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1999 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
Andrew Childs writes "The 1999 Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been announced. The physics prize goes to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." The chemistry prize goes to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." And the prize in physiology or medicine goes to Gunter Blobel "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell." "
He died a while back. But he was the only person to win two non-shared Nobel prizes.
Now take your vitamin C.
yes.. i agree that a new category should be added nobel prize for computing. but pls the stop the linus crap.
And guess what allows for us to advance in those fields. MATHEMATICS. If the universe as we know it ceased to exist, the one faucet of human knowledge that would still be pertinent is MATHEMATICS. Besides computer science is really rooted in mathetmatics. It wouldn't make sense to have a computer science prize without a math one first.
Its much, much,m uch mroe complicated then that. Take a year of college biology, and you'll find out :] (or just read the book).
The advances in the tech industry are fueled by advances in chemistry and physics. The tech industry is an application of the aforementioned disciplines. Just as computer science is an application of mathematics.
What about the acts inbetween giving out awards? I could see like NIN playing a little ditty inbetween awards HEH.
Your analogy really simplifies what's going on. Read a first year biology book, you'll be staggered at how intricately everything is designed and how it all works together so well. If computers (hardware/software) worked 1/(really big number HEH), well, we would be set.
This is outrageous, the nobel prize recipients need more diversity! Haven't you been told repeatedly that diversity is a strength, diversity is a strength? Now stop thinking and understand diversity is a strength! Am I the only enlightened individual here?!
I am mad as hell that the nobel prize recipients are judged based on merit and hard work, what about life experience and athletic intelligence? It is time for us to stand up for our right to recieve a nobel prize and organize another "brown out"! We must use threats and boycotts in our struggle against the nobel meritocracy! We will force them into submission, then force them to judge based on race. So all nobel prize recipients will reflect our wonderous, diverse, rainbow paradise we call our one world. Please teach tolerance and multiculturism, PEACE!
Hey, if Economics gets a prize, math should.
What about something like the invention of the reduced instruction set processor (RISC) ? Or the development of OOP? These are not as entrenched in mathematics as algorithms, but significant computer science advances none the less.
Bill Gates is a naughty boo-boo farty brain! *giggle*
Windows crashes so much I feel like a crash-test dummy! *tee-hee*
Tux is a funny penguin! He's cute and he's gonna stomp on Bill Gates (that farty-head!!) *giggle* *chuckle*
Get with the program moderators - its ain't funny unless it makes someone else cry.
PS - "User Friendly" isn't funny either - its lame
*tee-hee* *chuckle* *giggle* *giggle* Now that's funny .. and yes you made me cry ;-P
Since you are refering to the Nobel peace prize, the purpose is to understand how the atoms react. *cough*les*cough*bian*cough*
I was considering winning but I decided not to. I figured I'd let someone else win this year. Tha whole Nobel peace prize is just too easy to get, I'd rather win a proze that involves talent and inteligence.
You said it yourself though, the networking is heavily based on mathematics, e.g. it puts a branch of mathematics to use. It, in itself, isn't anything really new. Of course, I guess the same could be said about biology and chemistry (to physics), but I don't know, the stuff in biology and chemistry is still discovering new stuff. When you draw out the ideas for networking, its really very, very simple. Networking is really just a transit system transcribed in a computer lnaguage. So in that sense, should we also give nobels to those who design our roads? They do it in concrete, computer scientists do it in c :]. I could see giving a nobel prive to the person who designed the algorithm for artifical inteligence though :].
Physics is not mathematics, but it is inherently dependant on mathematics. All the theories whether just hypothesis or accepted, are expressed mathematically. No mathematics -> no physics.
To turn it around at you, my physics teacher (recognizing his possible bias :), told us Newton developed Integral Calculus to solve a physics problem. So physics has definietely contributed to the development of math. Imagine if we didn't have integration how easy math would be! Damn newton to hell.
Anyone who loves science doesn't care if she ends up getting awarded the prize. It's bosh...
OSS isn't a prizeocracy. OSS is built from the contributions of many, large contributions and small contributions. So is the work done by any Nobel recipient.
Let's face it, if Newton were alive today he would lack the social connections needed to win the prize.
Through knowledge we acheive freedom from ignorance, though it is our nature to be ignorant. It is also our nature to be curious. The search for knowledge is noble in and of itself.
I think somebody should give a Nobel prize to the junior high science teacher who teaches students to reason... to look beyond the obvious and to discover things for themselves. Wonderment and Discovery are the nirvana-states for the human mind.
Logic and Purity of Thought are the end, not the means. We must use them and relish in them, and consider the actual knowledge gained to be (as it has been proven to be throughout history) temporary and destined to be revised.
Personally, I think they should give the prize to Darwin every year.
This statement is provably false, since, (unfortunately for those who hold such things to be absolute) Goddel's incompleteness theorem is valid for any axiomatic mathematical or logical framework one cares to devise - this basically means any consistent set of base axioms relies on an outside assumption. Thus, methematics is a product of our perception of this universe.
- AC.
I think the people who actually can translate what they did into english should get an award!
That's not how you spell his name, and that in no way lessen's the point being made. Namely that without Mathematics, no significant progress would have been made in ANY field EVER.
I think good old Albert N. left math out on purpose. He wanted to award more practical inventions than advances in something as abstract as math, so there never was meant to be a Math Nobel. He's not really around to give his opinion on modern-day computing, though. Mathematicians have prizes own their own that compare to the Nobels in prestige.
I enjoied a couple of lectures by 't Hooft recently and i can assure you that he would not even consider such a cheap joke.
The ACM Turing Award is often described as the Computer Science equivalent to a Nobel.
WooWoo - the second Egyptian man to get a nobel prize :) First one: Nagiub Mahfouz (Literature) Second one: This chemistry dude Go Egypt - The birthplace of science (don't believe me? try to build a pyramid)
The nobel prize for physics goes to two Duth physisists. Just like the good old days :-)
It is amazing how often nobel prizes are awarded to europeans, asians and africans who work in the united states. Perhaps the US should consider paying compensations to universities in the rest of the world for draining away their talent. This might be a good thing for young american talent as well.
If somebody uses Linux to bring about world peace, they might send Linus to Stockholm. :)
/. flame w.. discussion would more likely put him in line for a prize for war ;-)
Hmmm... reading the average
How does the better understanding of electoweak forces benefit humanity?
Ask that question again in a century or so's time. At the turn of the century, who would have guessed the benefits of QM?
Why can't something profitable benefit humanity?
Because then, you're doing it to benefit yourself. Any other effect is a bonus. But you can argue this point ad infinitum....
Are you seriously telling me that life would be the same, or better, without computing?
Of course it wouldn't be the same. Better is a matter of opinion - and you can't predict what it would be like anyway. And being on a computer does not, ipso facto, make anything better.
I challenge you to describe the world without computing.
For an example, do what other posters have suggested. But as I said, you can't predict what things would be like (except in general terms).
Actually, they are televised in Sweden...
Not only the award ceremony itself, but also the dinner party afterwards. Imagine 5 hours of looking at people you don't know dressed up in tailcoats and evening gowns, and you get the general idea.
"Hope the legislators are embarassed..."
They would be, if they knew their shame. Not very
familiar with Oklahoma rednecks, are you? They
don't KNOW their level of ignorance, and have no
sense of irony. And I doubt you've written them
(as if they can read) to let them know there's something they should be ashamed of.
Everyone on /. seems to be suggesting their should be a computing prize. I'm going to have go against that. Computer Science is really just an application of mathematics. There isn't a prize for math, so one for computer science doesnt make sense. In addition, I think people on /. would think that Larry Wall (perl author, I forget his last name) or Linus should get an award. This would be like saying well My Electric Company should get the award in physics because tehy created a Nuclear Reactor (e.g. something thats been done with really no new ideas). If there were to be a computer science award, I would guess it would go to people who designed new algorithms, such as RSA, efficient heaping techniques, or whatever. These algorithms are mostly mathematically based, so it wouldn't make sense to have the award without a math category.
Well,... Alfred Nobel set up the prizes for the fields which he deemed important. If there should be a computing prize, then a mathematics should proceed that. How many of the things done these days can be accomplished without mathematics? Computing is based fundamentally on mathematics.
On another note, one should keep in mind that when the Nobel prizes were first established, the things applied to a much larger scale. For instance, prizes were given to the study of the atom. With a better understanding of the atom, the fields of chemistry and biology were advanced. With advancements in biology, medicine progressed. Zewail's research could potentially allow for much progress to be made in biology.
One should remember the following when dealing with the sciences... "biology becomes chemistry, chemistry becomes physics, and physics becomes mathematics." And college student can tell you that...
book to a pre-1970's section and start reading.
It used to suck.
Did it? Sure, there were other things to worry about then, but I maintain that the human condition was in a much better state back then than it is now. Computers only seem to get in the way most of the time. Sure, you can make a small exception in the field of scientific research, but think about all the other things we've lost due to the advent of the personal computer.
People are less productive at work. (Studies have proven this again and again.)
The government finds it much easier to maintain huge databases of people and their habits. It's a simple matter nowadays to find out any information you want about anyone -- something that was out of reach for anyone in the past who couldn't afford a private inspector is now as simple as entering your credit card and waiting for a tidy report of your neighbors' dirty laundry to arrive in your electronic mailbox. We have less privacy than before.
Think of how much time you waste wrestling with your computer every day, every week, every month. Add it all up. Some day, you'll want that time back.
So science has grown us a healthier tomato plant and given us the ability to maintain erections well into our sixties, and computers are a part of that. Small contribution compared to the rather enormous chunks of life and liberty they've usurped from us.
Has your quality of life really improved?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Not only did you get your assumpions wrong (I can easily devise formal systems that are complete and yet quite useful), the complete assertion makes little sense in this context.
Stephan
The Ig Nobels are the prizes given by the Annals of Improbable Research for research that "cannot or should not be reproduced" You can't talk about the nobels without talking about the igs. The link is here
Also interesting is that today we can click to the homepages of the prize winners. Again look at the announcement page. Gerardus 't Hooft having the most interesting home page one of them.
Do they even have a Nobel Prize for *anything* involving computers?
@}--`--
The closest thing to a Nobel in computer science is the Turing Award, given by the ACM.
For mathematics, the closest equivalent is the Fields medal.
Sadly, I think they care more about Holier-than-thou posturing and communtiy standards than Nobel Prizes.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The history of science is strewn with theories that come up with plausible mathematical models that turn out to be wrong experimentally. You might be able to derive chemistry from physics, but you cannot derive physics from mathematics. Math is a useful tool, but it is only a tool.
...so ther will be no 5th annual Nobel Prize party at Stanford Phys Dpt. Sucks. Free food was good last 4 years... :)
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Yup, but if you don't have an umlaut on your keyboard the closest spelling is Guenter.
/peter
I love computers as much as the best nerd, but no way they're worthly of a Nobel. For one thing, pretty much everything in computing is profit-oriented except for OSS, and for another, it doesn't really improve the human condition or anything.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
There's also a quasi-Nobel in biology, which Seymour Benzer has won, among others.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
If the Nobels were awarded solely based on the quality of the work done by these individuals, then perhaps this math trick did not deserve to win. However, there is more to the story.
The high-energy/particle physics community in Europe is currently focusing on using CERN to find the Higgs boson (a.k.a. the "God Particle"). But, to do that (or at least to beat the Americans to it), they need more funding. Two European high-energy/particle physicists winning the Nobel is just the thing to get CERN more money.
------
...I honestly think you're over-estimating the knowledge of the general public.
I'm sure biographers have had a wonderful time guessing what influences in his life led him to favor those particular five fields.
In any case, Nobel himself specified it that way; you can't just add another prize for your favorite field. At best, you could try to establish another "memorial" prize, like the one for economics. This is probably good: if you could, everyone would be agitating for their favorite hero to get the coveted Nobel prize. And if they succeeded, then the prize wouldn't exactly be coveted any more...
As a theoretical chemist, I must object. The interaction of two molecules is a consequence of electrostatics and the quantum mechanical properties of the electron (e.g., exchange and correlation, etc.)
To call these complex interaction "tactile" (while infinitely better than calling them optical) is just plain wrong.
As far as the hardware vs. software issue, I don't think you can apply those paradigms here. The protiens a piece of DNA codes for is a function of structure, and the actual enzyme is far more complex than the protien encoded for. For example, once assembled, a protien may go through several chemical changes before it becomes "activated" (e.g., picking up metal ions or other chemical moieties). So one could say that the protien has a program too.
Since one can call anything in a cell hardware or software to one degree or another, I don't think these analogies help to elucidate anything biological or physical in this case.
Uhh, it's a little more soundly based than that!
Renormalization is a very powerful technique that applies across a broad swath of physics, not just with elementary particles. The supposed "math error" is a recognition that the mathematical theories are incomplete. For example, in QED a calculation of the energy of an electron as a point charged particle gives you an infinite number - that can't be right of course because the electron does not have infinite energy or mass. An examination of where the infinity comes from reveals that it involves stuff at very small distances (and very high particle energies) - the renormalization technique is then to remove the infinity by putting in a high energy or short-distance cutoff in some physically consistent manner. Renormalization is really an augmentation of a mathematically "pretty" theory with some rules for getting practical calculations out of it - and the results are indeed very practical - QED has been verified in some instances to 1 part in 10^12 or so, better than any other basic physical theory we have.
The totally correct theory of course would not treat the electron (or photon) as a point particle but as some extended object (eg. a string). String theories in fact do resolve all these weird infinities, which is why they are so popular. Unfortunately, it's impossible to calculate just about anything practical with string theory (yet).
Energy: time to change the picture.
Proteins have always struck me (who've never taken an organic chem class) as programs, hardware and software in one...
...possibly optical in nature...
I think they're more hardware than software. Some proteins are enzymes, functioning in the regulation of vital chemical processes, others are structural, and that, to me, makes them more analogous to hardware.
Hope this helps.
If they must be software, I think proteins would be object code, while the genetic material (DNA for most of us) would be analogous to source code. Maybe all those introns (DNA segments that are copied in replication but never expressed) are comments, formatting, etc!
Then again, maybe it's all object code, with introns as the logic of the program, while extrons are the data. By this analogy, the extrons are the DNA code that gets transcribed (expressed) into proteins, while the introns dictate under what conditions to transcribe them. Loops and comparisons and subroutines, oh my!
I'd guess tactile, rather than optical. For one, unless one is working at extremely high (and thus damaging/dangerous to fragile DNA) frequencies, electromagnetic radiation (light) is inadequate to resolve the minute details of proteins. They're just too small. That's why electron microscopes and x-ray crystallography and the like are required instead of just visible-light microscopes.
Proteins interact with each other based on their shapes, and the attracting or repelling forces of their constituent parts. When they bind to each other, it works much like a lock and key (when they briefly mesh to facilitate some reaction, then break apart) or interlocking puzzle pieces (when they bind more permanently). Much more of a tactile than an optical event.
"I challenge you to describe the world without computing."
It's already been done... Just open any history
book to a pre-1970's section and start reading.
It used to suck.
-WW
Cplus wrote /. prize to reward the perosn with the highest karma rating.
I think we should have a
Highest? Not a good idea as it benefits the very early subscribers who've had longer time to post. Instead I suggest something like signal to noise ratio which is the number of posts per week that is above the baseline. Then perhaps sort by volume. This way you would reward people who consistently get 4-5 using a few pithy and to the point comments but without continuously responding just to get their posts noticed and their karma up. For your information, in studies of organisational efficiency, people have always found simple metrics to be rather self-defeating as people orient to the artificial goal instead of the organisational objectives. Defining metrics for measuring people is inherently a politicised process. E.g. would you say that having a high IPO is a good measure of success in Silicon Valley? If so, does this encourage people to overhype technology giving the entire industry a bad name in the long term?
Oh well, he (or she) who defines the rules, gets the reward.
LL
Chalst wrote
... ummm ... personal disagreement with a prominant mathematician of the day so deliberately left out mathematics to prevent his rival from gaining any kudos.
No mathematics prize either, and I believe that subject existed then...
The mathematical equivalent is the Fields Medal. The story is that Nobel had a bit of a
As for other posters wanting something similar for computing, I would instead suggest that a computer language which is widely adopted and solves a significant class of problems would be a better choice. Afterwall, what is a language but a systematic way of ennunciating the concepts for a general problem domain? In this way, the greatest mark of respect for Perl and (to some extent) Python has been their rapid adoption by peer programmers. To paraphrase ESR, show them the code and reap the kudos.
LL
't Hooft has a little FAQ on 'Can Theoretical Physics explain paranormal phenomena?' find it at http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/para.html . also, check out his PostScript pictures, he even has one of a 'living black hole'!
had two classes with this guy, so i am excited to finally see him get what he deserved a long time ago.
patrick.
I believe the spelling in Guenter Blobel.
-Splat
No it wasn't.
Some overzealous law enforcement official nabed a guy claiming the film was child porn. The case was thrown out of court. Plus the guy got damanges for being run through the system Thats a long way from OK banning the film.
Granted, still pretty embarassing...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
What about Linus?
A + infinity = B + another infinity
:-)
Therefore A = B.
Yeah, but what about the fact that "infinity" might be "bigger" or "smaller" than the "other infinity"
If he was still alive, I'm sure that Feynman would actually have made quite an interesting TV award recipient! :-) OTOH he'd probably have skipped the ceremony, and been reinventing physics at some topless bar, with Hooft & Veltman's work having been some unpublished margin notes next to his Feynman diagrams!
Yes, I've read it. :-)
There's a new Feynman book just out, based on transcripts of his own words: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
As you say, one of the most fascinating, and also most brilliant minds of this century. If I was selecting a "great figures of history" dinner party, Feyman would definitely be at the head of the table!
Heck, he could have done a musical number on the bongos....heh.
If you haven't read it, take a look at Genius by James Gleick. An excellent supplement to Feynman's own writings. He's truly one of the most fascinating folks of the 20th century.
The Slashdot Prize should be your nickname added in a derogatory fashion to the bottom of every poll. Heh.
A/0 = B/0 {yes, that's dividing both sides by zero}
Therefore A = B.
Needless to say, this technique can, properly applied, solve ALL problems. Physicists are exceedingly unhappy about having to renormalize QED/QCD (which generated it's own set of Nobels for people like Feynman, Weinberg, Glashow, and Salam, among others) and it's widely felt this means the Standard Model is not the last word, even though it gives exquisitely accurate predictions that have been been subsequently borne out in the real world. Unfortunately, trying to apply the same techniques to a quantum theory of gravitation leads to infinities that cannot be renormalized (so far, anyway), so hopes of a TOE (theory of everything) are still nebulous. Nevertheless, a whole bunch of theoretical physicists are devoting their lives to that holy grail and its Nobel.
-- John Dierdorf, Austin TX
funny, simple, and untrue.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
-
Hmm. Personally, I think it should go to someone dealing with the science of networking, which has allowed the Net to keep on even with geometric increases in bandwidth, users, nodes, and loads. As opposed to those who make atomic-size miniature pianos.
But I doubt it will happen. Some of those networking advances use some pretty hefty math.
Will in Seattle
There is a "funny" and simple explanation why there is not math Nobel prize : the wife of Nobel had an affair with a mathematician...
If anyone's interested, Caltech, the home of Professor Zewail, the chem winner, has a press release up as well as video from a press conference from earlier today.
Of course, I'll have to insert a Go Caltech! here (so I hadn't even heard of the place when he did his research in the late 80's... I'm here now.)
You cannot build a computer wihtout using physics! Enough said!!!
No mathematics prize either, and I believe that subject existed then...
The film adaptation of his most famous novel `The Tin Drum' was outlawed in Oklahoma until last year as child pornography.
Hope the legislators are embarassed...
You'd miss... it's an awfully small target..
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
To all the people asking why there is no nobel in math of comp. sci....there have been many people asking the same question about mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aeronautics, etc., for years. Keep in mind that the Nobel prizes were awarded more than 100 years ago, so these fields were very valuable and saved millions of lives many decades ago, and yet did not merit a Nobel.
i story.html
The answer is in the intent and purpose of the prize. Also, the nobel in Economics arrived recently, in the 1960s, and is titled
"The Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." It is in many ways different from the "original prizes".
Check out the history for the answers, and as to why there is no Nobel in mathematics.
http://www.lib.lsu.edu/sci/chem/guides/srs118_h
L.
Well, I don't know about that. There are very few that I think would deserve a "Nobel Prize in Computing". Alan Turing. Claude Shannon. Uh....
Most that happens in this field isn't Nobel calibre stuff. We are in an evolutionary, not revolutionary field.
Anyway, certainly not Linus as Linux, though a revolution organizationally, is not particularly revolutionary technically. It is a very good OS, but at its root, it is merely a clone of something else. You don't get Nobels for copying someone else's work.
I'm not trying to diss anyone here. Linux is a great thing, but what is great about it is the method with which it was created, not the OS itself.
The cake is a pie
Actually the 'whole point' of the Nobel prize was
so that Nobel could be sure that when he died
he would be known as more that the dude that invented dynamite.
Just providing your daily dose of cynicism.
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
t ml)
. html; see also
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 452 October 12, 1999 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
THE 1999 NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS goes to Gerardus 't
Hooft of the University of Utrecht and Martinus Veltman, formerly
of the University of Michigan and now retired, for their work
toward deriving a unified framework for all the physical forces.
Their efforts, part of a tradition going back to the nineteenth
century, centers around the search for underlying similarities or
symmetries among disparate phenomena, and the formulation of
these relations in a complex but elegant mathematical language. A
past example would be James Clerk Maxwell's demonstration that
electricity and magnetism are two aspects of a single electro-
magnetic force.
Naturally this unification enterprise has met with various
obstacles along the way. In this century quantum mechanics was
combined with special relativity, resulting in quantum field theory.
This theory successfully explained many phenomena, such as how
particles could be created or annihilated or how unstable particles
decay, but it also seemed to predict, nonsensically, that the
likelihood for certain interactions could be infinitely large.
Richard Feynman, along with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro
Tomonaga, tamed these infinities by redefining the mass and charge
of the electron in a process called renormalization. Their theory,
quantum electrodynamics (QED), is the most precise theory known,
and it serves as a prototype for other gauge theories (theories which
show how forces arise from underlying symmetries), such as the
electroweak theory, which assimilates the electromagnetic and weak
nuclear forces into a single model.
But the electroweak model too was vulnerable to infinities and
physicists were worried that the theory would be useless. Then 't
Hooft and Veltman overcame the difficulty (and the anxiety)
through a renormalization comparable to Feynman's. To draw out
the distinctiveness of Veltman's and 't Hooft's work further, one
can say that they succeeded in renormalizing a non-Abelian gauge
theory, whereas Feynman had renormalized an Abelian gauge theory
(quantum electrodynamics). What does this mean? A mathematical
function (such as the quantum field representing a particle's
whereabouts) is invariant under a transformation (such as a shift in
the phase of the field) if it remains the same after the transformation.
One can consider the effect of two such transformations, A and B.
An Abelian theory is one in which the effect of applying A and then
B is the same as applying B first and then A. A non-Abelian theory
is one in which the order for applying A and B does make a
difference. Getting the non-Abelian electroweak model to work was
a formidable theoretical problem.
An essential ingredient in this scheme was the existence of
another particle, the Higgs boson (named for Peter Higgs), whose
role (in a behind-the-scenes capacity) is to confer mass upon many
of the known particles. For example, interactions between the Higgs
boson and the various force-carrying particles result in the W and Z
bosons (carriers of the weak force) being massive (with masses of
80 and 91 GeV, respectively) but the photon (carrier of the
electromagnetic force) remaining massless.
With Veltman's and 't Hooft's theoretical machinery in hand,
physicists could more reliably estimate the masses of the W and Z,
as well as produce at least a crude guide as to the likely mass of the
top quark. (Mass estimates for exotic particles are of billion-dollar
importance if Congress, say, is trying to decide whether or not to
build an accelerator designed to discover that particle.) Happily,
the W, Z, and top quark were subsequently created and detected in
high energy collision experiments, and the Higgs boson is now itself
an important quarry at places like Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN's
Large Hadron Collider, under construction in Geneva.
(Recommended reading: 't Hooft, Scientific American, June
1980, excellent article on gauge theories in general; Veltman,
Scientific American, November 1986, Higgs bosons. More
information is available at the Swedish Academy website:
http://www.nobel.se/announcement-99/physics99.h
THE 1999 NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY goes to Ahmed H.
Zewail of Caltech, for developing a technique that enables scientists
to watch the extremely rapid middle stages of a chemical reaction.
Relying on ultra-fast laser pulses, "femtosecond spectroscopy" can
provide snapshots far faster than any camera--it can capture the
motions of atoms within molecules in the time scale of
femtoseconds (10^-15 s).
An atom in a molecule typically performs a single vibration in
just 10-100 femtoseconds, so this technique is fast enough to discern
each and every step of any known chemical reaction. Shining pairs
of femtosecond laser pulses on molecules (the first to initiate a
reaction and the second to probe it) and studying what type of light
they absorb yields information on the atoms' positions within the
molecules at every step of a chemical reaction. With this technique,
Zewail and his colleagues first studied (in the late 1980s) a 200-
femtosecond disintegration of iodocyanide (ICN-->I+CN),
observing the precise moment at which a chemical bond between
iodine and carbon was about to break.
Since then, femtochemistry has revealed a whole new class of
intermediate chemical compounds that exist less than a trillionth of a
second between the beginning and end of a reaction. It has also
provided a way for controlling the courses of chemical reaction and
developing desirable new materials for electronics. It has provided
insights on the dissolving of liquids, corrosion and catalysis on
surfaces (see Physics Today, October 1999, p. 19); and the
molecular-level details of how chlorophyll molecules can efficiently
convert sunlight into useable energy for plants during the process of
photosynthesis. (Official announcement and further info at
http://www.nobel.se/announcement-99/chemistry99
Scientific American, December 1990.)
wow, this is the first I've heard about this. Proteins have always struck me (who've never taken an organic chem class) as programs, hardware and software in one, possibly optical in nature- at least analog.
Does anyone informed care to "illucidate"?
Don't improve the human condition? How does the better understanding of electoweak forces benefit humanity? Why can't something profitable benefit humanity?
Are you seriously telling me that life would be the same, or better, without computing?
I challenge you to describe the world without computing.
Peter Pawlowski
Nobel was a practical man. He himself devised dynamite. He wanted people to be rewarded for things that had direct application to the real world. As much as you might like mathematics, very rarely does it have a direct application to the real world, unless this application is done through Physics, Chemistry or Medicine(which get prizes). Computing is a very practical field. Its applications usually have a very direct and tangible usage. Therefore the field deserves a prize.
Peter Pawlowski
Nobel wanted fields that were practical. As you said, Math is the root. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology spring from Math. However, in itself, Math doesn't have an application, it is pure abstracts. The whole point of the Nobel prize is to award the best 'applicators'.
Peter Pawlowski
If you're going to give a Nobel to Linus, as some are suggesting, you might as well give a Nobel to Gates and Jobs. Those people didn't do Nobel level stuff...
As for your statement about computing being evolutionary, all Science is. You can't get Quarks without Atoms. You can't get Mitochondrea without cells. You can't multiplay before adding. All Science is evolutionary. However, I still believe that Computer Science is a field that deserves a stand-alone Nobel. Not much we can do about it, though.
Peter Pawlowski
Around one hundred years ago, or whenever Alfred Nobel gave all his money to the Nobel Foundation, the computer was not forseen. I propose a new addition to the array of prizes, a prize for computing. Some of the most influential advances in technology happen in or because of the field of computing. Shouldn't the people who spend their lives bettering the field, which very directly affects science, get a Nobel prize as well?
I say yes.
Guess who I'd nominate first?
Peter Pawlowski
I think we should have a /. prize to reward the perosn with the highest karma rating. The prize could be a licensed copy of linux (what?). We should also reward the person who gets the most first posts and says nothing with a good slap in the face.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
The femptosecond reaction work he has done is truely revolutionary. I'd like it to see some more features in a scientific american-ish view of the work of all the awardees. Does such a place exist?
-- Moondog
Then Dennis Richie is the obvious choice. He invented C and used C to invent UNIX
nuff said?
I've been sleeping a lot during Quantum Field Theory last year. But what I understood from their renormalization theory is that they ignored infinite components in the integrals since they were more or less fixed numbers.
not:
A/0 = B/0
but:
A + infinity = B + another infinity
Therefore A = B.
Just as tricky btw, but certainly not applicable to every other problem.
Ivo
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
Ahh, the Nobel Prizes. Now this is an event worthy of seeing. Of course, since I can't attend in person, I won't be able to. It'd be nice if they were televised:
Announcer: "And the Nobel for Physics goes to...."
(Cut to shot of nervous hopefuls)
Announcer: "Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman, for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics!"
(The duo look surprised and go up to the stage to claim their prize. The audience cheers happily, though those who were not nominees have no idea what the announcer said)
Veltman: "What can I say? This is indeed a proud moment for us both. We'd like to thank everyone in our lab for helping us. And our families, for supporting us morally."
Hooft: "And Elvis."
(Veltman just gives Hooft an odd look)
Announcer: "And there you have it. Coming up next, the nobel prize for Chemistry! Right after this word from our sponsor...."
-Denor
I guess you could look at it this way:
DNA is like source code RNA are like the object files proteins are the compiled binaries.
You could think of these signals as--I guess--equivalent to magic numbers in UNIX?
The hardware/software question is kind of hard to tackle with this analogy, though--it kind of breaks down. I guess in an everyday sense, they are hardware--they are physical entities that move around and sometimes have structural functions and they function by physically interacting with other substances. But I think it's more fruitful to make them analogous to objects, in an OOP sense.
Apparently the idea of signal sequences has been around for about 20 years.
see how your two molecules would react.
't Hooft is also known for the 'Holographic Hypothesis'. This is the bizarre sounding idea that in some way space is 2d rather than 3d and may in fact have a lot of resemblances to a 2d cellular automaton like Conway's Game of Life. Strangely this isn't idle speculation but seems to be built into General Relativity from the beginning. I have a few notes and references at my web site. The papers are a bit technical but the results are cool.
-- SIGFPE
So, not 't Hooft... sorry.
A/0 = B/0 {yes, that's dividing both sides by zero}
Therefore A = B.
Or rather, a + A/0 = b + B/0, so a=b (Feynman, Schwinger, Tomonaga, 1947).
But you could ask whether this is really so much worse than A.0 = k B.0 (Newton, Leibniz c.1680).
In both cases, once you have found the right way to show that the cancellations work for all finite values, the limit starts to look plausible (and you can start isolating just what situations would break it). 't Hooft gave the fundamental proof that all gauge theories genuinely are renormalisable (including the electroweak theory and QCD).
The important thing about renormalisation is that the problem isn't with the interactions, it's that the set of basis functions that you're using to expand space are getting more and more nearly orthogonal to reality. That means you end up with something rather like a very very ill-conditioned matrix to invert. (If you like, this is the O^(-1) (B-A)). You don't have to expand in such a bad basis, though. 't Hooft was able to show that if certain symmetry properties hold then all the nasties cancel, whatever the basis expansion.
So it probably isn't still true that all physicists are "exceedingly unhappy" about renormalisation; but a better sequence of basis functions for thinking about small-scale reality would certainly be nice.
't Hooft also found a quite unexpected mathematical gauge symmetry between bosons and fermions, which probably deserves a Nobel prize by itself. We still don't know whether the laws of nature have this supersymmetry or not, but the idea has fascinated theoretical physicists for 25 years, and is built in to superstrings in their very foundations.
A thoroughly worthy winner.
To avoid Slashdotting Sweden, the primary US mirror is http://nobel.sdsc.edu/announcement-99 , and the announcement is also mirrored at several SUNsites.