Ordinary Matter, page 20
Witnessing
1988 | GERTRUDE B. ELION | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
In 1933, when Gertrude Elion was fifteen, her grandfather died of stomach cancer, inspiring her to pursue science. A biochemist and pharmacologist, Elion was unable, for a time, to obtain research positions commensurate with her skills. Later, she worked on drugs for leukaemia, herpes, cancer, malaria, HIV/AIDS and organ transplant recipients. Elion’s drugs have saved millions of people, and for years she received letters of thanks from families whose lives were changed because of her research.
Fruit Flies
1995 | CHRISTIANE NÜSSLEIN-VOLHARD | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard grew up in post-World War II Germany. Curious about plants and animals, she decided at a young age that she wanted to be a biologist. Genes regulate the process by which embryonic cells divide and become specialised cells. Nüsslein-Volhard shared the prize in 1995 with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus for their ‘discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development’. Nüsslein-Volhard told the Nobel Prize organisation that she was fascinated by flies, loved working with them, and that they followed her around in her dreams.
Titan Arum
2004 | LINDA B. BUCK | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
American-born Linda Buck and her long-time collaborator, Richard Axel, determined how odorants are detected in the nose. In 1991 they published their revolutionary paper on odorant receptors. These receptors are located in a tiny part of the nasal cavity and, from there, messages are sent to parts of the brain. The differences in these signals allow human beings to distinguish, for example, between the scent of an apple and the scent of a strawberry, all of which was for a very long time unknown.
The Bodies Are Buried
2008 | FRANÇOISE BARRÉ-SINOUSSI | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
French virologist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was one of the first to discover what later became known as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which she identified in the context of understanding that it causes AIDS. Barré-Sinoussi and her chief collaborator, Luc Montagnier, made their discovery while working at the not-for-profit Pasteur Institute in Paris in the early 1980s. Barré-Sinoussi became president of the International AIDS Society, where she advocated for accessible antiretroviral drugs to improve the health of people living with HIV.
Better Nature
2009 | ADA E. YONATH | CHEMISTRY
Ada Yonath had an impoverished upbringing in Jerusalem. Later, as a keen young scientist, she took a job cleaning a laboratory and used the time alone to conduct her own experiments. When she was a crystallographer and professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Yonath won a Nobel for work she had started four decades earlier. She helped map the structure of ribosomes, using x-ray crystallography, which has had significant effects on the production of high-quality antibiotics. The last time a woman was awarded for Chemistry was forty-five years earlier when Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s work – also in crystallography – was recognised.
Wingspan
2009 | ELIZABETH H. BLACKBURN | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
Born in Hobart in 1948 into a family of two doctors and seven children, Elizabeth Blackburn was fascinated with the outdoor world. She was educated in Launceston and Melbourne, and is the only Australian woman to win a Nobel Prize in any field. Blackburn shared her 2009 win with Jack W. Szostak and her former student Carol W. Greider – the first time two women have shared the same prize. Blackburn, Szostak and Greider discovered telomerase, the enzyme that extends telomeres.
The Garden Bridge
2009 | CAROL W. GREIDER | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
American-born Carol Greider shared the Nobel Prize in 2009 for her co-discovery, in 1984, of telomerase, which produces the DNA of telomeres. In their co-authored landmark paper published in Cell in 1985, Greider and her team refer to Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock’s work on maize chromosomes. Their research is often cited as contributing to our understanding of the factors that affect our quality of life as we age. Telomeres deteriorate in all of us as we age but the rate differs. It appears possible to delay, prevent and even partially reverse their deterioration.
The Town Turns Over
2014 | MAY-BRITT MOSER | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
Another husband-and-wife team, May-Britt and Edvard I. Moser won for ‘their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain’. The positioning system they identified makes it ‘possible to orient oneself in space, demonstrating a cellular basis for higher cognitive function’. Early in their careers, the Mosers studied psychology at the University of Oslo. Their research helps explain how human beings know which direction to go, and how to make repeat trips, all from memory. The parts of the brain that permit this navigation break down in people living with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Little Fly
2015 | TU YOUYOU | PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people per year and, according to the World Health Organization, children under five make up around sixty per cent of all deaths. Working from her laboratory at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing, Tu Youyou consulted Chinese texts dating back 1600 years and isolated an anti-malarial compound from a plant that had traditionally been used to treat malaria. Qinghaosu, or artemisinin, has led to improved health outcomes for millions of patients affected by malaria. In her lab, Tu demonstrated her confidence in its safety and efficacy: she first tested it on herself.
The Fix
2018 | DONNA STRICKLAND | PHYSICS
Canadian optical physicist Donna Strickland and her PhD supervisor, Gérard Mourou, invented chirped pulse amplification by stretching, amplifying then recompressing laser pulses. Doctors use these high-intensity, extremely brief pulses of light beams to perform precise cuts during, for example, laser eye surgery. Strickland is the third woman, after Curie and Mayer, to win the Physics Prize, and only the second Canadian woman laureate in any field. Strickland’s Nobel win was awarded on the basis of her first scientific paper, published with Mourou in 1985.
A Brief History of Petroleum
2018 | FRANCES H. ARNOLD | CHEMISTRY
Frances Arnold is a chemical engineer, inventor and entrepreneur working out of the California Institute of Technology. She pioneered directed evolution to change the function of enzymes, whereby enzymes can conduct new or faster or better chemical reactions. Directed evolution employs what nature has been doing for millennia: selecting genetic mutations within an organism that impart advantageous properties. Specific applications of Arnold’s research include more-sustainable pharmaceutical substances and renewable fuels, often with fewer by-products.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful publisher, Aviva Tuffield, who has been an encouraging presence in my writing life for many years. Aviva understood this project in its early days and worked so hard to help me shape it. Cathy Vallance is a careful, genius editor – thank you. I’m really grateful to the whole team at UQP.
I wrote this book with generous support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Varuna the Writers’ House, Griffith Review, and a Queensland Writers Fellowship through State Library of Queensland and Arts Queensland. Versions of the following stories were first published online and in print: ‘Something Close to Gold’ in New Australian Fiction, 2019; ‘Fruit Flies’ in Overland, issue 236, 2019; ‘Wingspan’ in Griffith Review, edition 58, 2017; ‘The Garden Bridge’ in Overland, issue 235, 2019; ‘The Town Turns Over’ in Griffith Review, edition 68, 2020. Thank you to the editors of these publications.
I’m grateful to Ashley Hay, who was a wise and insightful mentor when my ideas were fledgling. Thanks to Rebecca Pouwer for answering lots of my questions. Thank you, yet again, to the wonderful Ian See. Thank you, John Tague. My gratitude to the following people for their assistance with various details, drafts, or crises of confidence: Tamara Armstrong, Brooke Davis, Jonathan Hadwen, Sarah Kanake, Andrew Last and Jack Vening. For their time and expertise, I thank Åsa Husberg and Karin Jonsson of the Nobel Prize Museum, Stockholm.
Thanks to the stars in my writing groups: Andrea Baldwin, Sean Di Lizio, Emma Doolan, Kathy George and Kate Zahnleiter, all of whom are so generous with their time and ideas. And I could not have finished this book without Mirandi Riwoe’s support and friendship.
Thanks to my in-laws for their enthusiasm and help, and my great friends who cheer me on. Love and gratitude to my supportive, beautiful parents and infinitely good sister, Jiselle. And final thanks and love to Simon, Harriet and Theo. Our lives are full and busy and it’s hard to get away to write. But all I want to do when I’m away is come back home to you.
First published 2020 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
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Copyright © Laura Elvery 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Prize motivations for the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry © The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, www.nobelprize.org; prize motivations for Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine © The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, www.nobelprize.org
Cover design by Josh Durham, Design by Committee
Author photograph by Trenton Porter
Typeset in 12/17 pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
The University of Queensland Press is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The University of Queensland Press has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project was supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Queensland Library Foundation and Queensland Writers Centre.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
ISBN 978 0 7022 6276 0 (pbk)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6398 9 (epdf)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6399 6 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6400 9 (kindle)
Laura Elvery, Ordinary Matter
