In his article “Flight Lessons,” about Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Michael Penn mentions that the internationally renowned flu expert could be the UW’s best candidate to win a Nobel Prize in the near future. Which leads to a natural question: when was the last time a professor picked up a Nobel? It seems that we’re overdue. No member of UW-Madison’s faculty has won the elusive honor in more than thirty years.

Between 1944 and 2000, some seventeen Nobel Prizes were awarded to people associated with UW-Madison, covering four of the six categories — all but literature and peace. Eight Badgers have picked up Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine: Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Gasser ’10, Joshua Lederberg, Edward Tatum MS’32, PhD’34, Har Gobind Khorana, Howard Temin, Erwin Neher MS’67, and Guenter Blobel PhD’67. Five have received the award for physics: John Bardeen ’28, MS’29 (twice!), E. P. Wigner, John van Vleck ’28, and Jack St. Clair Kilby MS’50. Three picked up the prize for chemistry: Stanford Moore PhD’38, Paul Boyer MS’41, PhD’43, and Alan MacDiarmid MS’52, PhD’53. And one grad, Theodore Schultz MS’28, PhD’30, received the award for economics.

In 1975, Temin became the last faculty member to pick up a Nobel for work done while on campus, after he discovered reverse transcriptase, an enzyme found in some viruses. Kilby (physics) and MacDiarmid (chemistry) were the most recent alumni to receive a Nobel — in 2000 — but for work they performed elsewhere.