Particle Physicists Share the Physics Nobel 67
somegeekynick writes "The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has been jointly awarded to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago 'for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics,' and Makoto Kobayashi of the KEK lab and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, both in Japan, 'for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.'"
Curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Curious (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting that they should award a Nobel for particle physics now, when there's a very real possibility that discoveries at the LHC will make an outstanding case for another within just a few years.
Even if the LHC changes how we view the subatomic world, their contributions can't be denied. I even think that it was on purpose: knowing that the LHC will make more discoveries worthing of a Nobel, they decided to award it now, as not to award again on an even shorter period of time.
I'm not sure if I agree with the Committee politics of awarding the prizes after many years, "to let the theory settles", although I agree it is a good way to avoid things like the cold fusion. But I'm sure whoever finds the Higgs using the LHC will be awarded the Nobel 10 years later.
Re:Nambu ok, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly. The prize was awarded "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature", that is, for realizing that CP-violation can only take place if there are at least three families of fermions.
Cabibbo made a theory of quark flavours with two families (predicting the charm-quark). Kobayashi and Maskawa found out that with two families there is no CP-violation, and that one needs a third quark family. This last reason is the one which the comitee mentions.
Whether Cabibbo should be awarded a price for the prediction of the charm-quark is another story.
Re:Bose anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bose had bad luck. He only had one big, Nobel-worthy work (Bose-Einstein statistics).. but it came about during a generation when there were quite a lot of great discoveries being made in Physics. But Raman did get one, so Indian physicists of that generation aren't entirely unrepresented.
Gandhi was as much a given prizewinner as anyone, but his tragic death came too shortly after independence.
Re:Bose anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Half of the particles are named after Bose. I think that's a much better deal than getting a price that will be forgotten in a few hundred years.
Gender naming (Score:2, Interesting)