Nobel Winners in Web 2.0

By ET

nobel.jpg

Just found a cool website. It displays MIT-related Nobel prize winners.

It is cool not because it shows something about MIT. It actually implemented the website with javascript to generate the figures from a text file. The format of the text file is like this:

{   type :                  "Nobelist",
label :                 "Elias J. Corey Jr.",
discipline :            "Chemistry",
shared :                "no",
"last-name" :           "Corey",
"nobel-year" :          "1990",
relationship :          "alumni",
"relationship-detail" : "MIT S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951",
imageURL :              "http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1990/corey_thumb.jpg"
},
{   type :                  "Nobelist",
label :                 "Horst L. Stu00F6rmer",
discipline :            "Physics",
shared :                "yes",
"last-name" :           "Stu00F6rmer",
"nobel-year" :          "1998",
relationship :          "research",
"co-winner" :           [
"Robert B. Laughlin",
"Daniel C. Tsui"
],
“relationship-detail” : “MIT researcher at MIT Magnet Lab”,
imageURL :              “http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/stormer_thumb.jpg”
},
{   type :                  “Nobelist”,
label :                 “Edward M. Purcell”,
discipline :            “Physics”,
shared :                “yes”,
“last-name” :           “Purcell”,
“nobel-year” :          “1952″,
relationship :          “research”,
“deceased” :            “yes”,
“relationship-detail” : “Staff, MIT Radiation Laboratory WWII (deceased)”,
imageURL :              “http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1952/purcell_thumb.jpg”
},
{   type :                  “Nobelist”,
label :                 “Phillip A. Sharp”,
discipline :            “Medicine/Physiology”,
shared :                “yes”,
“last-name” :           “Sharp”,
“nobel-year” :          “1993″,
relationship :          “professor”,
“relationship-detail” : “MIT Institute Professor, Biology”,
imageURL :              “http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1993/sharp_thumb.jpg”
},

Anyone familiar with XML, CSS or BibTex should feel very comfortable with this.

I like this website because it truely separates the data and the representation, making it very easy to modify the layout or the data separately.

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