Nobel Prize

Robert F. Furchgott, one of three American scientists awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body, died May 19 in Seattle. He was 92. Furchgott, formerly of the State University of New York in Brooklyn, shared the $995,500 prize with Louis J. Ignarro of UCLA and Dr. Ferid Murad of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.

Two Americans on Monday won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their seminal work on how people and organizations make decisions and cooperate outside traditional markets -- a growing area of research that scholars said was relevant to such pressing issues as climate change and the behavior of financial institutions. Elinor Ostrom, a Los Angeles native who teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., became the first woman to win the prize for economics since it was first awarded 40 years ago. She will share the $1.4-million award with Oliver E. Williamson, a professor at UC Berkeley.

Israeli writer Amos Oz is the favorite to be selected for the 2009 Nobel literature prize Thursday, but with the judging notoriously hard to predict, he is far from a safe bet. Oz, who deals with life in modern Israel in his novels and reflects decades of commitment to the Israeli peace movement in his political writing, is quoted at 4-1 odds by British bookmaker Ladbrokes, meaning he has one chance in five of winning. But Oz was also widely touted last year, when Frenchman Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the award.

Nobel Prize: An article in Wednesday's Section A about the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics included a photo of winner George Smith holding a camera that the caption said used a CCD sensor, for which he won the prize. The camera is a newer-generation model that uses a CMOS sensor.

Ginzburg obituary: In Tuesday's Section A, the headline on the obituary of Vitaly Ginzburg said he was born in 1922. The Russian physicist, who played a key role in the Soviet Union's development of the hydrogen bomb and later won a Nobel Prize for his work on the theoretical underpinnings of superconductivity, was born Oct. 4, 1916.

Dr. George Snell, whose research paved the way for modern organ transplants and who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1980, has died, officials at Jackson Laboratory said Friday. He was 92. Snell died Thursday at his Bar Harbor home, said officials at the Maine genetics research facility where Snell worked as a scientist from 1935 until his retirement in 1973. Known as the "father of immunogenetics," Snell was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize along with Dr.

For those who know him, it is not difficult to imagine Richard D. Kim one day winning a Nobel Prize. The 17-year-old is his high school's valedictorian, scored a perfect 1600 on the college-entrance Scholastic Assessment Test and will attend Harvard University in the fall to study biochemistry. He also earned a 4.9 grade-point average at Villa Park High School and a slew of academic honors.

Nigerian author and Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka will speak this month as part of Chapman University's Distinguished Author series. A poet, novelist, playwright and essayist, Soyinka has documented much of Africa's political turmoil in the 20th century and the struggle to reconcile tradition with modernization, Chapman officials said. "He is an outstanding writer who exemplifies global citizenship," said Mark Axelrod, assistant professor of comparative literature at the university.

Odysseus Elytis, a Nobel Prize-winning poet known for his sensuous lyrics about the Greek islands and the nation's turbulent history, died Monday. He was 84. The poet, who had suffered with lymph and lung problems in recent years, died at his Athens home of a heart attack. Elytis, a recluse known for his spartan lifestyle, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1979, becoming the second Greek poet to receive the award.

UC Irvine's two 1995 Nobel laureates, F. Sherwood Rowland and Frederick Reines, will be honored by the state Legislature on Monday for their contributions to science. Both the Senate and Assembly will read resolutions praising UCI's first Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The pair personally accepted their Nobel awards in Stockholm in December.