The 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is without a doubt the most unique in the history of this discipline. Even the award to the surgeon Kocher, which I wrote about, is not so unique; there was also an award to Alexis Carrel for the vascular suture. Whatever one may say, the award to Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and Nicholas Tinbergen “for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group behavior of animals” does not fit into any gates. Ethology? This has never happened in history. Zoology? It was also not before Lorenz with ducklings and Frisch with. No, of course, something comparable could have happened in the interval from 1915 to 1938, when Sigmund Freud was nominated for the prize 32 times (by the way, old Freud was nominated for a literary “Nobel” one more time in 1936, by Romain Rolland, but it didn’t work out then) .
Another important point. There are not many Nobel Prize laureates who predetermined my future life (I have already written about another one, Robert Woodward). But the book of our today’s hero, Karl von Frisch, “From the Life of Bees,” published in the USSR when I was only five years old, became one of the few that pushed me towards science. By the way, the 1980 edition was published during Frisch’s lifetime. And the first edition in German appeared in fifty three years before that, in 1927 in Heidelberg. Truly a book of the century!
“The life of bees is like a magic well. The more you draw from it, the more abundantly it is filled” - this is from the seventh edition. But first things first.
Karl von Frisch was born in Vienna into a scientific environment. His father, Anton von Frisch (you can often find the full name Anton Ritter von Frisch, but “ritter” is an analogue of the English knight, that is, “knight,” which indicates a noble title) was a urologist and professor at the University of Vienna. Anton von Frisch was considered a significant figure in science and became famous for identifying the causative agent of rhinoscleroma, a granulomatous disease of the nose. The scientist's mother, Maria Exner, was the daughter of the famous Austrian philosopher and reformer of school education of that time, Franz Serafin Exner. Karl's grandmother, Charlotte Duzenzi, belonged to one of the most influential families of Austria-Hungary. Maria had four brothers - and all of them also became famous people. About one of them below, but the youngest brother, Franz Serafin Exner, became a famous Austrian physicist, spectroscopist and rector of the University of Vienna.
The von Frisch family had four sons (Karl was the youngest), and, interestingly, all of them eventually became professors. Since childhood, Karl loved to tinker with all sorts of insects and blades of grass, fortunately Professor von Frisch lived outside the city, on Lake Wolfgang. They write that the future Nobel laureate was even published in various naturalist magazines.
The boy studied at the Schottengymnasium, a kind of high school at a Benedictine monastery in Vienna. Karl had a dream - to finish school and run away somewhere on a scientific expedition, explore animals, discover new species. But, of course, dad was against it. Dad wanted all the children to become medical professors, but how to become a professor on an expedition? I had to go to medical school at the University of Vienna (in our opinion, the Faculty of Medicine). Moreover, there were also people there - uncle Sigmund Exner, brother of Karl’s mother. A famous physiologist, a student of Helmholtz, by the way, the author of one of the first manuals on microscopy.
Photo: derstandard.at.
So Karl had to study the distribution of pigment in visual cells - beetles, butterflies and shrimp. However, young Frisch still ran away - to the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich, where he studied ethology, the science of behavior.
Introduction to ethology in 10 minutes.
After working under the famous zoologist Richard von Hertwig, he returned to the University of Vienna, where he earned his Ph.D. The work that became his dissertation turned out to be very interesting.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that neither fish nor invertebrates distinguish colors. By experimenting on fish, Frisch was able to train different minnows to respond differently to different colors. On this basis, Frisch had a scientific quarrel with the old and authoritative ophthalmologist Karl von Hess, who had a different opinion and tried to discredit Frisch’s work. However, then Frisch decided that Hess’s attacks were a good thing, as more scientists would learn about his work.
But fish are fish. As they say, not everything is clear with them at first glance. Being a Darwinist, Frisch understood that they definitely must have color vision, after all, their food is in flowers. From 1912, Frisch moved back to Munich and began experimenting with bees. It turned out to be quite simple to prove that bees distinguish colors - first, food was placed on a square of a certain color, and very quickly on this square without food, even if this square was swapped with squares of other colors...
Then came the war. Everyone had no time for bees. Frisch had poor eyesight, so the front passed him by. However, medical education was not going anywhere, and Frisch worked in a military hospital near Vienna until 1919. In January 1919, he returned to the institute, and it was in this year that he made his main discovery, which brought him the Nobel Prize 54 years later.
Documentary film about the dance of bees.
He marked several worker bees with paint and studied the behavior of a bee that found food and returned to the hive.
Let's give the floor to Frisch himself: “I could hardly believe my eyes when she performed a circular dance on the honeycomb, which brought the bees next to her, marked with paint, which immediately flew to the feeding place ... This was, I think, the most important an observation in my life, in any case, that has the most far-reaching consequences.”
Frisch studied the dance of bees all his life. He learned that it differs - if the food is close, then the dance is circular, if it is far away (further than 85 m) - “wiggle”, in the form of a figure eight. I learned that by dancing bees indicate the angle between the location of food and the sun, and that in case of variable cloudiness along the plane of polarization of light from the clear sky...
Illustration: fu-berlin.de.
Frisch lived long enough to live to see his Nobel Prize. True, he himself was no longer present at the ceremony. The scientist was 87 years old and his son Otto accepted the award.
Professor Berg Kronholm, from the Karolinska Medical-Surgical Institute, who introduced the laureates, said: “Animal behavior has fascinated humans since time immemorial, as evidenced by animals in myths, fairy tales and fables. However, for too long man has tried to understand him on the basis of his own ideas, on the basis of his own way of thinking, feeling and acting. A description on this principle may be quite poetic, but it does not lead to any increase in our knowledge of animals."
I would also like to finish my story about the great Frisch with a quote from the preface to the first edition of his book “From the Life of Bees.” It seems to me that these words should be in the memory of every researcher: “If a natural scientist uses too strong magnifying glasses when examining simple things, it may happen that he will not see nature itself behind the optical instruments. Something similar happened about twenty years ago with one respectable scientist, when, while studying in the laboratory the ability of animals to perceive colors, he came to a firm and seemingly well-founded conviction that bees do not distinguish colors. This gave me the idea to take a closer look at their lives. After all, anyone who has observed in natural conditions the biological relationship between bees and flowers with their magnificently colored corollas will think that it is more likely that a scientist could make a mistake in his conclusions than nature could make such an incongruity.”
American writer (1892-1973, Nobel Prize 1938)
Alternative descriptionsZeno Marcel (1903-83) Belgian. physiologist and radiobiologist
Pearl (1892-1973) American writer, novels “Earth”, “Sons”, Nobel Prize 1938
Tim (1891-1973) one of the organizers of the Communist Party of Canada
Large container for liquid
Stern on the ship
The insatiable belly of the iron horse
Bow superstructure of the vessel
The bow is top. (main) deck of a ship (vessel) from the stem to the foremast or bow superstructure (navigation bridge)
Chardin's painting "Copper..."
Large container for liquids
American biologist, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of olfactory receptors and the organization of the olfactory organ system
Painting by the French painter J. Chardin “Copper...”
Writer, pseudonym I. Sedge, Nobel Prize laureate (1938)
Where do they put the gun at the gas station?
Fuel...
Garbage...
Gasoline belly of the car
The bow part of the ship's upper deck, the superstructure on it
Bow deck
Capacity larger than a bucket
Capacity: forty liters
Garbage container
Garbage container
. "belly" of gasoline in a car
Gasoline container
Fuel container
Superstructure on a ship
Superstructure on the bow of the ship
Grown tank
Large vessel
Insatiable autobelly
Capacity
. "battery" of gasoline in a car
Vessel with tap
Large capacity
Maxipan
Car gasoline capacity
Automotive "stomach"
Forward of the foremast
Bow superstructure of the ship
Tank
. car wash "stomach"
Storage tank
Large saucepan
Front of the boat
Large vessel
Bow deck
American writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature
. Container, large container for liquids
German physicist (1881-1959)
Belgian physiologist and radiobiologist (1903-1983)
American geneticist (Nobel Prize 2004, together with R. Axel)
. Gasoline "battery" in a car
. "Stomach" of a car wash
. "belly" of gasoline in a car
Pearl (1892-1973) American writer, novels “Earth”, “Sons”, Nobel Prize 1938
Car "stomach"
Chardin's painting "Copper..."
Painting by the French painter J. Chardin "Copper..."
Where do you put the gun at a gas station?
M. Morsk. part of the upper deck of the ship, from the front (fore) mast to the very bow (middle part of the quarterdeck, rear or stern poop). On small or undecked ships this is the same space or a platform located in this place. A wooden round basin serving the lower ranks of the sea instead of a bowl or cup; part of the artel that eats from one tank. Our team has four tanks. Tank, tank, related to the tank
Does not cover the cheek sideburn
So, today is Saturday, May 27, 2017, and we traditionally offer you answers to the quiz in the “Question and Answer” format. We encounter questions ranging from the simplest to the most complex. The quiz is very interesting and quite popular, we are simply helping you test your knowledge and make sure that you have chosen the correct answer out of the four proposed. And we have another question in the quiz - For what discovery did the Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch receive the Nobel Prize in 1973?
- A. element technetium
- B. infrared rays
- C. cure for leprosy
- D. bee tongue
The correct answer is D - THE LANGUAGE OF BEES
Twerking is the closest approximation of human dances to real bee dances. Bees dance to indicate to other bees in the hive the direction in which they should fly for food, such as nectar. They move their abdomen (the back of their body) to indicate the distance to fly. The Austrian ethologist, Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine, Karl von Frisch, deciphered the language of bees, and we now know how it works.
To study the dancing of bees, the following experiment was carried out. Not far from the bee hive there were two reservoirs with a sweet liquid. Bees that found the first reservoir were marked with one color, and bees that found the second reservoir were marked with a different color. Returning to the hive, the bees began to dance a dance similar to twerking. The orientation of the dance depended on the direction to the source of sweets: the angle by which the dance of a bee of one color had to be shifted so that it coincided with the dance of a bee of a different color coincided exactly with the angle between the first source of sweetness, the hive and the second source of sweetness.
Typically, the column “How to get a Nobel Prize” talks about Nobel Prize winners in the natural sciences: physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine. Today's issue is special - it is dedicated to the Nobel laureate economist, our compatriot, who was born exactly 111 years ago.
Died February 5, 1999, New York, USA Nobel Prize in Economics 1973. The formulation of the Nobel Committee: "for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems."
Vasily Vasilyevich Leontyev was born in Munich, where his parents, professor of economics at St. Petersburg University Vasily Leontyev and native of Odessa Evgenia Becker, went specifically so that the birth would take place in one of the best clinics. Vasily spent his childhood and youth in Petrograd, at the age of 11 he experienced the revolution and even listened to Lenin speak during one of the demonstrations. In those troubled years, the wealthy Leontyev family, which previously owned a calico printing factory, lost its privileges. Thanks to his mother’s care, Vasily was first educated at home, and then studied for a year at a labor school to receive a certificate. Already at the age of 15, he entered St. Petersburg University, where he studied philosophy, sociology and economics.
During his studies, the future Nobel laureate more than once ended up in the Cheka because of his categorical statements. Having received a diploma in economics in 1925, Leontyev remained as a teacher at the university. The will of chance determined his future fate. Also in 1925, Vasily’s first scientific work was prohibited from publication. Leontyev himself later recalled that it was then that he realized the need to move abroad: “It was a historical and analytical article, terribly far from politics, from ideology. And even if they banned it, I realized that it would be impossible to do science here. Well, maybe, and partly possible, but there will be no normal working conditions. And my work is the most important thing in life for me.” However, leaving the country was not so easy. Vasily did not receive permission to continue his studies abroad until he was diagnosed with sarcoma, a tumor on his jaw. Only after the operation was he allowed to travel to Germany. It was assumed that Vasily did not have much time left to live. But after consultation with German doctors, it turned out that Leontyev’s diagnosis was incorrect. He soon fully recovered and continued his scientific work in Berlin.
In Germany, a 19-year-old scientist published a study of the balance of the national economy of the USSR for 1923-24. In this article, Leontiev first presented his method of analyzing intersectoral connections, which later became known as “input-output”. An ardent proponent of applied economics, firmly based on empirical laws, Leontief invented a method that later became the standard for statistical analysis and was widely used in both capitalist and socialist economies. It is used to quantify the effects that different industries - within a country or internationally - can have on each other.
During World War II, this method was used to select US Air Force targets, as well as to analyze the economic capacity of the Soviet Union. In addition, input-output analysis, using the apparatus of linear algebra, later formed the basis for forecasts and planning of economic activity in the USSR, and today, input-output analysis in Russia is periodically carried out by the Federal State Statistics Service. It is also believed that one of Google's most important services, PageRank, borrowed basic principles from the input-output method.
Back in the 19th century, the French economist Leon Walras laid the foundation for one of the theoretical approaches to economics - the theory of general equilibrium. It represents economic relations as a system of equations, the solution of which is an equilibrium state. However, before Leontief, this approach was not applied empirically: it was not tested on data and, accordingly, conclusions were not drawn from it about the real functioning of systems, for example, economic sectors. Using linear algebra, Vasily proposed a convenient analytical method. It is important that before the introduction of input-output analysis, applied economics could only qualitatively characterize the changes that would occur to a certain industry as a result of a shock (sharp change) in the parameters of another industry. In addition, economists before Leontief mainly carried out only the analysis of partial equilibria. This means that they could predict whether prices in the gasoline market would rise or fall as a result of an increase in the oil tax, but they could not simultaneously predict the effect of this event on, for example, the steel industry market. Moreover, we were not talking about specific judgments that could be measured in monetary or quantitative terms. Leontiev's method makes it possible to obtain quantitative predictions concerning the entire system of parameters.
In 1927-1928, after receiving his doctorate in Berlin, Leontiev began his research career at the University of Kiel. He then spent a year in China, where he worked as an adviser to the Minister of Railways, but quickly returned to Germany, which was entering a protracted and severe crisis. In 1931, Leontiev got a job at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States, but left after a year because he could not do the research that interested him. At the same time, he married the poetess Estelle Marcos, who later wrote a book about his parents called “Vasily and Zhenya.”
In 1932, Vasily Leontiev moved to Harvard University, where he worked for 47 years. He began by fighting to obtain a grant for a colossal project. Leontief collected unprecedented data on production costs, flows of goods, income distribution, consumption patterns and investments from government services, private firms, and banks. His input-output tables provided accurate predictions for an entire decade. It was a resounding success. In 1941, Leontief's monumental study on the structure of the US economy was published. During World War II, Leontief advised Roosevelt on unemployment issues. His models predicted how the economy would behave after emerging from the war - and these predictions turned out to be correct.
Returning to Harvard in 1946, Leontief created the Harvard Center for Economic Research, which specialized in compiling input-output tables. In those years, he received enormous funding: many orders from both the government and private companies. In 1954, Leontief was appointed president of the American Economic Society. During his time at Harvard, he taught four more future Nobel laureates: Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Vernon Smith, and Thomas Schelling. In addition, working with large amounts of data, Vasily discovered what is called the “Leontief paradox.” This is a contradiction of the standard theory of international trade (the Heckscher-Ohlin hypothesis), according to which rich countries such as the United States, where labor is expensive, would export capital-intensive materials and import labor-intensive ones. Leontiev revealed the opposite, and a single theoretical explanation has not yet been found for this empirical fact.
In 1973, Leontiev received the Nobel Prize for the method he proposed and its active implementation in applied industries. At the same time, the UN commissioned him to create a global “input-output” economic model. Because of this, in 1975 Leontiev moved from Harvard, where there was insufficient capacity for such a grandiose project, to New York University. There in 1976 he founded the Institute of Economic Analysis.
Leontyev never returned to Russia to work and refused to cooperate with the Yeltsin government, but he was one of the few Western scientists to whom the Soviet government was loyal. During the “thaw” he visited the USSR several times. The Soviet economics and mathematics school also carried out research on intersectoral balance: at the Institute of Electronic Control Machines, the Economic Research Institute under the USSR State Planning Committee, and the Laboratory for the Application of Mathematical and Statistical Methods of the USSR Academy of Sciences. During the transition period, Leontiev communicated with reformers. Now in St. Petersburg there is a research center named after Leontyev, opened on the initiative of the mayor of the city Sobchak in 1991. Leontiev died in New York on February 5, 1999 at the age of 92.
Remaining aloof from abstract theories, as well as political and ideological recommendations, Vasily Leontiev is an example of the brightest empirical researcher who has made a huge contribution to the understanding of how different economic systems interact with each other.
Literature
Patrick White. Nobel Prize for Literature, 1973
Australian writer Patrick White has been awarded the prize for his epic and psychological mastery, thanks to which a new literary continent was discovered. The best novel, Fosse, is a parable in which White shows how in the human heart there is a struggle between pride and humility, faith in oneself and faith in God, an attempt to break through to the spiritual center of Australian society.
Physiology and medicine
Karl Frisch. Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1973
Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly with two other ethologists, Konrad Lorenz and Nicholas Tinbergen, “for their discoveries concerning the creation and establishment of individual and group patterns of behavior.” “The discoveries made by this year's Nobel laureates... may... not seem all that important from the point of view of human physiology or medicine,” Björg Kronholm of the Karolinska Institutet said in his acceptance speech. “However, these discoveries served as a prerequisite for extensive research that also included mammals.”
Physiology and medicine
Konrad Lorenz. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1973
Austrian zoologist and ethologist Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was awarded the prize for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group behavior of animals. Lorenz observed patterns of behavior that could not be acquired through learning and had to be interpreted as genetically programmed. The concept of instinct, which Lorenz developed, formed the basis of modern ethology.
Physiology and medicine
Nikolaas Tinbergen. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1973
Dutch-English zoopsychologist and ethologist. Nicolaas Tinbergen, Lorenz and Frisch shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning the establishment of individual and social behavior and its organization.” In a speech at the presentation, Virge Kronholm of the Karolinska Institute said that although the award to “three animal observers” (as T. joked) was unexpected, it reflected the value of the laureates’ work not only for ethology, but also for “social, psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry " In his Nobel lecture, T. spoke about his research into the connection of ethology with diseases caused by stress, including autism in early childhood, a disease that he continued to study with his wife after leaving Oxford University in 1974.
World
Henry Kissinger. Nobel Peace Prize, 1973
American political scientist and statesman Henry Alfred Kissinger reached a ceasefire agreement with North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho. For this first, but incredibly important step on the difficult path of peace in Vietnam, Kissinger was awarded a prize. Kissinger's diplomacy led to a ceasefire between Israel and Egypt and the opening of the Suez Canal.
World
LE Duc Tho. Nobel Peace Prize, 1973
Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho was awarded a prize in recognition of his services in connection with the truce in Vietnam. The award of the prize generated the most controversial judgments in the history of the Nobel Committee. The Civil War in Vietnam continued to claim hundreds of lives. Le Duc Tho, who had denounced the United States and South Vietnam for violating the Paris Accords, refused the award.
Chemistry
Ernst Fischer. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1973
German chemist Ernst Fischer shared the prize with Geoffrey Wilkinson for their innovative work, carried out independently, on the chemistry of organometallic compounds, the so-called sandwich compounds. Fischer's work laid the foundation for the creation of new catalysts used in various industrial processes, including the production of pharmaceuticals and low-lead fuels.
Chemistry
Geoffrey Wilkinson. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1973
In 1973, the English chemist Geoffrey Wilkinson, together with Ernst Fischer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for innovative work done independently of each other in the field of chemistry of organometallic, so-called sandwich compounds.” In his opening speech on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Ingvar Lindqvist said: “The phenomena to which W. and Fischer drew attention could be seen by all chemists in the world. However, their adequate interpretation did not appear until these two scientists came to the conclusion that certain compounds could not be understood without putting forward a new concept. It is called the concept of “sandwich” connections.
Physics
Brian David Josephson. Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973
Welsh physicist Brian Josephson was awarded the prize for his theoretical predictions of the properties of current passing through a tunnel barrier, in particular the phenomena now commonly known as the Josephson effects. Later he devoted himself to transcendental meditation and mental theory, hoping that he would be able to achieve a synthesis of modern physics and mathematics and the theory of intelligence developed by the spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Physics
Leo Esaki. Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973
Japanese physicist Leo Esaki received the prize together with Ivor Jayever for their experimental discoveries of tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors. The tunneling effect has made it possible to achieve a deeper understanding of the behavior of electrons in semiconductors and superconductors and macroscopic quantum phenomena in superconductors.
Physics
Ivor Jayever. Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973
Norwegian-American physicist. In 1973, Aivar Jayever and Leo Esaki were awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their experimental discoveries of tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors." The other half was given to Josephson. In his speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony, Stig Lundqvist of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that the three new laureates “opened up new areas of research in physics. These areas are closely interrelated, since Esaki's pioneering work laid the foundation and served as a direct stimulus for D.'s discovery, and D.'s work, in turn, became the stimulus that led to Josephson's theoretical predictions... The laureates' discoveries were quickly adopted in electronics and found application in detecting gravitational waves, geological exploration of ore deposits, transmitting messages through water and mountain ranges, studying the electromagnetic field around the heart and brain.”
Economy
Vasily Leontyev. Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, 1973
American economist Vasily Leontief was awarded the prize for his development of the input-output method and its application to important economic problems. The Leontief method is recognized as a classic tool in economics. The entire world uses input-output analysis as an essential method of economic planning and government budgetary policy.