For Sale: One Nobel Prize Medal (Slightly Used, By Francis Crick) 179
Hugh Pickens writes "UPI reports that for the first time in the history of Nobel Prize, one of the Nobel Prize medals, along with the diploma presented by the Nobel committee, is on auction — with an opening bid of $250,000. Awarded to Francis Crick, who along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 'for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material,' the medal will be auctioned off in New York City, by Heritage Auctions. The medal has been kept in a safe deposit box in California since Crick's widow passed away in 2007 and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Francis Crick Institute of disease research scheduled to open in London in 2015. '"By auctioning his Nobel it will finally be made available for public display and be well looked after. Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Crick. "My granddad was honored to have received the Nobel Prize, but he was not the type to display his awards; his office walls contained a large chalkboard, artwork and a portrait of Charles Darwin."'"
Re:For sale: All Nobel peace prizes. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, Crick was a bit of a git anyway (and Watson wasn't exactly what you might call a gentleman). They basically stole someone else's unpublished scientific work to confirm their own data (mainly, it has to be said, because she was only a woman) and without which they'd have ended up with entirely the wrong model. They were loathe to credit her, even after her death, even though others did.
Not saying they *didn't* do a lot of the work, but without her observations, comments, and years of working on data, they'd have been lost for quite a while longer than they were.
Auction Link? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a link to the item, it is being auctioned off by Heritage Auctions: http://historical.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=6093&lotIdNo=50001 [ha.com]
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:4, Informative)
A fraction involves two integers.
True.
0 is an integer
True.
so 0/0 is a fraction.
False.
The denominator of a fraction must be nonzero. A fraction is a number. N/0 is never a number, regardless of the value of N.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware that Franklin herself ever stated that she had been robbed.
According to wiki and whoever they cite, she probably wasn't aware her data was used [wikipedia.org] and died before she would have found that out.