Slashdot Mirror
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." "
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?"
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.)
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...
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
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
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
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.