Cambridge alumni clear up 2016 Nobel Prizes

Let’s keep pretending we’re as smart as these guys.

Cambridge cambridge alumni cambridge students nobel prize Oxford university

Four ex-Cambridge students recieved 2016 Nobel Prizes for their work in economics and physics.

Oliver Hart, who studied at Kings (1966) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, alongside Bengt R. Holmström, for his contributions to contract theory. Hart studied maths at Kings, and is currently a professor of economics at Harvard.

Oliver Hart went to Kings – remember when all the smart ones didn’t go to Trinity by default? We don’t.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to three students. David Thouless (Tit Hall), Duncan Haldane (Christs) and Micheal Kosterlitz (Caius) won the award for “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”. The Tab doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds smart.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have put Kosterlitz on their websites as an award winning alumni. Kosterlitz did his D.Phil at Brasenose Oxford, but his undergrad at Caius. The Tab therefore suggests the rule of ‘finders keepers’ applies, and suggests that the Other Place stop trying to take credit for *our* Nobel Laureate’s success.

He’s OUR Nobel Laureate, you hear me?

The 2016 Nobel Literature Prize is being announced on Thursday, but a shortlist of contenders from Ladbrokes includes A.S. Byatt (Newnham), Salman Rushdie (Kings, again), and Paul Muldoon, who taught at both Caius and Fitz.

A bumper haul of somewhat arbitrary prizes for Cambridge this year, with potentially a 5th to come.