Nobel Prize Chemistry 2023

Given that leaks demonstrably occur,

Given human nature,

Given at most 3 can share a Nobel Prize,

It is not a question of "if" but "when" eventually a fourth wheel scientist risks being assassinated if consideration of topics for a prize leaks substantially beforehand. Perpetrators could include candidates, but also nationalists (for prestige) of any rank (civilians, national security employees, ...).

Perhaps a topic for a film school student? A bizarre cross between "Don't look up" and the French film "Le couperet", with elements of film noir.

To make it extra bizarre, have the invention be resurrection technology.

Defensive measures the Academy could take could include last minute randomized selection of the topic / breakthrough, probability weighted by dubious nature of death of deceased candidates. Although this risks an escalation where a candidate has larger numbers of random candidates for other discoveries or breakthroughs assassinated...

It's funny because it looks exactly like something you'd see in a stock photo of "chemistry."

The usual reaction to that being "chemistry isn't flasks of brightly colored liquids, what are you doing?" But in this case it's finally appropriate.

Nanocrystals Technology Inc seems to have less than a handful of employees and doesn't have an official website. https://www.newyorkbids.us/new-york-contractors/contractor-5...

Quantum dots have an increasing relevance to display technology, so it feels reasonable to look back and reward a discovery which was more important than it seemed at the time.

The world becoming more and more complex, the time span between the theoretical framework and the first experiments to the realization of something genuinely useful tends to become longer and longer. There are some fields where, with the time to become an expert plus the time for the discovery to become Nobel-worthy, it may become difficult to get a Nobel in a lifetime (so, at all).

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/quantum-dot-first-for-ca...

Pretty impressive stuff:

> "The researchers used cadmium–selenium dots 3nm in diameter to seamlessly replace iridium and ruthenium catalysts in five different bond forming reactions including β-alkylation and β-aminoalkylation. What’s more they needed orders of magnitude less catalyst than conventional metal ones. ‘We were pleasantly surprised by the level of performance by just substituting, without any optimisation, a very simple quantum dot into these reactions,’ says Krauss.

> "The dots have some other advantages: they are easy to synthesise, cheap and ‘you can tune the photophysical and redox properties of the catalyst just by changing the dots’ dimension’, Ceroni explains."

> Recognition time lag

> Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the awards usually recognised recent discoveries. However, some of those early discoveries were later discredited. For example, Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused cancer. To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the awards increasingly recognised scientific discoveries that had withstood the test of time. According to Ralf Pettersson, former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine, "the criterion 'the previous year' is interpreted by the Nobel Assembly as the year when the full impact of the discovery has become evident."

My own comment: Since there is a large queue of potential awardees, I suspect there is a preference for older scientists who might die soon since being alive is also a requirement for award.

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier had a much shorter delay, for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier