China celebrates Liu Xiaobo Nobel Prize with arrests and error messages

There is no doubt that Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is a worthy recipient of the Nobel Peace prize – far more worthy than, many previous laureates. Needless to say the Chinese authorities were not best pleased.


There is little prospect of his being released from prison but now, according to the Globe and Mail, his wife, Liu Xia, has been placed under house arrest having been allowed to visit him over the weekend to tell him he was now a Nobel laureate, she is also prevented from using her mobile phone….

But not prevented from using Twitter…. “I’m under house arrest. I don’t know when I can meet you guys. My mobile phone was broken and I have no way to take calls,”
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Many Chinese likely still have no idea that Mr. Liu has become the country’s first resident Nobel laureate. Those Chinese media that did make mention of the award ran only a small article from the official Xinhua news wire that quoted a foreign ministry official saying the award could hurt ties between Beijing and Oslo.

In a sign of how anxious Beijing is to prevent any public rallying around Mr. Liu’s award, police broke up two small gatherings of dissidents who had hoped to celebrate Mr. Liu’s victory over the weekend.

Nonetheless, news of Mr. Liu’s win – and the contents of Charter 08 – continued to spread online among China’s 420 million Internet users. Though search terms such as “Liu Xiaobo” and “Nobel Peace Prize” return only error messages, some Chinese internet users bravely reposted the contents of the Charter 08 for others to read.

“The government will certainly try all means to block [the news of Mr. Liu’s win], but we are in the Internet age, so it is impossible to block it completely,” said Wen Kejian, a Hangzhou-based writer who was among the first to sign Charter 08 when it was published in December 2008. “The Nobel Prize will surely help more people read and know what Liu has done, and to hear about Charter 08.”

I will add no glib comment to this article

Andre Geim, a true star of science

This year’s Nobel physics prize goes to Russians Andre Geim and Konstantin. Novoselov for their "groundbreaking" work on graphene, a material with amazing properties.

Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick; it is almost completely transparent, but also extremely strong and a good conductor of electricity. Its unique properties mean it could have a wide array of practical uses.

The researchers, along with several collaborators, were the first to isolate the layers of carbon from the material graphite, The breakthrough could lead to the manufacture of innovative electronics, including faster computers, according to the Nobel Prize Foundation.

Dr Novoselov, 36, holds British and Russian citizenship and is the youngest Nobel laureate in nearly 40 years. They first worked together in the Netherlands before moving to the UK. They were based at the University of Manchester when they published their research on graphene in October 2004.

But there's more...

Geim is one of a tiny handful of scientists who have won both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel prize.

Ten years ago, he and Sir Michael Berry from the University of Bristol were jointly awarded an Ig Nobel prize for their experiments using magnetic fields to levitate live frogs.

A Nobel and an Ig Nobel? Surely Geim is one of science’s true heroes. Move over Newton, Einstein et al, we have a new star n the firmament!

And now a new British Nobel laureate

After British triumphs at the Ig Nobels it has been announced that physiologist Professor Robert Edwards has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on in vitro fertilisation.

He, and the late Dr Patrick Steptoe developed IVF technology in which egg cells are fertilised outside the body and implanted in the womb.

The groundbreaking work led to the birth of the world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.

Louise Brown as a baby

Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall, near Cambridge, the IVF clinic which Prof Edwards founded, said: ''Bob Edwards is one of our greatest scientists. His inspirational work in the early '60s led to a breakthrough that has enhanced the lives of millions of people worldwide.

''Bob Edwards is held in great affection by everyone that has worked with him and was treated by him. I am really pleased that my great mentor, colleague and friend has been recognised in this way.''

One of his proudest moments was discovering that 1,000 IVF babies had been born at Bourn Hall since Louise Brown.

A spokeswoman for Prof Edwards said he was not well enough to give interviews.

A hearty congratulation to a man whose work has brought joy to many thousands. I hope that he is well enough to accept his prize.

Nicholas Winton nominated for Nobel Peace prize

A 98-year old Briton has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. The person in question is Sir Nicholas Winton who in 1939 arranged for the transport of nearly 700 Czechoslovakian Jewish children to the UK

In the spring of 1939, the young Nicholas Winton cancelled a skiing holiday in Switzerland and, at the urging of a friend, went to Prague instead. Nicholas Winton was particularly shocked by the condition of the children: many of them he found living in squalid - and freezing - refugee camps. With a group of others he drew up a list of children whose parents would agree to send them to Britain until the emergency - however long it was to last - was over.

He lobbied the Home Office in London. They said he could bring as many children as he liked, provided he could find foster families for them, and provided they went home when it was safe to do so. He then organised a series of closed trains to take the children from Prague directly to Liverpool Street station in London.

For nearly 50 years Winton lost contact with the children he had brought to Britain, including director Karel Reisz and Labour politician Lord Alfred Dubs. He did not even tell his wife Grete what he had done. It was not until 1988 when she found a scrapbook in their attic, with all the children's photos, names, and letters did she learn the whole story (The scrapbook is now held at Yad Vashem)

By the time his deeds became known there survivors and their descendants numbers over 5,000 "Normally events that happened a long time ago diminish in importance as time goes on," Sir Nicholas has said "This story is the opposite - it keeps on growing, because there are more and more people. They keep breeding, you see!"

Perhaps it is time for a self effacing hero to be awarded this high accolade. He is far more deserving that quite a few previous recipients.

My thanks to Snoopy the Goon for drawing this story to my attention

Doris Lessing wins Nobel Prize

Doris Lessing has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature for her life's work over a 57-year career, including The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and Memoirs of a Survivor.

Lessing told BBC Radio "I've won it. I'm very pleased and now we're going to have a lot of speeches and flowers and it will be very nice. She recalled that, in the 1960s, "they sent one of their minions especially to tell me they didn't like me at the Nobel Prize and I would never get it. So now they've decided they're going to give it to me. So why? I mean, why do they like me any better now than they did then?" The author, who turns 88 on 22 October, said she thought she had become more respectable with age. They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off." she said.

Lessing is only the 11th woman to win the Literature prize and only the 34^th woman to win any Nobel prize, The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, described Lessing as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". In addition to the Nobel cash prize, Lessing will receive a gold medal and an invitation to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm..

Lessing was born in Persia then moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) as a child before. She settled in England in 1949. Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published the following year. She is the second British citizen to be awarded a Nobel prize this year: Sir Martin Evans director of School of Biosciences and professor of mammalian genetics at Cardiff University.shares the Medicine prize along with Americans Mario Capecchi, and Oliver Smithies (who was born and educated in England) for their work on stem cells and genetic manipulation.

It’s a long time since I’ve read any of her works. Like a lot of people I will be digging through the boxes of stored books or heading off to the bookshop....

Sanger's papers to be held at the Wellcome Library

Frederick Sanger is one of just four people to have won two Nobel Prizes . The others are Marie Curie – Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911; Linus Pauling - Chemistry 1954 and Peace in 1962; John Bardeen – Physics 1956 and 1972. Sanger won his first prize in 1958 for his work on protein structures, in particular the structure of insulin. His second award in 1980 (shared with Americans Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert) for work on DNA sequencing.

Sanger is one of Britain’s greatest scientists so it is pleasing to see that his notebooks used by have been saved for the nation. The Wellcome Trust is taking possession of the note books which give crucial insights into his thinking as he carried out work that transformed medical science. The DNA techniques of Sanger are now used by gene sequencers throughout the world. If his books were sold on the open market, they would be worth millions.

'Sanger was the father of genome sequencing,' said Clare Matterson of the Wellcome Trust. 'With his notebooks, we now have a clear record of his influences and thought processes. It would have been tragic if these notebooks had ended up outside Britain.' After collating the entries of the notebooks, the organisation will make them available for study to the public at the Wellcome Library in London. 'This will give insight into the thinking of one of our greatest scientists,' added Matterson.

Whereas other double Nobel prize winners like Marie Curie are rightly venerated, Sanger is virtually unknown in the United Kingdom This is in no small part due to his intense modesty. He is summed up by the biographer Georgina Ferry as 'Small, self-effacing and modest in the extreme, Sanger had determination, perseverance and the scientific equivalent of green fingers for developing new lab techniques and getting them to work. He was the kind of scientist who thinks with his hands.'