Slashdot Mirror
Nobel Prizes
An AC sends: "The guys at Bottomquark.com are pledging to bring NBC-esque coverage of the Nobel Prize releases. The first prize, for Medicine, is already posted."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Lars
__
Reality or nothing.
Besides, there is the Fields Medal in mathematics which is the equivalent of the Nobel except that there is an age limit associated with the Fields Medal. You have to be under 40 by the time you make your breakthrough else you don't get a medal! This is why Andrew Wiles, who cracked Fermat's Last Theorem did not get one. He was a little bit over 40 when his proof was published etc etc. So they gave him a special Field's Medal. Btw, Field's medal is not named after the idea of fields in mathematics but is actually the name of the guy who endowed the trust that funds the medals.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Lars
__
Reality or nothing.
The server problems that probably prevented everyone from getting to the site are now gone. Proceed to slashdot the site into submission again.
You Like Science?
You Like Science?
You Like bottomquark.
You bet.... :-) (The schoolbook story is that Denmark and Sweden were colonial powers....)
The reasons Nobel had for choosing a Norwegian Committee (or rather, let the Norwegian Parliament appoint a committee), is a long and difficult story, probably with no clear answer.
One possibility is that Norway was the only nation around that had never gone to war on anybody.
Another is that he did not trust the Swedish politicians, only the Swedish scientists.
Another is that he might have had personal reasons, and another is that it was such a gesture. I don't think we'll ever know for sure...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
1) I concede that Robert Noyce did come up with the same idea shortly afterwards.
2) I also admit that Kilby's prototype was not feasible for mass production (I did not know that it never worked.) However, he did plan on using a solid-state process for the interconnects, independent of his original idea for having multiple components on a single piece of silicon. (If I remember correctly he even considered contacting Fairchild eventually about licensing their process for interconnects.)
3) The patent fight only occured because of some vague wording and a bad diagram in the TI patent. IIRC, specifically, the meaning of the words "laid down", and the meaning of Kilby's famous "flying wire" diagram.
Intel could possibly claim credit for a computer on every desk, since they were the first to develop the general purpose processor, but the first "embedded" application for IC's was the TI pocket calculator, for which Kilby was one of the engineers. While this was only a significant (as opposed to revolutionary) device, it served as an effective demonstration of what IC's were capable of.
If Robert Noyce were still alive today, I have no doubt that he would have shared the Nobel Prize.
On the other hand, the reason I have great respect for Jack Kilby is because he never sought a great fortune or fame for his discovery. AFAIK, he remained on the engineering staff from TI. That is not to say that seeking riches is ignoble, just that neither is not seeking them.
Perhaps I should have changed the wording of my post somewhat recognize the fact that Robert Noyce developed it at about the same time, and later won the patent. I did not mean to take anything away from anyone else.
Sweden and Norway was in a union from 1814-1905
That is: Norway was under Danish government but was "given" to Sweden (who sought some compensation for the recent (1809) loss of Finland to Russia in 1814.
Nobel was indeed swedish, born in Stockholm 1833 if my memory is correct, but all his life (he died 10 dec 1896, the prizes are given the day of his death) Sweden and Norway was in union.
Now the norwegians may view the "union" a bit differently...
Actually, the Nobel Peace prize is awarded by a norwegian comittee, possibly a gesture by Nobel to improve the relations between Sweden and Norway.
Hey, I've found a link so I can end this rambling: www.nobel.se
All opinions are my own - until criticized
In other words, it couldn't have happed to a better guy.
It was clear, however, that Einstein deserved the prize, so he got it as soon as there was another work (the photoelectric effect) to award it for.
(or so the story goes)
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Screw the NBC-style coverage. They should have four finalists in each area square off in front of a studio audience -- the Iron Chemists would have to whip up some new and useful compound from a set of ingredients, the Iron Doctors would have to perform speed-surgery, and the Iron Peacemakers would have to break up some arguments.
They already did, in 1998, to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad "for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system". From the press release:
So does that mean it's going to be 12 hours late ?
Does that mean that there will be informative news.... OR will we be greeted with voyeur style 'house scientists' that are all competing to be the last voted out of the lab to win a Nobel prize? Now that's MUST SEE TV!
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
Cut'n'paste from this site found trough google .
Alfred Nobel was born in 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden to a family of engineers. His family was descended from Olof Rudbeck, the best-known technical genius of Sweden's 17th century era as a great power in northern Europe. At age 9, he moved with his family to Russia where he and his brothers were given first class education in the humanities and natural sciences by private teachers.
Nobel invented dynamite in 1866 and later built up companies and laboratories in more than 20 countries all over the world. A holder of more than 350 patents, he also wrote poetry and drama and even seriously considered becoming a writer.
The idea of giving away his fortune was no passing fancy for Nobel. Efforts to promote peace were close to his heart and he derived intellectual pleasure from literature, while science built the foundation for his own activities as a technological researcher and inventor.
On November 27, 1895, Nobel signed his final will and testament at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris. He died of a heart attack in his home in San Remo, Italy on December 10, 1896.
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
There is one given to Medawar & Burnet in 1960 in Physiology or Medicine back in the 50's on the mechanism of the immune system and it apparently is being refuted by work done by Polly Matzinger at the NIH. Also another guy, Stanley Prusiner, won the Nobel in 1997 for the discovery that prions can cause disease; This award is being criticized on the grounds that there is no real proof that unusual proteins cause disease. So at least two Nobels could be invalidated because of new research or having awarded the prize too quickly.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
They've gotten rather applied this year,
but took forty years to recognize this achievement. I don't know I'd consider it physics.
This is almost like Stanford University finally
recognizing it is in Silicon Valley and promoting
a tech-geek to president after decades of lawyers and humanities types.
Alfred Nobel probaby had a certain bias toward science with a practical application versus pure or theoretical science. There's been a lot of armchair psychologizing about this (Nobel made his fortune off of munitions; many members of the Nobel family were killed in industrial accidents), but the fact is that his attitude was pretty standard for his time.
It is sort of interesting that Planck's Quantum Theory counted as a "discovery" but not Einstein's Relativity Theory. Perhaps it was because the Quantum was seen as an actual physical entity, whereas Relativity was seen to be largely a work of Mathematics.
Incidentally, my orange roomate is very pleased that the inventor of the laser diode has finally been recognized. He also vows to capture and devour that glowing red thingee at all costs!
__________
Here are some other important prizes that the media tend to neglect:
The No Bail Prize, given for major advances in waterproofing.
The No Ball(s) Prize, given in to the judge who caves in to corporate interests the fastest.
The No Belle Prize, given to a randomly selected geek as a consolation for the geek lifestyle.
The No Bill Prize, given to the programmer who comes up with the best innovation that does not get bought out by Microsoft within a year.
And my favorite, the No Bull Prize, which will go to the candidate that gets caught out in the fewest lies during the debates.
--
Give me a candidate who speaks out against the war on drugs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
uhm. Einstein died in 1955. And Alexander Friedmann (the physicist who first implied the Big Bang from the complete solution of Einsteins equations) is also LONG since dead(like 1920's or something). Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson who discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (taken as direct evidence of the big bang in the form of leftover EM radiation) at Bell Labs in 1965, were granted their nobel in 1978. George Gamow who predicted the CMBE was scooped by the Bell Labs team and never got his nobel, he's also very dead.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
BTW, any mirrors up yet?
So what was it for, anyway? I gather from the comments it was prozac, but that could be completely wrong. Anyone have something more specific?
Does anyone know why there aren't any? I have heard two plausible explanations. One is that Nobel Prizes are given for achievements with tangible benefit to humankind which is why Einstein got his for his work on the Photoelectic effect rather than for general relativity which is far and away his greatest work. The second I think is much more likely - the mathematician Niels Abel was fooling around with Nobel's wife.
:wq