the day after the Nobel Prize for her husband was announced.

Dr Kornberg leaves a great legacy to science, not only through his work but also his children who are in fields such as biochemistry and biophysics, as well as the architecture of laboratory design.

Rest in peace.

References

Arthur Kornberg, MD, 1918-2007 - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine

Photos - Arthur Kornberg, MD, 1918-2007

Other DNA Blogs

The music of dead white men

What the Poles gave the world

Having written about the Polish brain drain yesterday, the list of notable Poles reads like a civilisation of ideas, talent, ability and genius better exploited in other lands and this is a shame.

In fact, I was not aware that Mikołaj Kopernik (Nicolaus Copernicus) the father of Astronomy was a Pole, even though when the Nazis occupied Poland they tagged his statue in front of the Academy of Sciences in Warsaw as German, a young teenager chiseled that usurpation of citizenry off one night, legend has it, he only suffered a night or two in a dungeon.

I was however, determined to see something about Maria Skłodowska (Marie Curie) who discovered radium and polonium which was named for the land of her birth when it was still under occupation and seeking self-determination through turbulent times. She was also the first to win the Nobel Prize twice for radiography and the isolation of pure radium, her family received five in all – however, there is only one museum that celebrates her in Poland and it was not even open 75 minutes before its stated closing time.

Fryderyk Chopin however is better acknowledged and celebrated, every Sunday in summer time cultural Warsaw gathers in the Royal Łazienki Park for free piano recitals under the grand statue of Chopin who sits gaze averted in the direction of Poland that he loves or from the occasional pong the wafts from the circular pond at the bottom of the plinth.

Both recitals at 12:00 and 16:00 were well attended and the performances were excellent, definitely of the highest professional quality from Professor Kazimierz Gierzod who won first prize at the Festival of Young Musicians in Gdansk in 1964 and Joanna Marcinkowska whose biography of pianist excellence reads volumes.

She played in the afternoon session and as her performance reached a climax the clouds rolled in but held their waters till we had applauded her extraordinary talent.

In the end, the music of dead white men has its enduring quality and this time, I am not talking of Elvis Presley whose shrine in Graceland would receive the multitudes remembering his death 30 years ago on the 16^th of August - I am talking classical music.