Thanks to everyone who submitted nominations for the 2020 October Madness, Sigma Xi's Nobel Prize prediction contest!
Voting is open until September 17, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time for the Elite 8 round.
Make sure to vote to keep your favorites in the running!
Elite 8 Voting
Chemistry
1.
Harry Gray, for his work in electron transfer research; tunneling, bioinorganic chemistry
vs.
Ron W. Davis, for advancing technology in genomics, gene editing, and cloning
2.
Robert S. Langer, for development of nanocarriers as a platform for cancer therapy, and other biotechnology using his background as a chemical engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur
vs.
Samuel Danishefsky, for his overall contribution to total synthesis; organic synthesis
3.
Omar M. Yaghi, Makoto Fujita, for the development of metal-organic frameworks/coordination polymers and reticular chemistry
vs.
Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, for the discovery of Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP)
4.
Jennifer Doudna, for her co-discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering technology
vs.
Donald A. Tomalia, for the invention of the dendrimer family of polymers that have the capability of transporting pharmaceutical agents through cell walls for medicine
Physics
1.
Nicholas P. Samios, for the discovery of the Omega hyperon confirming the quark model
vs.
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, for discovery of first radio pulsars
2.
Edward Witten, for his work in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum gravity
vs.
Anton Zeilinger, John Clauser, Alain Aspect, for taking data which was loop-hole free and demonstrated that hidden variables could not be an explanation for quantum entanglement.
3.
Geoffrey Hinton, for establishing the backpropagation algorithm to train multi-layer neural networks.
vs.
Lene Vestergaard Hau, for her work on slowing down and stopping light
4.
Edward Stone (and the Voyager team), for heading the Voyager I/II missions, which have explored all of the outer planets and are now cruising interstellar space (the first human-made objects to do so).
vs.
Alan Guth, for providing observational evidence corroborating the cosmic inflation hypothesis.
Physiology or Medicine
1.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for spearheading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic as the Director General of the WHO
vs.
Mary-Claire King, for the discovery of BRCA1 Linkage and confirmation of an inherited risk of cancer
2.
Anthony Fauci, for his work during the COVID 19 pandemic
vs.
Samir Mitragotri, for the discovery of red blood cell hitchhiking using nanoparticles for the intravenous cure of diseases
3.
Irving Weissman, for advances in immunology and stem cell biology
vs.
Arthur L Horwich and Franz-Ulrich Hartl, for discovery of the role of molecular chaperons in protein folding in health and disease
4.
Charles David Allis, for discovery of epigenetics and histone modification
vs.
David Julius, for the identification of the biophysical basis of nociception