Well, it is that time of year. Lots of people are pretending not to wait anxiously by the phone: This whole week sees the announcement of the Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, along with the Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) in Economic Sciences, all in memory of Alfred Nobel.
The physics one has just been announced. This year’s goes to Roy J. Glauber (1/2), John L. Hall (1/4), and Theodor W. Hänsch (1/4). Some of the press release:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2005 with one half to
Roy J. Glauber
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA“for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”
and one half jointly to
John L. Hall
JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA andTheodor W. Hänsch
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany“for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”.
Here’s a pdf link to a longer, more detailed description of the quantum optics this year’s physics prize is about.
The Physiology/Medicine prize was announced yesterday, and it went to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren. Here is the press release:
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2005
jointly to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren,
for their discovery of“the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease”
Marshall is from the University of Western Australia Nedlands, Australia, and Warren is from Perth, Australia.
A link to the summary is here.
(How come there’s no nice layman’s summary for the physics one at nobelprize.org? Sigh. [Update: Mark tells me that it comes a day or so later.])
Tomorrow: Chemistry!
Friday: Peace!
Monday: Economics!
Sometime Later: Literature!
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Beat you.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Curses!!
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Not only that, Sean had a fun laser puzzle.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:05 am
The summary usually comes a day or so later.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:13 am
People worry about the Nobel prize too much. Well, the money, I can understand, but the ‘honour’, I don’t think people should get too excited about.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:30 am
Ben Lillie: When it comes to fun, Sean’s the Man. I don’t mess with Sean.
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Adam. You’re absolutely right.
…. is that your phone ringing? Look at him go!
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 10:47 am
OK, this may sound really stupid but I have to ask. How does a Nobel nominee know that The Call is authentic and not from a prankster? Does some form of caller ID work for calls from Sweden? Even so, a malicious prankster with a like-minded friend from Sweden could arrange to have the wrong person called.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:52 am
Clifford: I’d be excited about the money, sure (I could probably find something to spend it on) but there is clearly more brilliance about than there are Nobel prize places, so there’s bound to be a pretty large element of luck, too, for many of the winners.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:58 am
citrine, I was thinking about this just yesterday. Got a bit worried thinking about it actually. In the end I thought it would be a great book or movie idea: A regular, competent physicist who’s done nothing Nobel worthy gets the call one morning. His/her first reaction is “there must be some mistake”…then its “who’s playing a joke on me?”… and it quickly turns into an excellent drama, with comedic touches, serious points to make about trust, the nature of one’s grasp on reality, the nature of the awards process, etc, with great insider looks into how science and scientists work….(Well, I gave the idea away…..there goes my fortune…Novelists or Screenwriters, please mention me in your Nobel/Booker or Oscar speech. )
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 11:01 am
Adam. Sure, it is good to acknowledge that there is good work out there that can be given a prize too. I don’t think that this means that we should demean the value of the prize at the same time. I think we can have a prize for something, and still be aware that there are worthy non-prize winners. We’re complicated beings….it’s not hard to do, right?
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I’m not complaining that people like to win these things, just that I think that the level of excitement attached to them (particularly from the general public, but also from the scientific community) exceeds what logic suggests it should. I don’t know how many physicists really are on anything like tenterhooks (particularly given the lag between doing the work and getting the prize, on average) but, given that it’s something of a crapshoot for most of them, it shouldn’t be something they worry about too much. If it happens, great, but it’s not like the Oscars where the field is narrowed to only five or so nominees (incidentally, I think that the Oscars is the most vacuous piece of crap on television, and that’s really saying something).
October 4th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Adam. Excitement has nothing to do with logic. Much of what you say might be true in spirit, but it’s fun! Might you be taking this all a little too seriously?
Repeat after me:
Calm Blue Ocean.
Calm Blue Ocean.
Cheers,
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 11:41 am
I find prizes, and the excitement surrounding them, pretty nauseating (incidentally, this is especially true when it’s me getting the plaudits). I’ve never been a particular fan of people who need recognition, or who like to bask in the glow of admiration (both of which I find particularly irritating when it is me that is the subject). One’s own satisfaction should be the main motivator (aside from the basic stuff like getting a job that pays money to live on, etc), and I don’t understand those people who fawn over others or those people who enjoy being the subject of that sort of attention.
I’m certainly not one of the people who’s anti-competition. I also like winning, like it a lot. What I don’t like is the backslapping that follows.
October 4th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Adam. Good. All those shallow people should feel ashamed of themselves.
But is it not you who’s draping all that baggage onto the Nobel prize? Maybe the laureates and most of the people are not liking the glow any more than you would. Probably they did not go out seeking it. Maybe they’re just happy to have done the work, and this is an unexpected bonus to them.
So all I’m saying is that you’re probably not alone in your thoughts, but maybe it is still ok to celebrate with prizes and the getting of prizes, etc, as long as we are careful about what they really mean.
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
OK, this may sound really stupid but I have to ask. How does a Nobel nominee know that The Call is authentic and not from a prankster? Does some form of caller ID work for calls from Sweden? Even so, a malicious prankster with a like-minded friend from Sweden could arrange to have the wrong person called.
My former boss (Bill Phillips) won a share of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, and we asked him about this. He said that the call (which came to his hotel room at 3am local time) came from someone he knew, on behalf of the Nobel Committee. There was also a Swedish physicist at the conference who was charged with getting Bill’s hotel room number (which was an amusing conversation) so they could call him directly, who provided extra confirmation.
I’m not sure how they handle it with people who don’t have Swedish colleagues who can be recruited to make the call, but I imagine they do something similar. They know who’s getting the prize well in advance of the announcement, so they have time to arrange something.
October 4th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
I thinki it might be a lot more fun if a SWAT (or some such) team of five finds you whereever you are on the planet, parachutes in, blows up your bedroom door with explosives, and storms into your room training white-light spotlights at you. Assuming you’re still alive from the shock, a Swedish emissary with a perfectly tailored suit and an impossibly thin briefcase comes in through the dust and smoke, intermittently cutting through the spotlight beams, and tells you the news with a slightly accented level tone, ending with a brief, crisp smile.
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Adam,
I dunno about you, but if somebody wins the Nobel prize, I won’t mind at all if he or she go out and paint the town red, screaming like a madman about winning it.
Like they say, chill dude. We are not all idealists in this business, sacrifing 6 figures paychecks for the good of mankind
. Narcissism is a Good Thing (TM). Just ask Sean, though only on Fridays .
October 4th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
I doubt that an objection to nauseating backslapping and adulation is ‘idealism’. It’s just my own feeling about it (which is that it makes me somewhat sick). As for the money, people are worth what they can get, as far as I am concerned (and they should try to get as much as they can).
My other concern about the Nobel prizes is that they have too high a profile; this is liable to lessen the appreciation on at least the part of the general public for the much larger set of brilliance than that subset rewarded by Nobel awards. Maybe I’ve met the wrong physicists, but I don’t see that the chance to win a Nobel prize is anywhere near the main motivation they have to achieve greatness, so they don’t serve the purpose of encouraging greater efforts, particularly. Although I’m not, in any case, saying that the whole thing shouldn’t happen, I’m saying that it leaves me cold and that, in my opinion, it’s overcelebrated (that was the content of my first post; the rest has been explanation that I wouldn’t have given had I not been replied to). It’s not like this is one of my main irritations in life, however. The Oscars, however, that could be a different matter.
October 4th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Adam said: “Maybe I’ve met the wrong physicists, but I don’t see that the chance to win a Nobel prize is anywhere near the main motivation they have to achieve greatness, so they don’t serve the purpose of encouraging greater efforts, particularly.”
Sorry for replying again Adam, but that is not the point of them. We are not doing physics to get the prize, any more than someone who runs for a bus, or for their health, is hoping that there’ll be a press conference and an Olympic gold medal waiting for them when they finish their run!
“It’s chocolate, it does not have to have a point”, to quote Charlie in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. The Tim Burton film. I don’t know it it’s in the book. Never read it. (I’m a philistine.)
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
I had a funny conversation this morning in a cafe on my way to work. There were a couple of people at the next table talking about the Nobel Prizes, and I (perhaps foolishly) stuck my nose in when one of them said that Marshall had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “No,” chirped I, “it was the Nobel prize in medicine.” One of them got up to leave, and the other remained and struck up a conversation.
It turns out that he was from a family of people who had all suffered from ulcers before the role of H. pylori was discovered, and he was crowing about the prize and talking about how Marshall had had to fight conventional wisdom for so long: “They all told him ‘No, no, no! ‘The world is flat! Go away!’ You know, Galileo got excommunicated for saying the world is round,” etc. And he started saying that everything that science says is wrong, that scientists don’t know what they’re talking about and that this story proves it.
This is one of my pet peeves: reflexive disbelief. It’s just as intellectually lazy as reflexive belief, but people think it makes them rebels or something. So I objected:
Me: If you believe this guy is right, then obviously you think some scientists do know what they’re talking about.
Him: Well, okay, but a lot of it…
Me: The thing is, at any time a lot of what we think we know is wrong. The problem is that we don’t know which parts are wrong and which are right. We just have to work with the knowledge that we have now.
Him: [looking suspicious] I guess….
Me: But the whole point of science is that when we get new evidence, we can throw out ideas that have been proven wrong.
Him: [still not convinced] Well, you know, people used to believe that cherries and milk were poison….
Then somehow we were onto the subject of the Meirs appointment.
I never did bother to correct him about Galileo….
October 4th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Clifford:
I know that we don’t pursue physics for the chance of winning a prize (perhaps I hadn’t made that obvious). My whole point is that I think it’s overblown, is all (and also that, if there really were any people waiting by their telephone hoping for the call, they shouldn’t be so wrapped up in it, not that I believe that people really were like that, not sensible ones, at least).
I also don’t fully understand why the recipients have to be alive. Sure, it’s probably a bit late to be awarding one to Newton, but if, say, Higgs died before the Higgs particle was discovered, it’ll be a bit odd to give it to (say) Goldstone, Anderson and Kibble and no Higgs, even if the money won’t be awarded. Pretty soon, as a theorist, just living long enough to be in the running for a Nobel prize might be reward enough in itself.
October 4th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Adam,
Ah. Fair enough. But Prizes are there not just for the physicists : it’s a chance for the general public to learn about science. And therein, I believe, lies the their greatest value : they are a wonderful instrument of outreach. A certain amount of hero worship goes into it of course, but the public loves this sort of things, whether we (as scientists) like it or not.
I agree with the “alive” thing though. But the Swedes like their winners breathing
and it’s their money!
October 4th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
What WOULD happen, though, if an Prize recipient dropped dead of a heart attack when his or her name was announced? They don’t give postumous prizes, but they were alive when they got it, and it’d seem really, really mean to take it away after they died. Anyone know if there’s a contingency plan for that sort of event?
October 4th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Thanks Chad (post # 16)! I’ve always wondered about this and I’ve met a few laureates but was never brave enough to ask this question. Something I *did* ask a laureate was whether a nominee’s controversial beliefs outside his/ her immediate line of work would be a disqualification for the prize. He said no.
But imagine a plausible (but extremely) unlikely scenario: the nominee publicly espouses (insert the most horrendous belief you can think of, a Hitlerian worldview, if you can’t come up with something equivalent). Maybe the nominee was pretty quiet upto this point, preaching only to a select few. But in the light of publicity, it all comes out. What then? Would it have a different weightage from a nominee in Econ, Medicine, Peace or Lit. than from a Physicist or Chemist?
October 4th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
Maybe physics needs its own Hall of Fame shrine, in the sense of documenting and respecting all of those who have contributed over the course of human history. The Nobel remains the dominant award in the same way the Oscars reflect something that really probably isnt’ there anymore. How is the Oscar so much more important than the Golden Globe? Well other than the dollar value not much. Were there other great (yes and not Templetons either) prizes/awards that acknowledged achievement would the Nobel become lost in the shuffle?
October 4th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
The prize can be awarded posthumously, but only if the recipient dies after being anounced.
Apparently, after Ghandi died (without receiving any N.prize for peace) the committee considered to change the rule, but they decided it would be better not to do it…
October 4th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
In a recent review of Freeman Dyson of Feynman’s newest book, (www.nybooks.com/articles/18350) he’s talking about the feeling of Feynman towards the Nobel price:
Before he went to Sweden, when the award of his Nobel Prize was first announced, he made disparaging remarks about the prize and about the formal ceremonies that he would have to endure in Stockholm. He said that he had made up his mind to refuse the prize, until his wife told him that refusing it would bring him even more unwelcome publicity than accepting it. He detested formal ceremonies, and he especially detested the snobbery associated with kings and queens and royal palaces. But then, after he went to Stockholm and experienced the warmth of a Swedish welcome, he wrote a note that is as close as he ever came to expressing his emotions in public. He describes how the prize had led to a deluge of messages:
Reports of fathers turning excitedly with newspapers in hand to wives; of daughters running up and down the apartment house ringing neighbors’ door bells with news; victorious cries of “I told you so” by those having no technical knowledge—their successful prediction being based on faith alone; from friends, from relatives, from students, from former teachers, from scientific colleagues, from total strangers….
In each I saw the same two common elements. I saw in each, joy; and I saw affection (you see, whatever modesty I may have had has been completely swept away in recent days).
The Prize was a signal to permit them to express, and me to learn about, their feelings….
For this, I thank Alfred Nobel and the many who worked so hard to carry out his wishes in this particular way.
And so, you Swedish people, with your honors, and your trumpets, and your king—forgive me. For I understand at last—such things provide entrance to the heart. Used by a wise and peaceful people they can generate good feeling, even love, among men, even in lands far beyond your own. For that lesson, I thank you.
October 5th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I’ve always wondered about this and I’ve met a few laureates but was never brave enough to ask this question. Something I *did* ask a laureate was whether a nominee’s controversial beliefs outside his/ her immediate line of work would be a disqualification for the prize. He said no.
Definitely no, given how many Nobel laureates are just batshit crazy by the time they pick up their prizes.
The other interesting thing about the notification process is that they contact the laureate directly, and go to great lengths to do so, without telling anyone else. Bill Phillips got the call in his California hotel room at 3 am; the rest of NIST found out when the phone started ringing off the hook. Even Bill’s wife wife heard about it first on the radio in the car on her way to work.