2015 Nobel Prize Winners Pt. 2: Beyond the Dissertations

By Theresa Laveck, ProQuest Product Marketing Manager

Each year when Nobel Laureates are announced, it’s almost certain several will have his or her dissertation in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Have you thought about the Noble Prize winners who do not hold advanced degrees or have not written a dissertation? Study of their work and lives related to the Nobel Prize is frequently the topic of scholarly research.

Take the third recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, YouYou Tu. A research scientist who graduated from Beijing Medical University, she was part of a project battling malaria in the late 1960s. Combining modern science with research of ancient Chinese medicinal texts, she figured out how to extract the medicinal agent of the Artemesia annua plant, which was then developed into the malaria-fighting drug Artemisinin. Although Tu doesn’t have a dissertation, you can find more than 1,100 full-text graduate works in PQDT related to the drug she developed, including:

• • Studies in organic and medicinal chemistry: Treatment of malaria and cytomegalovirus
  • Part A: Antimalarial agents modified at the C-16 position of artemisinin; Part B: Lead optimization of falcipain-2 and falcipain-3 inhibitors

The trajectory of modern Russian and Soviet history is the focus literary nonfiction writer Svetlana Alexievich. Awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” her research often includes hundreds of interviews with people directly involved in monumental events. A native of Belarus, her works include the stories of female World War II veterans (War’s Unwomanly Face), Chernobyl (Voices from Chernobyl), and the Soviet-Afghanistan war (Zinky Boys). Frequently targeted as “oppositional” by various authorities in Soviet and post-Soviet countries, she has won many literary awards in addition to the Nobel Prize. A sampling of graduate works in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global referencing Alexievich’s writing includes:

• • A long goodbye: The politics and diplomacy of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1980-1992 
  • Spaces of Chernobyl: Emptiness and fullness, absence and presence

The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, a group of four civil organizations in Tunisian society who worked together to help ensure the establishment of a democracy after the “Jasmine Revolution” in 2011, resulting in peaceful democratic elections in 2014. The work of these organizations and resulting election is so recent it has not yet yielded specific graduate works, though it likely will. But leading up to this award are many scholarly works dealing with the “Arab Spring”, human rights, and Tunisian society, including:

• • Women's political and legal empowerment and post-conflict peacebuilding 
  • Digital activism: Social movements in the digital age

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

* Note: To view the dissertations in this post you must have access to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global through a library.