Atom Spy Claims
New Zealand-born DNA pioneer and Nobel Prize recipient Professor Maurice Wilkins was investigated by MI5 as a possible atom spy who had passed US nuclear secrets to the Russians. Security service files recently released…
Tag Archives: Nobel Prize
Quietly Heralded
Tauranga-born peace campaigner Alyn Ware, 47, has been awarded what is commonly known as “the alternative Nobel prize” for “his effective and creative advocacy and initiatives over two decades to further peace education and…
Flaming Britches
James Watson, head of Massey University’s school of history, philosophy and politics in Palmerston North and author of agricultural study, ‘The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers’, won an Ig Nobel prize…
Nobel Nomination for NZ Institution
A NZ youth development course is in the running for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The Spirit of New Zealand, a ship that takes teenagers on 10-day development workshops, is one of 21 ships…
A Great Mind Remembered
NZ Nobel laureate, Alan Graham MacDiarmid, has died in Philadelphia aged 79. Professor MacDiarmid won the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his joint discovery that some plastics could be made to…
New Zealand Women Make Nobel Peace List
Four New Zealand women are among a historic collective nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Each of the 1,000 women, nominated from across the world, have worked for justice and peace in their respective…
Edge Hero Remembered
The science world – and the Edge community – lost one of its brightest stars with the death of Maurice Wilkins on October 5. Born in NZ in 1916, Wilkins was awarded the Nobel…
No 8 Wired
Singapore’s Straits Times focuses on the entrepreneurial spirit driving NZ’s booming science industry. “Over time, the Number 8 wire came to epitomise a culture of adaptability and creativity, a ‘can-do spirit’ of which the Kiwis are…
Edge Breath Freshener
Sweden’s Right Livelihood Award Foundation – the “alternative Nobel” – honoured former-PM David Lange for his “steadfast work over many years for a world free of nuclear weapons.” The foundation was formed in 1980 by former European…
Edge: Intellectual Capital
NZ’s nano-tech Nobel laureate Alan MacDiarmid has been appointed to the newly created James Von Ehr Distinguished Chair in Science and Technology at The University of Texas at Dallas. “Alan MacDiarmid’s move to Dallas is an…
Clark, Kissinger and South Korea
PM Helen Clark was the keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of the Korean War held in South Korea in July. At a luncheon held in her honour, President Roh Moo Hyun described…
“It’s Life James, but Not as We Know It”
Time devotes a special issue to DNA and its discoverers, including NZ born scientist Maurice Wilkins. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Nobel Prize winning and paradigm shifting findings of Crick, Watson, and Wilkins: “The…
Epilogue Written to a Life of Words
NZ lost one of its edgiest inhabitants with the death of Janet Frame from acute myeloid leukemia on January 29. Frame, the author of 11 novels, 5 collections of short stories, a poetry collection,…
Tribute to Edge-geneticist
NZ’s “third man of the double helix” Maurice Wilkins has been honoured in the lead-up to next year’s 50th anniversary of DNA. In 1962, Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with fellow discoverers…
Oscar Double?
Russell Crowe earns his third consecutive Best Actor Oscar nomination for his depiction of Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr in A Beautiful Mind. If he were to win, Crowe would join the elite…
Alan MacDiarmid
For a hundred years young graduates have been told that “there’s a great future in plastics.” That exhortation continues to have currency today, thanks to the work of New Zealand born and educated scientist…
Peaceful PM
PM Helen Clark sat on the selection committee for the Millennium Peace Prize for Women, alongside writer Alice Walker and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta.
Nobel Award
New Zealander and Nobel laureate for Chemistry, Dr Alan MacDiarmid, receives his award from His Majesty the King of Sweden.
Dr MacDiarmid and His Fantastic Electric Plastic
New Zealand’s Nobel duo becomes a trio; Masterton-born and Wellington-educated chemist Alan MacDiarmid has joined Ernest Rutherford and Maurice Wilkins as a Nobel Prize (chemistry) laureate. MacDiarmid and his two colleagues discovere conductive plastics which have been…
Ernest Rutherford
The creator of modern atomic physics and forerunner of the nuclear age, Rutherford was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 and…
Maurice Wilkins
A Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine in 1962 for his contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA – the very essence of life itself – and a New Zealander by…
