The XX Factor

A Banner Year for Women and Nobel Prizes

With the announcement this morning that Indiana University’s Elinor Ostrom had won the Nobel Prize in Economics-the first women to do so in the prize’s 40-year-history-the tally of 2009 women laureates rises to five. Since the program began in 1901, only 40 women total have won Nobels. Ostrom doesn’t cut quite as striking a figure as DoubleX ‘s new office style icon, Herta Mueller , but this photo fills my Monday-deadened heart with happiness.