Point Of Discovery

The first week of October is like a science-lover’s World Series: Each year, the spotlight falls on high-impact science, when day after day, a series of Nobel Prizes and other prestigious awards are announced all in one week. This has been an especially exciting week for us here in UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences. For the second year in a row, one of our alumni (James Allison) nabbed the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. What’s more, the Nobel Prizes given in the categories of physics and chemistry this year were also celebrated by scientists on campus, because the breakthroughs getting attention have implications for research happening right here. Finally, on Thursday, another big announcement came: the MacArthur Foundation announced it had awarded UT Austin chemist Livia Eberlin a MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes called “a genius award.” So today on Point of Discovery, we're going to do something completely different. We’re bundling some past stories related to the science that’s been in the n