Nobel Minds 2020

hello from stockholm where i will be speaking to five of this year's nobel laureates for the first time on tv from their homes and offices around the world the laureates will discuss how science is responding to the global pandemic how to tackle food poverty and our fascination with black holes welcome to noble minds [Music] hello and welcome to noble minds from stockholm the capital of the nobel prize as with much else during the corona pandemic this year's discussion will differ somewhat from previous programs we have gathered five laureates from different categories by video link and we will be focusing on their groundbreaking work and contributions to mankind within science peace and economics in san francisco we have a michael houghton one of the laureates in medicine or physiology emmanuel charponti is with us from berlin she's been awarded half of the nobel prize in chemistry one of the physics laureates andrea guess is joining us from los angeles and in rome we have valerie gornieri assistant executive director of the world food program one of the upsides of the situation is that you can join us today normally the peace prize laureate is in oslo but obviously not this year paul milgrom one of the economics laureates is with us from south of san francisco welcome to you all and congratulations thank you thank you michael houghton uh i know that you from the beginning weren't sure you wanted to get into biology you were more into physics but then when you were 17 something happened could you please tell us about that yeah i was very interested in physics but i wasn't very good at it and so at 17 i was qualified to go to college to study physics or math or chemistry but i wasn't sure i wanted to do that so i i took a week out of my life to go to the local library in england where i was living and uh just they had a careers office and all the careers from a to z and when i got to m microbiology i read about louis pasteur's life and how his life was affected personally by the tragic loss of his daughter and how he dedicated his life to microbiology to understand it and prevent it happening to others so that was a big turning point in my life and then when the structural dna was elucidated by watson and crick and wilkins that really fascinated me as well so yeah i was dedicated to molecular medicine probably around the age of 17. fascinating uh what about the rest of you uh was there a certain moment in time that sort of defined your choice of career i remember that when i was 11 12 years old um at least it's what my mother remembers is that i came back from school telling her that one day i will be working at the pastor institute and when later on i chose a lab at the pastor institute for my master studies she reminded me that yes i was obviously interested by uh in working at the pastor institute for a while but i i guess i don't know i i experienced different waves i remember that around 15 this was a mixture of wanting to be a detective and being quite fascinated by people spending their life in monasteries now i understand what it means because when you're a researcher you need to spend your life in a way like in a monastery and in a way you're a detective because you know you have some questions puzzles to yeah to go through so yeah paul milgram uh what made you choose economic science well i sort of stumbled into it um i guess as as as an undergraduate i studied mathematics i had a terrible physics teacher who drove me out of physics in my first year in physics so um so i studied mathematics and then i went to work in industry and got bored there and went intending to get an mba and landed at stanford where i was studying for an mba a totally different kind of career but i was interested in research questions and i read this paper by william vickery about auctions and it became i was totally fascinated by the idea that you could use mathematics to model human behavior and and come to understand you know how a human institution would perform and i just got drawn into it and so i switched into a doctoral program i was sort of recruited actually by the faculty to switch programs we actually told you you were at the wrong place right they told me that i was in the wrong program i was in an mba program and i kept talking about you know the fundamentals rather than the business problems andre i guess i heard that at the age of four when you saw the moon landing you said i want to be the first woman on the moon have you since then known that you wanted to work in this field well it's actually no hindsight's always 2020 in terms of understanding how we arrived at where we are so at the same time that the moon landing definitely inspired me to think about the universe and in particular to think about questions of space and time which really kept me up at night i also wanted to become a ballerina when i grew up so but but by the time i was in high school i understood that i really had a passion for math and science and an aptitude for it and i went to college actually as a math major i think it's interesting in terms of the these conversations in terms of what fields we went into and then were attracted to because i soon found out that math was far more esoteric um than um what uh what really pulled me and it was physics um that really spoke the language that i was interested in terms of understanding these concepts of um the universe so that that that is how i how i got there uh valerie gornier when did you realize what you wanted to work with well i think i was still finding myself but in my mid-20s early in my career i was working for the u.s agency for international development and i had the chance to go to somalia as part of a relief airlift mission to bring food to the country that was having a major hunger crisis and while i was there it evolved into a famine and which was you know so devastating to see but once we were able to access people with food medicine clean water just there was such an immediate turnaround in the situation and from that moment on i was hooked this is what i want to do noble minds is an opportunity for you to talk to each other about your work about your research and we will start off with the prize in medicine professor michael houghton you are on the verge of starting clinical trials for a vaccine for the hepatitis c virus let's have a look at the work for which you and your fellow laureates have been awarded more than 70 million people are infected with hepatitis c worldwide a virus that causes diseases such as cirrhosis and liver cancer killing 400 000 people a year the work of this year's medicine laureates has transformed the understanding of this blood transmitted virus which patients can be silently infected with for years before serious complications emerge before their findings having a transfusion was a bit like russian roulette we actually found that we could decrease the incidence merely by had used commercial blood donors but that was a big big finding it became clear that the cases were not a and not b and that meant there was something else turned out they found a new virus and then we spent the next decade trying to figure out what was this new agent you can study in biochemical assays enzymes or proteins that the virus needs but in order to understand if a compound that might be inhibiting those functions actually is going to work you really need to find out does it get into a cell because that really sort of is important for developing the the toolbox that one needs to not only study the virus but also to begin to to screen for or evaluate drugs against the virus since then we've seen tremendous advancement in our understanding of the virus to the point that we're now talking about the possibility of eradicating it worldwide there are unfortunately very expensive antiviral drugs which can for the first time treat and cure the infection and on the horizon there is also the possibility of a vaccine [Music] as we heard it is possible to eradicate hepatitis c what would that mean to you you know obviously it would mean a great step forward and great satisfaction i've been working on hep c for so long nearly 40 years so uh i think it will take another five to seven years before we have a vaccine approved for human use and then then i think uh hep c will no longer be the threat that it is still today but uh how do you feel about the fact that your vaccine takes so much longer compared to the uh covid the corona vaccines um isn't that somehow frustrating yeah it is and you know i think covet despite being so tragic um has also taught us how to do things better in the future and i think by incorporating some of these new technologies specifically the rna technology and as well as the adeno based vaccine technology we can speed it up um and i think also we've all learned academics and the corporate private world and regulators and governments if we work together we can do things much quicker we are now going to move on to the chemistry price the two laureates made an unexpected discovery while doing basic research when emmanuel charpentier and jennifer doudna started investigating the immune system of a streptococcus bacterium one idea was that they could perhaps develop a new form of antibiotic instead they discovered a molecular tool the genetic scissors that can be used to make precise incisions in genetic material a discovery of untold possibility using the genetic scissors researchers can in principle make cuts in whichever genome they wish and rewrite the code of life it's kind of unbelievable how fast things have changed i mean labs now around the world are using crispr technology for genome editing already we've seen the results of clinical trials that are attesting its ability to correct disease-causing mutations it's just been extraordinary i mean that you know the the pace at which this technology was adopted worldwide was was truly unprecedented i would say biochemists and cell biologists can now easily investigate the functions of different genes and their possible role in the progression of disease in plant breeding researchers can give plants specific characteristics such as the ability to withstand drought in a warmer climate or resist insects and pests that would otherwise have to be dealt with using pesticides in medicine this gene editor is contributing to new cancer therapies and the first studies attempting to cure inherited diseases such as huntington's disease and muscular dystrophy professor emmanuel charponti before you and jennifer doudna made your discovery the genetic sisters also known as crisprcas9 did you ever imagine something like this tool would be possible it's true that when you come to uh to discover such a mechanism and that you understand that it's going to have the impact that it has it's a so it's a huge moment what kind of fields what kind of diseases do you hope that it can be used for in the future it is actually currently developed as a gene medicine that has shown already some success to treat patients with certain blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia or beta thalassemia by combining gene editing by crispr and and cell therapy and it has also some impact in curing certain types of cancer such as leukemia through the combination of gene therapy and immunotherapy so so once he's already some results directly in medicine the possibilities of crispr are tremendous but there is also an ethical discussion with the crispr we might in the future be able to design a baby with for example the gender of your choice how concerned are you about that fact for sure the technologies are evolving extremely extremely fast and it is possible that in the future one will see crispr being able to be applied in the human gem line to modify more than one chain and here for sure one can worry that the technology may be used for wrong purposes the only thing i can say is that you have a number of scientists working together and not only scientists but other players you know in etique for ethical considerations working together to make sure that the technology is not used for unwanting purposes that would be human enhancement or human transformation and you know just one of the comments as dr sharp pentier described it can be applied to genetic disease it can also as you pointed out be applied for infectious disease you know hep c we can cure with antivirals we cannot cure hiv and hepatitis b but maybe with the technology she's developed with her colleague can be used to actually cure hiv patients and hepatitis b infected patients andrea i guess you have said that things are most interesting when they're not working can you please elaborate on that well in my research technology has played such an important part giving us insight or ways of viewing things that we hadn't um been able to see before and while you go into the field trying to answer a certain question often the new technology gives you insight into new questions that you should have asked that you didn't realize you should that the universe works in different ways and for me as a scientist it's it's really exciting when that happens when things don't behave the way you had anticipated um it's really an opportunity to think much more deeply um about what's actually going on that's how it is um often experiments that you think will work and yield some information don't and sometimes experiments that you are almost talking yourself out of doing become the most important ones so i try to convey that to the students and the trainees that um you can't predict what's going to happen in science you you just ask some questions and uh it's surprising how really it it progresses it really is professor paul milgram what's your message to the students well it's the same thing i think we've been that we've been hearing you know you try to ask questions whose answers if you get them right you think will be important um but then uh though as you explore new questions come up along the way and you just follow them and you understand that some of your conjectures are going to be wrong and and um and you you know you keep exploring what's interesting what's surprising and and hope that you find something important i actually tell my younger science scientific colleagues that if somebody's telling you it can't be done that means you're on the right track keep keep going that's a good sign when people tell you that oh yes i i think you know one of the things i've heard from uh that i hear from everybody that in this group is you know you really have to have the courage of your convictions other people don't see what you see as potential you just keep plugging away in the directions you think are the right ones and try to convince other people to come along let's now take a look at the big picture this year's surprise in physics is about our universe and black holes four amateurs trying to grasp the idea of a black hole is mind-boggling what is it something incomprehensibly heavy and impossible to observe for astrophysicists it provides proof of the accuracy of the general theory of relativity and for all of us it is what makes for example gps navigation possible this year's laureates share the nobel prize in physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe it took years i would say probably a decade before people eventually accepted that black holes maybe were really there roger penrose used mathematical methods to reinterpret general relativity to prove that black holes can be formed from dying stars using the world's largest telescopes andrea guess and reinhardt gentle developed methods to be able to see all the way to the center of the milky way through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused by the earth's atmosphere in the milky way they found convincing evidence of a supermassive black hole in the area of sagittarius professor andrea guess you spent 25 years trying to find a way to observe a black hole in the center of the milky way i'm very very impressed by your patience what kept you going well it's interesting we didn't set out to do in a project for 25 years in fact we envisioned only the first stage of what became a 25-year project and so i think what kept me going is both a fundamental curiosity about black holes and also the fact that as the project went on and technology developed there was more and more to ask and the realization in fact that we could do more so each step sort of led to the next so i think it was both curiosity and tremendous opportunity in terms of what was happening with the work because of your discovery gps navigation is possible as we've heard but aside from that why is it important for us to know that there are black holes out there well black holes are so interesting they they represent a fundamental breakdown in our understanding of physics so in some sense they point the way um to deeper insight in terms of our description of the physical world so from a pure physics or gravitational physics perspective black holes are um are the path forward for our deeper understanding of of gravity and then we also think that black holes play a fundamental role the supermassive ones as opposed to the smaller stellar mass black holes play a fundamental role in the formation and evolution of galaxies so if we want to understand the way in which the universe evolves these are just absolutely key components i think it's amazing the work andrea and colleagues have done um it sort of makes you realize we we live in a in a surreal world isn't it really we are com concerned with everyday life and our careers and getting jobs and so forth but when you actually get deep down to it we don't understand really what we are and why we are so i think you know the black hole work is emphasizes that more and more so it's kind of has a deep impact on human psychology i think so we're living in a mystery and in a way i find that actually reassuring i kind of like living in a mystery so yeah wonderful work how fascinated are you by space the universe i think it's the same that what was mentioned we feel that we are very very tiny and that's you know yeah the world is so huge now me when i look at stars uh you know it's like i look at uh not uh it's like i look at little microbes shining this is always what i see i mean i i actually it's it's you know looking at the sky it's it's it's uh reflecting on on you know the humanity as as it was said why why are we here uh for for which purpose are we on this planet andrea gas what is it like to work in a field uh when the public is so engaged i think it's actually um part of what makes astronomy and astrophysics so important that public engagement i often think of this field as the gateway science it's an important field for engaging the public and young students in science and technology we live in such a technical world and generally there's such phobia around science and technology i think so i think it's a it's a useful field for engaging and talking about broader the broader concept of science and technology when you first presented your project they said no i was actually quite surprised because it seemed so obvious to me um that this was a an interesting um project to do and in fact had done so much work to prepare for it i think in a sense scientists are are generally quite conservative so um in a sense discovery comes from taking risks so it was key to convince people that the technology would work and it was worth investing the telescope time in the project so it was a little bit of a campaign to convince people that the idea was robust we are now going to focus on the next award this year's peace prize the world food program the world's largest humanitarian organization is among the first on the scene in an emergency the organization provides food and other assistance to the victims of conflict drought floods earthquakes and hurricanes as well as pandemics such as the current right now afghanistan is facing three seas conflict climate change and covert 19. we've seen an upsurge in fighting that's forced people to move and we're worried that that is going to deteriorate even further at the same time the world food programme focuses on sustainable development providing governments with support to manage food security in the long term each day the organization has 5 600 trucks 30 ships and nearly 100 planes on the move delivering food and other assistance to those in most need as you can see behind me here it's really looking very chaotic but this is the kind of situation in which we are right now as a humanitarian organization wfb really has to play a very important role here by providing food for people who are here in this camp and also water and also fuel the wfp is working to save and change the lives of hundred million people in 88 countries each night nearly 700 million people go to bed on an empty stomach the eradication of hunger has been one of the united nations sustainable development goals since 2015. the world food program is working towards reaching a world with zero hunger by 2030. valerie gornieri uh the work of the wfp how does it contribute to peace well there can be no peace without addressing hunger and where there's no way that we can end hunger without ensuring peace conflict is what's driving hunger up in the world and so the world food program works to eradicate hunger and we have to face the fact that there are millions of people displaced by conflict separated from their livelihoods who need urgent food assistance and we want to make investments in their lives so that they can be more self-reliant grow nutritious foods take care of their own well-being and that of their children so these two things really come together conflict and hunger peace and food security and we're really working to ensure that we can end hunger and we're not on track to doing that but would you say that this goal is achievable it's definitely achievable this isn't one where we need a new invention or we need a vaccine and nutritious food is the vaccine for hunger and so the fact that we're facing a hunger pandemic the fact that four countries are facing devastating famine in the coming months and year is really a representative of the of the failure of of political systems to ensure that all people have access to the nutritious food they need to live healthy and productive lives so we need the political will we need resources in order to support populations and we need to improve food systems to ensure that they deliver for all i've noticed we've covered the expense of covet and countries are getting into deficit and some of them are reducing their overseas aid how how much is that a factor in your in your objectives for ending hunger well that's something that we we've been very concerned about and thankfully this year the governments that support us have been generous and we've been able to reach um our targets um but we still lack billions of dollars in order to address the growing need and and there's this sense that that you know there's domestic budgets they're under strain there's fiscal stimulus packages that are absolutely necessary um but while covet affects everybody it's the most vulnerable people in the most fragile nations that are affected most of all to help others to make a difference is a driving force for many people michael houghton i know that you've had letters from patients who have been cured of hepatitis c can you tell us a bit about that well yes especially from mothers of children you know hemophiliacs have been very vulnerable to hep c infections so to get letters knowing that you've made a difference in their lives um it's it's obviously it's very moving um conversely i was contacted very recently actually just two days ago by someone whose loved one passed away from pepsi so it works both ways you know the quicker we work the more lives we save emmanuel chappentia i know you have also received messages from patients or parents of children affected with the genetic disorders they put their hope in you uh you know one is always emotional when you you read messages from patients because they are desperate and you know they offer themselves to to any kind of of treatment available even in development so surely it's uh yeah it's as as michaels you know mentioned you have a large number of diseases that are still to be eradicated and it's a huge challenge and as valerie mentioned everything is linked you have the issue of conflicts you have the challenges of climate change and of fighting diseases of hunger everything is linked i don't often get letters from people about how an economic invention has saved a life and i certainly respect my colleagues wish i could have that kind of impact but the the kinds of impact we can have that are relevant for life saving among many other things you know when we think about resource allocation which is what economists think about uh uh when we think about for example the new covid vaccines that are coming out there are efficiency issues in in distributing the vaccine that also will increase the number of lives saved shipping the right vaccines at the right time to the right places is also going to save lives and uh the role that that we have and you know and as economists in in helping design distribution and helping when we have a variety of priorities and helping account take account of those priorities uh uh to make sure that the distribution satisfies those that will will also help save lives not in the primary way that my my scientific colleagues here have done which i you know honor and respect but still in very practical ways getting the distribution right is very important we are now going to look at the price for economic science and the price deals with auctions traditional farm auctions someone making a sale on the internet the european union's auction of emission allowances to mitigate global warming auctions are becoming increasingly common and increasingly complicated paul milgram and robert wilson have not just clarified how auctions work and why bidders behave in a certain way they have also used their discoveries to invent entirely new auction formats for complex situations where existing auction formats cannot be applied well my my experience was so much with the oil industry where it was so prominent because there there's enormous uncertainty in the valuation of these tracks their estimates of the values are very imperfect you'll drill and then you'll find out that it's either dry or not that's the first part of it the second part is that there are estimates of the value of the petrol you know hydrocarbons if it's not empty if it's not dry are very imperfect that's the second part i mean there's a third part which is that your estimates of the future price of oil are very imperfect it's very highly volatile so you're facing that milgram and wilson used and developed game theory to analyze how different actors behave strategically when they each have access to different information their best known contribution is the auction they designed for the first time the u.s authorities sold permits for radio frequencies and wireless communication to telecom operators this model has brought billions of dollars in revenue to governments instead of to lobbying firms or frequency speculators since then auctions have been increasingly used in the distribution of complex public utilities such as electricity and natural resources in the future they might be used for life-saving benefits such as the safe international exchange of transplant organs professor paul milgram i know you yourself have bought property a house in california an apartment here in stockholm where you had to participate in a bidding procedure have you ever felt who i might have paid too much well yes um of course the the um when we bought our house in california actually um uh you know emotions come in a lot in these these simple auctions that consumers engage in and uh my wife and i had been looking for a house for a long time and we found one house it was the only house she liked among all the houses we looked at and i thought i really have to buy that house and i'm sure i paid too much uh although uh you know we've lived there now for uh you know almost almost 20 years and we've enjoyed it so i guess i don't regret i don't regret that too much i wanted to offer one other comment that i i think one of the things that distinguishes the economics prize this year is it's uh in many respects the work that the nobel committee decided to honor was more engineering work than scientific work we were it's true we've done some you know fundamental research and game theory and so on but the but these designs were really uh is really engineering how markets work it's less about fundamental discoveries and more about seeing you know how we could put them to work to improve resource allocation in your little video you mentioned the kidney exchange which is also a you know matching kidneys to to donors is an issue that's not mostly about money it's mostly about getting the uh getting the matching right and so when people think about auctions they think mostly about cash but market design isn't primarily about cash it's primarily about getting the right resources into the right places we've talked about covid 19 and when the covet 19 vaccines are distributed that will be a typical allocation procedure how complicated will the distribution around the world be would you say well so first of all you have to understand why it's um uh why it's not simple the vaccines are not all the same some of them require more infrastructure than others to be distributed well and the timing which vaccines are available when in different places is going to be a critical issue the uh the question of making sure that this isn't just for rich people it's not we're not running an auction where we say gee those those who can afford uh to to be protected are the ones protected i think that fortunately that uh you know that countries are taking these things into account so you know the these complexities are real we're addressing them and hopefully we'll do a good job of of getting vaccine to the people who need them uh michael howtom from what i understand to be a fact there will be new pandemics uh what can we learn would you say from the tragic situation we face right now yeah i think there's many lessons we we must learn from covet i think the first one is governments around the world need to spend more money funding infectious disease research both basic and translational i think number two we've learned working together everybody at all levels of society and internationally really helps really helps progress um i think a very sobering lesson is that if we had made vaccine against the sar strain that was circulating in 2003 and stockpiled it we would have prevented much of the disease and fatality of covid so we must start stockpiling vaccines i believe um i totally agree with michael and as a matter of fact i focused all my research on on the understanding of bacterial infectious diseases and it was always a struggle to remain in this field of research and i had to go from one country to another one to to find the you know the way to to to stay in this research actually i have two concerns i mean we we talked about uh you know the challenges of global warming hunger fighting diseases there is also the health care system i think this pandemic has has shown that the health care system needs major improvement and also funding but having said this i'm also concerned and i'm sure that michael would agree with me i'm concerned with the fact that you know our science works so the scientists are anyway judged to you know to be able to go on with our carrier and the way we are judge impacts also a lot uh different types of of areas of of research that has that are forgotten along the way uh you know you have some fashionable subjects of research and microbiology is always the the least fashionable one so i'm concerned that we lose experts in the long run really understand bacteria and viruses and can cope with a future challenge of of pandemics since it's inevitable we will always face pandemics well i think that's a really good point [Music] many years ago people would have said studying bacterial viruses is not as going to be as profitable as looking at mammalian viruses for example and emmanuel and her colleagues have shown that how valuable that is going to be for humans so it's a very good point some of these very specialized areas of research you can be surprised how much impact they can have on humans and so i think she's exactly right we should be broad in our funding we should fund curiosity driven research for sure even in areas where you think there might not be human equivalence at the same time i think you do want more funding for areas that you think might be relevant to human health so it's a mixture you know if you want to score the bullseye on a dart board you it will help you to throw at least towards the wall that has the dartboard but on the other hand the wall behind you as i think emmanuel has shown uh you can get surprising consequences from basic research in very exotic speciality areas andrea guess you earlier said that every challenge is an opportunity even a pandemic what do you tell your students when obstacle and problems arise oh it's i think it's such an important um part of um their development actually is to figure out how to deal with challenges um we all face challenges in our professional and our personal lives and this is an enormous challenge worldwide and to think about how they can make differences on both small scales and large scales professor paul milgram and these extraordinary times what do you want to give your students well i want to give i want to keep them motivated toward working on important problems i think we've we've only begun to talk about them within economics there are others that we care a great deal about too we care about income distribution and poverty we care about food resources as we've already the importance of which we've already heard we care about helping the economy to operate more efficiently so there are more resources available for all these priorities we have from from climate change to you know to poverty to ever to everything else so so uh and some of that is about fundamental research is about coming to understand the mechanisms so that we can make policies and intervene effectively and some of it is about the kind of engineering that i was talking about before which was taking that knowledge and seeing how we can employ apply it in the complex world we live in i think i think it's important to and i think this program is doing exactly that it's i think it's important for young students to understand and feel the the enormous depth of what it means to be human our collective intellect uh intellect our collective science our collective knowledge the world about us and uh i i think the program you're putting on today can really help young people understand that we're all part of this incredible rich tapestry yes we have disasters we have tragedies like covid but i think the enrich enrichment you can get from science and intellect and inquiry is is incredibly meaningful and it defines us as humans doesn't it valerie gornieri uh working with poverty with conflicts and now with the pandemic um how do you keep your hope up well i i'm i'm inspired by the people who we reach the people who we serve they're they're so their resilience in the face of just a tremendous amount of adversity is is what keeps me hopeful and it makes me it makes me just want to do more and want to do better so i'm generally really hopeful about the future but you know we we we need to do better well that brings us to the end of this noble minds discussion thank you all the laureates for being with us thank you it's been so interesting talking to all of you thank you so much it's been great we've really enjoyed it thank you so much thank you for watching nobleminds goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Nobel Prize

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Keywords: nobel minds, nobel prize 2020, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Andrea Ghez

Id: Kr92M3l1ea0

Length: 46min 50sec (2810 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020