It’s getting to be that time of year again…

With no odds (or anything else for that matter) posted on ChemBark and Thomson seemingly not making any predictions this year, where do I go for my Nobel Prize gossip?

Well, it seems as though medGadget has come to the rescue, and is running a ‘Guess-A-Nobel’ contest’ – just leave a comment on their blog post with your picks for who will win the Chemistry (or Physics or Physiology/Medicine) prize and you could win an iPod nano (or two or three).

Amongst the guesses for the chemistry prize, Whitesides is getting some attention, with two votes, and Tsien also has two votes (along with others for using fluorescent tags to monitor proteins). Ken Houk – one of my former UCLA colleagues – also gets a mention.

One of the suggested winners is a bit of a long shot if you ask me – not only has John Pople already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of computational methods (and winning two Nobels is rare – Curie, Pauling, Sanger and Bardeen are the only individuals to achieve this feat), but he died in 2004, which is the bigger handicap, because Nobel Prizes aren’t handed out posthumously.

So, go along to medGadget and leave your picks – and while you’re at it, leave us a comment here to let us know who you think will win – no iPods up for grabs, but the respect of the Sceptical Chymist audience awaits…

UPDATE: Thomson must have put up their picks today… – they weren’t there yesterday when I checked. They’ve gone for Lieber or Matyjaszewski or Tsien (doesn’t seem fair that they get three picks).

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)