12:19 p.m., Nov. 4, 2009----The University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences concluded its 2009 Nobel Prize symposium with presentations Friday afternoon, Oct. 30, in the Trabant University Center Theatre.

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Brian Bahnson, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, discussed the Nobel Prize in chemistry; Monika Shafi, Elias Ahuja Professor of German and director of the Women's Studies Program, discussed the literature prize; and Jeffrey Miller, professor of economics, discussed the economics prize.

The Nobel in chemistry was awarded to three recipients -- Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, Thomas Steitz of Yale University and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K. -- for their work on the structure and function of the ribosome.

Bahnson discussed the history of research involving ribosomes, which were first observed in the mid-1950s.

Yonath, he noted, is in elite company as one of only four women among the 156 winners of the Nobel in chemistry, joining Marie Curie, Irene Joliot-Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Her work is in crystallizing ribosomes, an idea that came to her following a bicycling accident when she had extra time on her hands and read about how polar bears survive hibernation by packing their ribosomes.

Bahnson said Steitz considers the structure solution of the 50S ribosome to be “the most rewarding discovery of his career,” one he likened to “climbing to the top of Mount Everest and seeing the view from the top.” Ramakrishnan, who got his start on ribosomal studies with Peter Moore at Yale University, had done his initial work on the 30S ribosomal particle. Originally a theoretical physicist, he developed a love of biology from a subscription to Scientific American.

The work of the three Nobel laureates in important in furthering a molecular understanding of how the ribosome works, Bahnson said. Practically, their work has the potential applications in the development of new antibiotics based on rational drug design, he said.

Shafi said the selection of German novelist Herta Müller as the winner of the Nobel in literature was “a surprise choice” and that “both nationally and internationally the announcement was met with astonishment, if not a bit of irritation.” The Nobel Prize Committee said Müller, whose work focuses on oppression and tyranny, was honored for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose."

Shafi said that by immersing herself in the literature by and about Müller, she has “come to greatly appreciate this writer, and I certainly can applaud the Nobel Prize Committee for its choice.”

She noted that Müller is only the 12th woman to win the literature prize in its 109-year history and that her selection has drawn attention “to a most uncomfortable topic, namely, life under oppressive regimes, and those include the personal, the regimes of family and community, as well as the political.”

The Nobel in economics was awarded to Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver Williamson of the University of California Berkeley for their work in economic governance.

Miller noted that Ostrom, who is the first woman to win the Nobel in economics, presented a lecture at UD several years ago. Also, Miller studied under Williamson while a student at the University of Pennsylvania and said he has “always viewed him as one of the most innovative thinkers in the economics profession.”

Williamson, a co-founder of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics, has done extensive work on the use of transaction costs as a framework for analyzing the efficiency of organizations. “His arguments have had important implications whenever there are questions related to economic institutions,” Miller said.

Miller said Ostrom has studied a different but related question concerning protection of “the commons,” an area where there is a resource but where property rights are not well defined. He cited as an example a fishery, in which fishers have an incentive to overfish to make more money but who face the eventual loss of the fishery through that very overfishing.

Through her research, Ostrom has found that people -- the fishers themselves - generally develop a system of self-governance to regulate the resource, with that form of regulation often out-performing government-imposed laws.

Miller said the work of Ostrom and Williamson is particularly important now “at a point in time where we have seen the collapse of financial markets and new questions being raised about so-called 'efficient market' theories.”