Slashdot Mirror
2003 Japan Prize Winners Announced
dpatil writes "The 2003
Japan Prize winners have been announced.
James Yorke (who named the field of chaos theory) and
Benoit Mandelbrot (father of fractals) will share the prize for "Creation of Universal Concepts in Complex Systems--Chaos and Fractals". Here is the
citation. The Japan Prize is right up there after the Nobel Prize and the Fields Medal. A good article on Yorke and his research team at the
University of Maryland appeared in the
Washington Post"
That's about 400,000 U.S. dollars. Science pays.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
non-science pays more.
Templeton foundation always offers a prize that's valued at more than the Nobel's (Nobels are about 1 million US dollars, making it the highest paying science award, I believe)...
Worse yet, I hear that you are always forced (peer pressure?) to donate away your award (Nobel, anyway) if you are in the sciences; I think the templeton people keep theirs?
Small side-note: Nobels have no category for Mathematics; but i think recently (last few decades) a separate foundation set up one for math with comparable awards. Something about Nobel (the dude) hating mathematicians because (unsure) his gf was seduced away by one, or some such (please correct me if anyone knows the straightdope)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The Washington Post article mentioned is actually pretty lame. If you strip out the boring "real chaos" vs. "math chaos" jokes and the explanation of chaos theory that is pretty much what Jeff Goldblum's character said in the _first_ Jurassic Park film, there's almost nothing there.
The article also mentions a Simpsons episode which relates to chaos theory, but didn't bother to mention that it was a take-off on Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder," a short story written in 1951, well before chaos theory had a name.
Why is it that even the Washington Post can't scrape up a numerate reporter? Would they send an illiterate reporter to interview the winner of the Nobel prize in literature?
Category of Information and Communications "Outstanding achievement in the field of electronics and communications technologies"
Money can be a powerful inspiration, after all doing something you love is one thing, but you still have to pay the bills. And knowing, there is rewards out there, should you stumble on something great can only inspire you when your really looking into a dark dark tunnel with no light in sight.Dr. John R. Pierce (U.S.A.)
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Born in 1910.
Dr. Pierce's achievements in the field of information and telecommunication engineering represent the highest scientific caliber in the United States.
His work has resulted in the theoretical development of the possibilities of communications satellites and of broad-band digital transmissions via pulse code modulations and multivalent signals.
--+> Life, is there any?
Can someone clarify what part Mitchell Feigenbaum played compared to Yorke and a likely reason why Feigenbaum wasn't included in this prize?
See also The Feigenbaum Discovery and of course James Gleick's book Chaos.
I would have liked to see a chaos prize go some some of the physicists who did more real and solid work in Non-linear dynamical systems, Lorentz or Packard or May or someone like that.
Almost everything that is popularly believed about chaos is wrong.
Sorry for the angry rant about this, but I am sickened to see that some prize is given out this way.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Could you please explain how winning an award makes you a loser? What was the logic behind your statement? Your analogy is irrevelent. These people won awards. They weren't denied awards, and they didn't get "honorable mentions" or anything like that for these awards.
A better analogy would be comparing the Academy Awards to the Golden Globes. Sure, getting a Golden Globe is great, but I'm sure most people would agree that an Academy Award is more prestigous. Of course, this depends on who you talk to, and what their priorities are.
blog & fiction: jd87
Although Mandelbrot has also been accused of knowingly taking credit for other people's ideas, notably R. N. Elliott.
With that said though, this is an immensely important field for innumerable applications, so I'm glad it's being recognized.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
for some really cool ``sound animation'' presented at SIGGRAPH this year, check out James O'Brien's research
this is not exactly what you're talking about, it's computationally generated sound from 3-d animation, which is much cooler...and harder.
replace 'berserkeley' with 'berkeley' to respond via email.
"Worse yet, I hear that you are always forced (peer pressure?) to donate away your award"
I am going to guess that anybody who is nominated for awards like this isn't making do flipping burgers in the local MacDonalds... as poorly paid as the university environment is, I am sure that Professors Emeritus (and the like) get a little more than subsistence wages, and probably don't have too hard a time finding employers who might be interested in them. I get the feeling these folk are probably motivated by more than just cash... ("Screw your Nobel Prize! Phone me when you're offering ten times that much, and make sure it is Euros, cash up front!").
At least, it would be nice to believe that they're not just in it for the money. I thought that was the role of large corporates and the whole patent-everything-and-close-down-scientific-freedo m philosophy.