Thanks to everyone who submitted nominations for the 2021 October Madness, Sigma Xi's Nobel Prize prediction contest!
Voting is open until September 15, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time for the Sweet 16 round.
Make sure to vote to keep your favorites in the running!
Sweet 16 Voting
Chemistry
1.
John Brauman, for his contributions to the understanding of the factors that determine the rates and products of chemical reactions
vs.
John C. Tully, for his contributions to our understanding of the rates and pathways of chemical processes in gas phase, condensed phase, and surfaces through insightful analyses and creation of computational tools such as surface hopping
2.
Omar M. Yaghi and Makoto Fujita, for the development of metal-organic frameworks/coordination polymers and reticular chemistry; for pioneering reticular chemistry
vs.
Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, for the discovery of Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP)
3.
Samuel J. Danishefsky, for his wide-ranging accomplishments in natural products total synthesis and for his pioneering chemical synthesis of carbohydrates for the development of anticancer vaccines.
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
4.
Weitao Yang, for his contributions to density functional theory development, and its applications to chemistry
vs.
Andrew Smith, for the development of organocatalysis methodology to synthesize new heterocyclic ring systems
5.
Jacqueline K. Barton, for her pioneering contributions to our understanding of the chemical, biological and spectroscopic properties of the DNA double helix
vs.
Carolyn Bertozzi, for founding bio-orthogonal chemistry, and applying this novel chemistry to install artificial sugars on the surface of living cells, enabling the study of their roles in cancer and the immune system
6,
Eric Scerri, for his cross-discipline work on the Periodic Table of Elements
vs.
Peter G. Shultz, for his work in the exploitation of molecular diversity in the synthesis of new medicines and materials
7.
Harry B. Gray, for his work in electron transfer research; tunneling, bioinorganic chemistry
vs.
Ron W. Davis, for advancing technology in genomics, gene editing, and cloning
8.
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.
Gabor A. Somorjai, for his pioneering experimental and conceptual contributions to the understanding of surface chemistry and catalysis at a microscopic and molecular level
Physics
1.
Nicholas P. Samios, for the discovery of the Omega hyperon confirming the quark model
vs.
Edward Witten, for his work on string theory, quantum gravity, and supersymmetric quantum gravity
2.
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, for her work on the discovery of pulsars, one of the major astronomical discoveries of the 20th century
vs.
Margaret G. Geller, for her work in mapping the nearby universe, providing a new view of the enormous patterns in the distribution of galaxies like the Milky Way
3.
Anton Zeilinger, John Clauser, and Alain Aspect, for their Bell’s inequality experiments, which established quantum entanglement
vs.
Andrew Fabian, for his research in the field of observational X-ray astronomy, from gas flows in clusters of galaxies to supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies
4.
Collin Humphreys, for his research on gallium nitride (GaN), which has improved the understanding of this important material with a wide range of technological applications
vs.
Ewine van Fleur Dishoeck, for her research aimed at the determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra
5.
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
6.
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
7.
Michal Lipson, for her pioneering research that established the groundwork for silicon photonics
vs.
Leonard Susskind, for his contributions to the string theory
8.
Michelle Simmons, for seminal contributions to our understanding of nature at the atomic-scale by creating a sequence of world-first quantum electronic devices in which individual atoms control device
vs.
Armand Paul Alivisatos, for making fundamental contributions to the controlled synthesis of colloidal inorganic nanocrystals, measuring and understanding their unique physical properties, and utilizing these properties for applications ranging from light generation and harvesting to biological imaging
Physiology or Medicine
1.
Mary-Claire King, for the discovery of BRCA1 Linkage and confirmation of an inherited risk of cancer
vs.
Dennis J. Slamon, for discovering a breast cancer gene called HER2/neu and the treatment to reverse its tumor-growing effects
2.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for spearheading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic as the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO)
vs.
Anthony Fauci, for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic
3.
Marilyn Hughes Gaston, for her work on sickle cell disease screening program for newborns and her research showed both the benefits of screening for sickle cell disease at birth and the effectiveness of penicillin to prevent infection from sepsis, which can be fatal in children with the disease.
vs.
Benjamin S. Carson Sr, for his work as the only neurosurgeon to successfully separate twins who are joined at the back of the head
4.
Charles David Allis, for discovery of epigenetics and histone modification
vs.
David Julius, for the identification of the biophysical basis of nociception
5.
Irving Weissman, for advances in immunology and stem cell biology
vs.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, for the idea to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease and the discovery and commercialization of mRNA vaccines
6..
Michael Doyle, Maurice Pescitelli, and George Michaels, for the invention of spatial transcriptomics
vs.
Arthur L Horwich and Franz-Ulrich Hartl, for discovery of the role of molecular chaperons in protein folding in health and disease
7.
Samir Mitragotri, for the discovery of red blood cell hitchhiking using nanoparticles for the intravenous cure of diseases
vs.
Michael Shepard, Dennis J. Slamon, and Axel Ullrich, for their invention of Herceptin, the first monoclonal antibody that blocks a cancer-causing protein, and for its development as a life-saving therapy for women with breast cancer
8.
Eve Marder, for her research over more than 40 years which provided transformative insight into the fundamental processes of animal and human brains
vs.
Max D. Cooper and Jacques Miller, for their discovery of the two distinct classes of lymphocytes, B and T cells – a monumental achievement that provided the organizing principle of the adaptive immune system and launched the course of modern immunology