Author JMG Le Clézio gets Nobel

As a Japanese, I could drink tasty beer in the past few days, owing to Nobel Prizes. Haha, please laugh at me. Living in a foreign country sometimes makes you patriotic and nationalistic!

In particular, I'm very pleased that Professor Nambu has been awarded a Nobel physics prize. He has been well known among science-lovers in Japan for several decades.

Changye, considering Nambu's nationality, we could both have a beer over that Nobel.  As you know, in the past most Asians who won Nobel prizes lived in the U.S. due to superior postwar research facilities.  It was heartening to see two Japanese living in Japan (and Nambu) sharing this year's prize.

Given China's production of PHD's, one wonders when Chinese residing in Taiwan and/or China will begin winning Nobel prizes.  If one accepts the premise that increasing liberty and wealth encourages creativity, it seems like it's only a matter of time.  Taiwan is already there on both counts by any objective standard.

sorry to appear patriotic, I really don't care much for this, but Le Clézio is a remarkabke person, not only a brilliant writer but someone who's really different, with lucid and unambiguous views about the world, who does speak his mind (although he's not a media person).

Hi tvan,

I'm pleased that not a few Asian people have contributed to the development and prosperity of the US. And, let me say Prof. Nambu still IS a Japanese (at least for me) regardless of his current nationality, hehe, but if he commited a grave crime in the US, he would soon change into "an American citizen" in my mind. 哈哈，我太自私啊....!

All joking aside, sorry, I readily admit that the system of research and higher education in the US is just brilliant. As you wrote, some overseas Chinese have already been awarded Nobel prizes, definitely partly owing to the ideal research environments in the US, like 钱博士, Chinese-American, who has won a chemistry prize this time.

In this sense, I'm not so optimistic about future Nobel prizes won by native Chinese who live in mainland China. It seems to me that increasing wealth doesn't necessarily contribute to the healthy development of science in China. On the contrary, I'm afraid that "money whorship" corrupt Chinese universities and research institutes.

The above notwithstanding, I ran into this article on some Chinese nominated for a Nobel.  I imagine such news would receive a reception similar to that with which the Bush administration greeted news of Al Gore's Nobel last year.

goulniky, I apologize for the partial hijacking of this thread.  France truly is a cultural treasure as evidenced once again here.