The Nobel Foundation announced the Nobel winners for the year 2000 last week, honoring outstanding efforts around the globe.
The Peace Prize was awarded to Kim Dae Jung, President of South Korea, for his efforts to make peace between North and South Korea and support Democracy in South Korea, "despite repeated threats on his life and long period of exile," according to the Committee.
The Prize in Literature was awarded to Gao Xingjian, an exiled Chinese novelist and playwright. Gao's writing celebrates "the struggle of the individual to survive the history of the masses," according to the Swedish Academy, which award the prize. He is the first Chinese author, ever to receive that prize.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two Americans. James Heckman, from the University of Chicago, and Daniel McFadden, of The University of California at Berkely, were cited for developing statistical techniques to help analyze and predict individual choices.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded physics prizes to Jack Kilby, of Texas Instruments for co-inventing the integrated circuit, and to Zhores Alferov of St. Petersburg Russia and Herbert Kroerner of University of California at Santa Barbara who made advances in high-speed transistors and tiny lasers.
The chemistry prize was awarded to Alan Heeger, also of UCSB, Alan Macdiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania and Hideki Shirakawa of the University of Tsukuba. The prize was awarded for the "discovery and development of conductive polymers," plastics that are able to carry electric current as easily as metals.
Although no Dartmouth professors have received the prize, three have been honored.