So what's it like to be a Nobel Prize Winner? Well, the daily routine for Dr. Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has not changed much since winning the 2009 Nobel Prize. As a single mom, she still spends her time juggling activities between home, family and job.
Here's an excerpt.
"She was folding laundry when the call came at 5 a.m. After she hung up the phone, Dr. Carol Greider went upstairs to wake her children. She had to tell them, even if it meant getting them out of bed early.
"I said, 'By the way, I just won the Nobel Prize. You can go back to sleep now,' " she recalled.
Until this past October, many would have described Greider as your typical working woman. A molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the mother of two children -- Gwendolyn, 10, and Charles, 13 -- she splits her time between job and family. But "typical" no longer applies.
Winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine may help her career, but it hasn't changed her attitude about home life. "I could have basked in the moment, but I had to tell my kids first. And they were thrilled, but then they wanted to know, 'Do we have to go to school today?' " she said. "Of course I said, 'No, you don't.' And they came to work with me."
The Nobel Prize and Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to women 41 times between 1901 and 2009. Only one woman, Marie Curie, has been honored twice. Ten women, including Greider, have received it for medicine, others for economics, physics, literature and chemistry; 12 have won the Nobel Peace Prize. But few have been single moms, whose thoughts are just as consumed by homework as by helices."
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