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

Smart people eh?

[eggstasy]

Thank God. Wouldn't want any dumb people getting a Nobel prize, now would we? :)

Re:Smart people eh?

[Munra]

Did everyone hear about the farmer who won a Nobel Prize? Apparently he was out standing in his field.

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).

The Golden Globes, meanwhile, struggle on

[Brento]

In related news, the Golden Globes continue to be awarded to the opposite end of the academic spectrum, according to industry analysts. "Just look at Jennifer Connelly," said an unnamed source, pointing to this year's winner for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. "Sure, she's easy on the eyes, but she couldn't tell a neutrino from her elbow. And don't even get me started on Sissy Spacek - the woman keeps trying to reserve the periodic table at restaurants."

Ron Howard has repeatedly gone on record that his work on 'A Beautiful Mind' puts him in the appropriate Smart People category, but that is still in dispute. Judges point to his work in Happy Days as proof.

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

In other news...

[kcbrown]

It was recently announced that Olympic gold medals are awarded to physically fit people, Baseball Hall of Fame entries are awarded to good baseball players, and the Nebula Award is given to really good science fiction authors.

People in the entire U.S., but especially the editors at Slashdot, were astounded and amazed by this announcement.

"I never even suspected" said chrisd, an editor at Slashdot.

The Dow rose 78 points today, largely in response to this announcement.

Re:title : dumbest ever

[spakka]

do give us an example sometime of nobel prizes being awarded to dumb people.

Ask again after the Peace prize is announced Thursday...

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.

Richard Feynman used to boast. . .

[kfg]

"Lots of people have won the Nobel Prize, but to win it with an IQ of only 124, now *that's* an accomplishment!"

He always took great pride in being a "dumb" winner.

Of course there are many who would consider 124 pretty damned smart, but Feynman hung out with people like Hans Bethe, Neils Bohr, Albert Einstien and those other "dummies."

KFG

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.

The Legacy of Einstein

[InodoroPereyra]

Such a phenomenal genious was A. Einstein that he even influenced the social perception of what physics is. Being himself a theoretician, the prototype of a physicist is some sort of a lunatic doing fancy calcuations on a blackboard. However, voila, most Nobel prizes go to experimentalists. And that is the way it should be. Physics is an experimental science. If you cannot measure it, it ain't. Einstein himself understood this better than anyone, and he based his theories in solid experimental evidence.

Now let me disgress: how does it feel winning a part of a Nobel prize ? I see it coming: "Our next speaker, Prof. Inodoro Pereyra, 1/8th of the Nobel Prize 2004"

;-)

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).