By Eugenia Manolidou
In this year’s Nobel announcements, among the names of the laureates and the descriptions of their discoveries, we encounter the Greek language.
Anne Carson, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, has devoted much of her life to studying, translating and teaching Ancient Greek. In her work, Sappho, Greek tragedy and myth meet contemporary life, creating a distinctive literary voice recognised by the Swedish Academy for its boldness, inventiveness and dialogue with the classical tradition.
During the same week, Greek appeared in the announcements of the scientific Nobel Prizes in a different, equally significant way. Words formed from Greek roots described methods and phenomena at the forefront of research. From literature to the study of the brain and the chemistry of molecules, the Greek language was present once again.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their pioneering contributions to optogenetics, a method that enables researchers to control the activity of specific nerve cells using light. The first component of the word leads us to sight and vision (ὄψις), while the second belongs to the linguistic family of genesis (γενετική). The modern term brings together the use of light and the genetic modifications that make cells sensitive to it.
In Chemistry, Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai were honoured for discoveries that helped explain how homochirality can arise. The word sounds highly specialised, yet the image behind it is familiar. Our two hands are mirror images that cannot be perfectly superimposed upon one another. A similar relationship can exist between two forms of a molecule.
Here, the Greek origin is explained by the Nobel organisation itself: homochiral combines Greek roots meaning “same” and “hand”, (ὁμός and χείρ). Homochirality describes the predominance of one of the two mirror-image forms, a phenomenon of fundamental importance to the chemistry of life. The Greek word for “hand” thus supplies an image through which a complex molecular property becomes easier to understand.
This use of Greek has a long history. Centuries before these Nobel announcements, scientists and inventors were drawing on Greek words to name instruments and technologies that would transform humanity’s understanding of the world.
The telephone, whose invention is widely associated with Alexander Graham Bell and his 1876 patent, combines tēle (τῆλε), meaning “far away”, and phōnē (φωνή), meaning “voice”. In 1861, the German inventor Philipp Reis presented an early apparatus for transmitting sound electrically, calling it the Telephon. Its Greek roots expressed the remarkable possibility the instrument offered: a voice travelling across a distance.
The telescope combines the same tēle (τῆλε) with a root associated with skopein (σκοπεῖν), “to observe”. The name entered scientific usage in 1611, within the circle of the Accademia dei Lincei. In 1625, the German physician and naturalist Johannes Faber named Galileo’s instrument for observing tiny objects the microscope, combining mikros (μικρός), “small”, with the same root of observation. Greek supplied a related vocabulary for looking towards distant worlds and examining the minute structures of our own.
In medicine, the French physician René Laennec named his invention the stethoscope, drawing on stēthos (στῆθος), “chest”, and skopein (σκοπεῖν), “to examine”. In photography, the Greek words phōs (φῶς), “light”, and graphē (γραφή), “writing” or “drawing”, gave a new process an exceptionally expressive name: writing with light. John Herschel used the term in 1839 and helped establish it in scientific usage.
These names reveal the continuing productivity of Greek roots. Across countries and generations, scientists have combined them to create words with precise technical meanings, responding to the possibilities opened up by each invention and discovery. Elements of the Greek language continue to participate actively in the expression of new knowledge.
For us Greeks, many of these roots belong to our mother tongue and have been familiar since childhood. A reader whose first language is different may need to learn their origins and meanings, while we can often recognise within a scientific term words and images we already know. This linguistic familiarity gives us a natural advantage when approaching the terminology, a starting point upon which scientific understanding can be built through study.
If Greek can therefore be called the great winner of this year’s Nobel Prizes, it is because we encounter it wherever human thought creates: in the words used to describe life and in the texts through which we seek to interpret it. Its value is renewed whenever someone, in any country, language or age, finds within it the means to express something new.
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This article was first published in Greek in Proto Thema. This English version includes additional examples from the history of science and invention.