UCLA Nobel Prize Laureates
In honor of Nobel Week and the announcement of the 2023 Nobel laureates, we’re recognizing our incredible UCLA Nobel Prize laureates! According to UCLA Newsroom, eight UCLA faculty members and seven alumni have been awarded Nobel Prizes in the categories of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, economics and peace.
Keep reading to learn more about UCLA Nobel Prize laureates like Andrea Ghez, Willard Libby and Elinnor Ostrom.
UCLA professor Andrea Ghez was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Ghez’s work is testing the limits of Einstein’s theory of relativity; in a 2019 UCLA Newsroom article, Ghez says that the theory cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole and that a more comprehensive theory is needed.
Ghez shares the prize with UC Berkerley’s Reinhard Genzel and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
Willard Libby was another UCLA faculty member who was honored with a Nobel Prize; in 1960, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a carbon-dating technique based on carbon-14, a radioactive carbon isotope found in all living material. Libby found that carbon-14 deteriorates at a fixed rate when an organism dies, which means that scientists can measure current levels of carbon-14 in a fossil or archeological relic and work backward to find out how old it is. Libby’s carbon dating technique is used in a variety of fields like archaeology, geology, geophysics and more.
Eliinor Ostrom was a triple Bruin and one of the seven UCLA alumni who have received a Nobel Prize. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009 for her research that challenged the tragedy of the commons, the idea that inidivudal greed leads to the over-exploitation and depletion of collectively-used natural resources. Ostrom conducted field studies in small communities that share natural resources, and she found that over time, the community established rules that guided the use and care of the resources in an ecologically and economically sustainable way.
Ostrom shares the prize with UC Berkerley’s Oliver Williamson.
For those still curious about the other 12 UCLA Nobel Prize laureates, a full list of UC faculty members who have a Nobel Prize is available here and a full list of UCLA alumni with Nobel Prizes is available here.
Congratulations to the 2023 Nobel Prize winners!
