The Smell of Success

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The New York Sun

A professor at Columbia, Richard Axel, shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine yesterday for his role in research on the sense of smell. It’s a reminder that for all the attention to New York as a capital of fashion, finance, theater, and baseball, there is plenty of groundbreaking scientific research happening here, too.


The Nobel Prize has gotten a bit of a bad name in recent years, what with the decision to bestow it on terrorist leader Yasser Arafat. But the Swedish academy that gives the prize in medicine has a better reputation than the Norwegian academy that awards the peace prize. If the Norwegians want to repair their standing, one thing they could do is award this year’s peace prize to G.I. Joe, the American soldier whose sacrifices over the past few years have brought freedom to tens of millions in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to protect the world from the menace of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.


In the meantime, New Yorkers join in congratulating Dr. Axel and Columbia for their Nobel achievement. Dr. Axel, who graduated from Columbia College in 1967, lives in Manhattan, has his lab in Washington Heights, and said yesterday that he “wouldn’t work in a city other than New York.” Add him to the list of celebrities who make the city such a lively place.


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