Nobel Prizes for Physics Awarded to Smart People

bobol6 writes "The 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics is out. The $1 Million is split two ways: Riccardo Giacconi gets half for building the first X-Ray telescopes, and Raymond Davis, Jr and Masatoshi Koshiba split the other half. Davis invented the water tank neutrino detector, and Koshiba used a more sophisticated one to discover neutrino oscillation. The original press release is available . News articles can be found at Science Daily and The New York Times. (Free Blah di Blah)"

Comments

Chemistry prize shared between

[jeorgen]

Chemistry prize is shared between John Fenn, USA, Koichi Tanaka, Japan an Kurt Wüthich, Switzerland. Prize is awarded primarily for the development of powerful metods for analysing biological macro molecules, such as proteins.

With these methods researcher can now quickly reveal what proteins are present in a sample.

It's also possible to visualise proteins in 3D with these methods.

The methods have revolutionised the development of new drugs and show promise in areas as food qualit control and diagnosing breast cancer and prostate cancer.

(all according to a Swedish on-line article)

/jeorgen

Re:Chemistry prize shared between

[richie2000]

Official site.

Motivations: "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" (John B Fenn, Koichi Tanaka) and "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution" (Kurt Wüthrich).

google

[ObitMan]

Googlefied NYT article for your enjoyment

Re:lets have more winners

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Split it ten ways.

Not possible. Paragraph four of the statutes of the Nobel foundation clearly states that a maximum of three people can share a prize.

It's even been mentioned in the television series (where the laureates of the year are interviewed) by some US physicists that they did indeed have that in mind when applying for grants etc. I.e. not to be more than tree eligible researchers not to spoilt their chanses.

Check out the statues of the Nobel Foundation.

Kamiokande

[photonic]

I believe the Japanese guy that received the prize worked at the Super-Kamiokande detector that damaged half of its photo-multiplyer tubes in a big implosion.

Famous quote at the time of the incident: Thank goodness we got our Nobel already cooking

get the experiments right!

[Alien Perspective]

Davis built the Homestake experiment, which was a radiochemical experiment to look for solar neutrinos. NOT a water-Cerenkov experiment.

Kamiokande (Koshiba's experiment)was a water-Cerenkov experiment, however the IMB experiment (another water-Cerenkov experiment, near Cleveland) also saw the neutrinos from supernova 1987A *and* IMB had an atomic clock, so they could get accurate arrival times, which the japanese experiment couldn't.

Kamiokande confirmed Davis' results, but so did gallium experiments in what was then the USSR and in Italy.

Go to the source!

[Lars Arvestad]

I would like to recommend the Nobel prize homepage. There is a lot of information there. In particular, go check out the "further information" links for the public, where nice presentations of the science is available.

Re:The Nobels lost their innocence in 1969

[cperciva]

Simple explanation: There isn't any Nobel Prize in Economics. There is, however, the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel -- but while people call it a Nobel prize, it isn't, and the money for it comes from the Bank of Sweden (not from the Nobel trust).

Kudos to Riccardo Giacconi

[MtViewGuy]

Congrats to Mr. Giacconi for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into X-ray emissions in outer space.

It was his research with sounding rockets, the UHURU satellite and the Einstein satellite that made it possible to study unusual astronomical objects such as black holes and pulsars and allow us to peer much more closely at nebulas and other astronomical objects that have befuddled astronomers before Giacconi's pioneering work. It was his work that made it possible for the development of the NASA Chandra and ESA XMM-Newton X-ray observatory satellites.

Re:Richard Feynman used to boast. . .

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The history of the world argues rather strongly against the proposition that there is any correlation between religion and "ethical IQ" at all.

Sadly, the Nobel Foundation Obscures This Fact

[good soldier svejk]

You are absolutely correct. However, the Nobel Foundation corruptly obscures this fact and treats the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" just like a real Nobel Prize on its web site. The award is totally politicized, disproportionately awarded to the U of Chicago school, and frequently goes to fringe cranks like Ronald Coase.

The great economist Gunnar Myrdal, who sat on the board of the Bank of Sweden, argued for the prize's abolition. In 1974 Myrdal shared the award with Freidrich Hayek. Basically, Myrdal felt that if ideologue hacks like Freidman and Hayek won the prize it was meaningless.