This year the $1.5 million loot for the Nobel Prize in chemistry 2010, was shared out between Akira Kurosawa, sorry that’s Akira Suzuki and Ei-ichi Negishi of Japan, and American scientist Richard Heck. While Heck hails from the University of Delaware, Hokkaido University and Purdue University now has bragging rights about Nobel professors Suzuki and Negishi respectively.

Thanks to their efforts, complex carbon molecules can mow be chemically synthesized with fewer by-products. For those in the know, this is “Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling” where carbon atoms have a reaction kick-started by palladium that acts as a catalyst. Diamonds may be an atomic kitten’s best friend but the chemical trio loves graphite for its layered carbon structure. The applications in everything from electronics to medicine have the geek community going gaga.

Amur cats have something to cheer about as Russian scientists won the physics accolade. André Geim and Konstantin Novoselov made path-breaking headway on super-strength material and conductive carbon.

The church gang was up in arms against Robert Edwards, the British scientist whose work centred on the development of in-vitro fertilization, got him the Nobel nod in the medicine category. The clergy was rabid in their hatred for man playing God research, but this has become a tired trope now.

If you want expert advice on where to invest your money when you have frittered it all away, and homilies on women empowerment and child care in third world countries, look out for the final prize, the Nobel for economics, that to be announced on October 11.