The Nobel in Chemistry for 2009 has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath for “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” And because I am (or was, or am, or..whatever) a physicist, I will note that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has a Ph.D. in physics 🙂
And today is even more busy than yesterday!
O brave new quantum world!
Theory? Experiment? Heck … *that* style of science is *so* twentieth century.
This particular prize was all about observation and simulation … and it has to make us wonder whether (essentially) *all* future Nobel prizes awarded for chemistry, condensed matter physics, and medicine will be similar.
The point being, many scientific disciplines are evolving to become more observation-intensive and simulation-intensive … and the quantum and informatic limits to to observation and simulation are very far from being exhausted.
Some folks claim that there will be four branches of science: theory, experiment, observation, and simulation.
But IMHO, this is baloney. Perhaps the four branches of science will be theory, experiment, observation, and … this is the heretical part … *narrative* … with simulation being (in essence) the software aspect of narrative.
The Nobel committee is having to become really creative in what counts as “chemistry” these days.