By Charles Pan ’18, News Writer

Every year, the Nobel committee (a group of Swedish and Norwegian committees) bestows a set of international honors, Nobel prizes, and one million dollars to recognize individuals who have made outstanding advancements in specific categories. Here are the Nobel Prize Winners of 2014.

Nobel Peace Prize: Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi

Most notable of all the Nobel Prize winners that has appeared in the news quite a number of times in Malala Yousafzai. A 17-year old Pakistani girl who was almost killed by the Taliban, Yousafzai went on to become an activist for female education and the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize. In July 2013, less than a year after she was shot, she spoke before the United Nations and met with Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace to call for worldwide access to education. Her speech received standing ovations and the UN ended up dubbing the day “Malala Day.” She would continue on to speak at Harvard University, with President Obama, and at a Girls Summit in London.

Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian children’s rights activist and he has protected rights of more than 83,000 children from 144 countries. He received the Nobel Peace prize with Yousafzai “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and the right of all children to education.” Satyarthi has appeared on many documentaries, television series, talk shows, and advocacy and awareness films.

Nobel Literature Prize: Patrick Modiano

Jean Patrick Modiano, a French writer, won the Nobel Literature prize for his study of the Nazi occupation and its effect on France. Among more than 40 works, Modiano wrote the “Missing Person” (which won the Prix Goncourt) and co-wrote the movie “Lacombe, Lucien.” His works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been celebrated in and around France “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.”

Mr. Scerra: The Swedish Academy gives out the prizes and one of its members called Modiano a “Marcel Proust of our time.”  Even though Modiano doesn’t seem to be well-known in our country, that’s pretty high praise.

Nobel Physics Prize: Shuji Nakamura, Hiroshi Amano, and Isamu Asaki

Shuji Nakamura, Hiroshi Amano, and Isamu Asaki won the Nobel Physics prize “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.” Or more simply, for inventing the blue LED, which is a major advance in lighting technology. This blue LED allows for the creation of white light, which many people have been trying to do but have failed. This white LED lamp “holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids” as said by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Mr. Bitler: They set off the LED lighting revolution.  LED lights are super-efficient, coming down in cost, last vastly longer than incandescent bulbs, and are used around the world in all sorts of ways:  car headlights, newer super flatscreen TVs, all sorts of indicators, electronic watches, electronic displays, etc. I’m pretty sure there are some LED devices at Newark Academy if we looked for them.  Also, since LEDs are much more efficient (less energy needed per amount of light), they will be important in the poorer parts of the world, and can be used with solar technology to provide much needed light in unelectrified areas of the world.  It might seem like a rinky-dink technology, but it is anything but.  Revolutionary and transformatory.

Nobel Physiology (Medicine) Prize: Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser, and John O’Keefe

Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser, and John O’Keefe have been offered the Nobel Physiology Prize “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.” In other words, they found individual cells that activate in a part of the brain that stores memories when in a specific place. This part of the brain is the first area to show signs of damage in Alzheimer’s patients and is the reason for their memory loss. The three scientists have vowed to solve the mystery of Alzheimer’s disease and how to prevent it.

Nobel Chemistry Prize: William E. Moerner, Eric Betzig, and Stefan Hell

William E. Moerner, Eric Betzig, and Stefan Hell were all granted the Nobel Chemistry Prize “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.” Previously, it was thought that a microscope could not be able to obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Cleverly, these three scientists have found a way around this rule and now the microscope has the capability to look into the nanoworld, which could be used for even deeper research.

Nobel Economics Prize: Jean Tirole

Jean Tirole has won the Nobel Prize in economics “for his analysis on market power and regulation.” Tirole is chairman of the board of the Jean-Jacques Laffont Foundation at the Toulouse School of Economics and scientific director of the Industrial Economics Institute in Toulouse. He has also worked as a professor of economics at MIT and the École Polytechnique. He has also received other numerous awards in economics for his work.

Ms. Lifson’s Response:

Tirole’s work is very fascinating because he writes about how a lot of large companies do not act within a free market, which brings up key issues for those regulating such companies. This lack of a free market puts a burden on regulators to help create the right incentives for companies when the market does not fully play that role.  It is very tricky to regulate because of unintended consequences or “perverse incentives” when regulators mean to incentivize one thing but create something else.  So as one example, regulators can limit prices by saying that a company, like an electric company, can charge their customers costs plus a percentage on top of that.  But if that is the regulatory scheme, what incentive does the electric company have to control costs?  None.  In fact, they do better when their production costs are higher, but that is an inefficient use of resources.  In contrast, one of the great things about a free market is the incentive to control costs which allows a company to make more money.  So there are different options for regulators and each have their benefits and disadvantages.  Triole’s work explores these in great depth.

It might or might not impact global economics today.  One trick is that regulations happen within a given country.  But all countries have a problem in the global economy – if they impose too many regulations, the corporations will take more of their business elsewhere.  So countries compete with each other to have fewer regulations and taxes in order to attract more businesses.  This really limits a country’s ability to make meaningful regulations in all areas – such as the environment, safety regulations and the like.  We need to figure out as a world how to solve problems globally and cooperate.  But I think that Triole’s work is great food for thought. I am looking forward to bringing up Triole’s work in all of my Economic classes.