Wild and Crazy Nobel Guys

Science is boring? Not during nobel week, when the recipients of the highest honors in chemistry, medicine and physics are announced. The 2006 winners were named last week, continuing a tradition begun in 1901, five years after Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel died, leaving $9 million and instructions to start annual prizes to honor achievements in those three scientific fields as well as in literature and peace. (Recipients of those awards will be announced this week, along with the winner in economics, a prize created in 1969.) The stories behind this year's science winners are particularly compelling. It was a banner year...

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