Or, never mind the head of a pin, how many Nobel laureates can dance the Polonaise on a tiny dance floor in Lindau? About 47, I’d guess. after last night’s party.
Special kudos for stylish moves to Alan Heeger ( 2000 Chemistry) and of course Frank Wilczek (2004 Physics).
I love the part of traveling where you run into people you already know and like. Since December, 2004, Nobel prizewinners are about 99 44/100% of those people for me. And high on said list is Aaron Ciechanover (2004 Chemistry) who just taught me how to Skype.
Aaron, who won for studying ubiquitin, the useful protein-murderer in our cells, gave a talk yesterday about how cells do quality control by breaking down defective proteins. Just tag the bad protein with some ubiquitin, and a huge scribbly proteasome will find and destroy it. (I am simplifying quite a lot here.)
Cells that can’t recycle protein get damaged–old useless proteins get in the way of more healthy processes–so there are a lot of medical possibilities.
Metaphorical possibilities too. I wish all of us had some mental “ubiquitin”–a mechanism to get rid of bad ideas and outmoded beliefs, after testing them carefully to see which ones are defective…
Of course, my ideas are all perfect–including this one–but several of yours, well, they really do need some rethinking.