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Science

Nobel Prize for Physics Announced 138

Posted by CmdrTaco from the smart-people-winning-stuff dept.
what_the_frell writes "According to this Fox News article, two Americans and a Russian won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for research in the field of quantum physics. The trio conducted research in superconductivity and superfluidity, detailed in this official Nobel article."
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Nobel Prize for Physics Announced More

Nobel Prize for Physics Announced

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  • Two American citizens and a Russian won the 2003 Nobel Prize (search) in physics for their work in the bizarre field of quantum physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said

    It's interesting that the RSAS thinks that quantum physics is bizarre. Thanks Fox.

  • Nationality (Score:4, Informative)

    by iworm ( 132527 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:30AM (#7152951)
    Not that it really matters, but it's actually two Russians and a Brit (although two of them do hold dual citizenship with the US).

    Point is, if you're going to bother mentioning it in the story, then get it right. Otherwise (maybe better) don't mention it as it doesn't really matter...

    • 6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other (Score:5, Informative)

      by tomzyk ( 158497 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:41AM (#7153045) Journal
      Directly [clipped] from the article:

      Alexei A. Abrikosov
      Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, USA... born 1928 (75 years) in Moscow

      Vitaly L. Ginzburg
      P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia... born 1916 (87 years) in Moscow

      Anthony J. Leggett
      University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA... born 1938 (65 years) in London

      So, yes, 2 Russians and a Brit... But also 2 Americans and a Russian. Don't be so picky. I was born in Erie Pennsylvania, but I tell everyone I'm from Cleveland Ohio because that's where I live and work now.
      • So, yes, 2 Russians and a Brit... But also 2 Americans and a Russian.

        Look at where they were when they did the research they got the prize for.

        "The decisive theory explaining how the atoms interact and are ordered in the superfluid state was formulated in the 1970s by Anthony Leggett."
        (http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/2003/press . html)

        If you look at his CV [uiuc.edu] you will see:

        1967-1983 University of Sussex.

        (conflating lectureships and professorships here)

        So in the 70s, when he formulated his t

    • The two are American citizens, both live in Illinois.

  • Connected to the other prize (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TripleA ( 232889 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:32AM (#7152968) Homepage
    The technology of supraconductors is interrestingly enough used in the magnetic camera that gave the medical prize.

  • MRI week? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just yesterday: Nobel Prize for medicine awarded for MRI technology [slashdot.org].

    Today, from the article:

    Superconducting material is used, as an example, to produce powerful magnetic fields for the standard body scanning technique called magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

    Is this a theme this year?

  • Superfluidity (Score:5, Funny)

    by whizzzo ( 308797 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:34AM (#7152985)
    The winners will continue their research into superfluidity this evening, at the bar.
  • Nobel Prize winners should be people whose invention "benefitted the whole mankind". Did these guys theoretical research achieve that?

    MRI is a great application but how much it is due to the actual theory? Incidently, the inventors of MRI already got their prize this year.

    I think this prize was given out too early anyway. The jury is still out when it comes to the widespread applicability of high temperature superconductors.

    ** BEGIN RANT **

    On a completely another note, I must confess that it often

    • When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?

      You know, in high school, I took Physics 101 and Calculus 101 at the same time (college level courses as a senior in high school). There is, as anyone who took both surely realizes, a lot of overlap between the two.

      I always characterized the difference as empirical vs. theoretical. Calculus is concerned with describing how things move and react while Physics is concerned with measuring and interpreting how things move and react..
      • Physics is concerned with measuring and interpreting how things move and react...

        Ah, yes, would you go as far as saying that the interpretation is incomplete unless it is formulated mathematically?

        • Ah, yes, would you go as far as saying that the interpretation is incomplete unless it is formulated mathematically?

          I would agree that the interpretation many times includes a good deal of mathematical formulation, but I would hesitate to go so far as to indicate that it requires a rigorous mathematical formulation.

          Many Physics problems do not require a rigorous mathematical representation to prove a solution; A large number of interesting and revolutionary discoveries in Physics do not have a mathematic
          • Superconductivity was observed before there was a mathematical background. Not understood.

            Who do you think really discoverd gravity: Newton after realizing the 1/r^2 nature or the fist sapient man dropping a rock on his foot?

            Usage without understanding isnt worth very much. And certainly not a nobel price.
            Onnes got his not for his "discovery" of superconductivity, but because he created a process to liquify helium, thus revolutioning deep temperature physics.

            Von Klitzing is another example: He didnt just
    • I suggest you take a look at End of Science by John Horgan. I'm reading it now and most of the book is about exactly what you're ranting on. What's happening is we're getting to the point where empirical science is becoming impossible (either finacially or practically) in the field of physics. Because of this, a great deal of physics is headed towards philosophy. Everyone's conjecturing, but no one can (dis)prove anything.

      I don't know if I agree with everything in the book, but it's a great read.
      • Thanks for the book tip.

        I haven't read the book, but at first glance it sounds rather odd thing to say that physical science is becoming impossible. There are vast gaps in the very fundamentals of even a venerable field such as the solid state physics. New techniques have such as femtosecond laser spectroscopy and coincidence electron spectroscopies are being developed. I do not see any practical reasons to say that empirical science is dying. If there are practical problems with the more esoteric fields

    • Re:Benefitted the mankind? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dummkopf ( 538393 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:04AM (#7153232) Homepage
      Let me elaborate a bit on your rather narrow-minded comment: superconductivity (SC) was discovered 1911 by K. Onnes. Not until 1935 F. London came up with a macroscopic description of the effect which explained the magnetic part of the problem, but not much further than that. 18 years leater in 1953 Ginzburg and Landau came up with a phenomenological approach (GL theory) which actually explained MANY things without the knowledge of the underlying microscopic mechanism. This was a great breaktrough because you could actually start to PREDICT things without knowing how it really worked in the guts. In particular they were of great importance in realizing that there are two types of SCs (I and II) from which only type II are relevant for industry. Type I "die" soon with small fields and have transition temperatures which are only a few K. Even though in 1957 Bardeen, Cooper and Shriffer (BCS) explained the microscopic theory of SC, GL theory remained one of the most important approaches to understand novel phases, such as the intermediate (Abrikosov) vortex phase in type II SCs. Type II SCs are important in industry because they remain superconducting for high fields. Problem is, you get vortices in the system. Abrikosov (who got also a Nobel medal) was the first to predict that these vortices make a lattice and constitute a NOVEL state of matter (within matter). In the meantime one has als high-T_c superconductors (the stuff MRI machines use) and for these NEW materials there is NO understanding on how SC works. BUT for these materials the Ginzburg Landau theory still applies and often makes predictions on how things will behave. Therefore THEORY IS IMPORTANT and these gentlemen deserve the award. As for Legett: he made important contributions in the world of superfluids as well as Bose Einstein condensation. IMHO his work on quantum tunneling with dissipation is the best. To summarize: no MRI with no GL theory.

      As for your little rant: Theory and Experiment (and today also computational physics) should be COMPLEMENTARY to each other. You find many theory papers which do not seem to be close to reality. This does not mean they are garbage. It means that they are ahead of industrial applications. Often one sees experimental papers which simply say: "I measured this and look how cute it is". but they lack of ANY physical understanding. Now you tell me, which one is worse? Clearly Math is the language of Physics. But you need to know how to write in a languagel before you can create a nice poem... If as an experimentalist you do not even know how to "write", how can you then understand the theory pertinent to your experiment? All you are at that stage is an observer... and as we all know: everyone can observe.

      It seems as if some experimentalists carry a large chip on the shoulder???
      • Great reply, dummkopf (I *hate* calling you that, but it's your moniker ;-). I worked in Abrikosovs group at Argonne from 1994-1996 as a graduate student - and I was then an experimentalist, working on imaging in real time the magnetic vortices he had predicted in the 1950s. The man was in my lab *often* and nearly every day he communicates with the experimentalists. He is a true physicist of the old school: keeping his hands in both theoretical and expermental aspects. How foolish for anyone to criticiz
        • I am glad to read that another physicist agrees with my opinions. It always amazes me the things some people write without educating themselves and it hurts to see they get a Score of 4 for that.

          As an undergraduate in Zurich I once met Abrikosov because the "Russian Mafia" (Ivlev, Lesovik, Feigelman, ....) seems to like this town. Really nice guy.

          Cute side story: the original paper of Abrikosov predicts a square vortex lattice. He made a little mistake...
      • It seems as if some experimentalists carry a large chip on the shoulder???

        It's because we face unfair competition [slashdot.org] from the theoretical groups. This, incidentally, is driving us to corporate money which, in large amounts, always damages your objectivity. See what has happened to the biochem/drug research.

        Theory and Experiment (and today also computational physics) should be COMPLEMENTARY to each other.

        I fully agree with this. Yet, if you pick up a copy of Phys. Rev. B or even PRL and compare the number

        • I've submitted several purely empirical papers to PRB and a couple papers to PRL and, with one exception, they came back with a requirement to include DFT calculations - just to "strengthen the discussion". Huh? As if one could just simply go and start doing ab initio calculations. For some reason, the same rules do not seem to apply to purely theoretical papers. No-one's asking these guys to go and conduct some experiments just to "strengthen their discussion".

          I beg to differ. If you submit a paper to
          • because it *is* easier to measure a novel effect

            Having an experimental setup that no-one else in the world has is certainly a one way of getting a Nature of Science paper. However, to say that it's easier is quite an overstatement - unless you think it's easy to get funding for a prototype system costing several millions of USD.

            I don't think theory is evil. I'm just pissed off because experimentalists in general get dissed by the theoreticians because we "don't really understand the physics" (ie. we can

            • Having an experimental setup that no-one else in the world has is certainly a one way of getting a Nature of Science paper. However, to say that it's easier is quite an overstatement - unless you think it's easy to get funding for a prototype system costing several millions of USD.

              As a theorist I *have* done experiments next to my analytical and computational work. And let me tell you: running a Quantum Design Magnetometer or a Princeton VSM is a piece of cake...

              Yes, it is an ego thing, too. So what?
    • I think the point of asking for a theoretical treatment is very important. The theoretical treatment allows to generalise the results, and a well developed theoretical analysis of the results within the relevant framework is allways helpful to reveal new patterns, if there are any.

      Anyhow, theoretical representation will most likely come after the empirical work. In the three major physical divisions (newtonian physics, electromagnetism/relativity and quantum mechanics) each theoretical framework became co

    • > When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?

      More than a 100 years ago. Physics is not about just writing a formula on the blackboard, or only making a contraption with lots of buttons. It's about understanding nature and how it works, using various means, both theoretical and experimental.

      Lisa, in the house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

    • MRI is a great application but how much it is due to the actual theory? Incidently, the inventors of MRI already got their prize this year.

      Come on. How would one even use a MRI machine without any theory? One need to have an theoretical understanding of how the different tissues influence the magnetic field they are in, a theory to seperate the noise from the relevant signals, and then a mathematical (theoretical) algorithm to make a 3D image out of these signals based on the original physical theory of

      • One need to have an theoretical understanding of how the different tissues influence the magnetic field they are in, a theory to seperate the noise from the relevant signals

        Wasn't this years Nobel Price in Medicine given just for this particular theory?

        My point was: how did this years Physics Nobel Prize winner's theory benefit the whole mankind?

        I have no trouble with this winner if the theory can be used, for instance, to predict something concrete such as for predicting which materials would be good

        • Wasn't this years Nobel Price in Medicine given just for this particular theory? My point was: how did this years Physics Nobel Prize winner's theory benefit the whole mankind?

          I guess we then agree that that the MRI technology is a benefite the whole of mankind. If you had looked a bit closer you would have noticed that this years Nobel Prize in Physics was for work done in the 1950's. These theories was then studied by the people who got the Nobel prize in Medicine in the 1960's and they did their b

    • If you RTFA, you will/would see that Ginzburg got the prize for contributions to low-temperature superconductivity made in the 1950s. And you will hopefully agree that superconductivity as such is quite important.

      On your other note: Personally, I only know Leggett (from my time at the UIUC). In my view, he represents what one can admire in a theoretician; in some sense, he is above this world: shy with other people and bold in developing new theories (and very british). Pure experimentalists may be usefu

      • And you will hopefully agree that superconductivity as such is quite important.

        It has potential to be quite important. That potential is still mostly un

        can admire in a theoretician; in some sense, he is above this world: shy with other people and bold in developing new theories (and very british).

        Pure experimentalists may be useful, but without theoretical grasp they are no great physicists.

        I don't quite know what to make of this sentence.

        Firstly, what would you qualify as "theoretical grasp"? In

    • Re:Benefitted the mankind? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by menscher ( 597856 ) <menscher+slashdot@u i u c . e du> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @12:24PM (#7153937) Homepage Journal
      First off, congrats to Tony. The locals have been saying it was only a matter of time before he was awarded a Nobel.

      Nobel Prize winners should be people whose invention "benefitted the whole mankind". Did these guys theoretical research achieve that?

      Do you think the experimentalists would be doing anything other than flailing about without great theorists like Anthony Leggett? In an awards ceremony for Tony in the physics department [uiuc.edu] at UIUC [uiuc.edu] a few months ago, I heard experimentalists telling of how important their interaction with him was. How most of their major contributions to science stemmed from discussions with him. How he'd politely tell them when they were wasting their time (but were welcome to continue, since they might discover something new and unexpected, like that the 0th law of thermodynamics was wrong).

      When the condensed matter theory group was moved to a different building, the experimentalists were happy that they'd have theorists walking past their labs. There was even a video [uiuc.edu] [warning, 156M] of them trying to catch the theorists in big nets and force them to do calculations.

      When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?

      Physics has always been about understanding. From my theorist perspective, it pisses me off to see all the experimentalists that get PhDs without having the slightest clue of what they've done. They have something strange happen in an experiment, manage to reproduce it, and they've gotten themselves a PhD. It's then a theorist's job to figure out why. Of course, I'm exaggerating here. I know several good experimentalists.

      Now for my own little rant:
      Why does everyone constrain physics into Theory and Experiment? What about those of us that do Computational Physics? You know, like lattice QCD [fnal.gov]? Our work is necessary and important, but I can guarantee it'll never get a Nobel.

      Hrmm... now I'm gonna have to listen to one of my friends say "My advisor got the Nobel Prize and yours didn't."

      • From my theorist perspective, it pisses me off to see all the experimentalists that get PhDs without having the slightest clue of what they've done.

        Or Nobel prices...

        Why does everyone constrain physics into Theory and Experiment? What about those of us that do Computational Physics? You know, like lattice QCD? Our work is necessary and important, but I can guarantee it'll never get a Nobel.

        Hey! What about spin glasses!

        I am happy to see the physics community speak up when others spill out some unf
      • <quote>
        Our work is necessary and important, but I can guarantee it'll never get a Nobel.
        <unquote>

        Computational physics is <sh*t|bull|sh*t>. That's why it'll never get a Nobel prize.
        • Computational physics is <sh*t|bull|sh*t>.

          Oh, and I suppose you know how to do nonperturbative QCD some other way?

          For the uninformed among you, a large portion of experimental [high-energy] physics is writing computer simulations to compare their results to. Experimental results are meaningless if you don't know what you expected to see. The simulations help them understand backgrounds, etc.

          PS: nice physics joke there.

      • As I understand it, a Nobel (science) prize can only be awarded for work that has subsequently been proved empirically to be true. That's why Einstein didn't get his until the 1920s: only then were his theories proved. So any theoretical work that wins the Nobel will have done so because it has since been demonstrated to be true (as far as anyone can tell at the time!)
    • I keep running into 3rd-4th year Physics majors who think that you're not doing real Physics unless you write and solve equations.

      Authors of electrical engineering texts, especially in the Communications field, are like this. I recall when I was teaching myself the Viterbi algorithm, and I went through book after book until I finally found a clear verbal description. My reaction was, "Oh, is that all it is? Why didn't those other authors just say that!" That single verbal description (with a couple diagra

    • MRI is a great application but how much it is due to the actual theory? Incidently, the inventors of MRI already got their prize this year.

      I think this prize was given out too early anyway. The jury is still out when it comes to the widespread applicability of high temperature superconductors.

      So you want two things: 1) for the discovery to be a fundamental theory, and 2) for there to be applications available. But applications doesn't mean something you buy off the shelves. There are a NUMBER of situ

  • Two winners from the same lab... (Score:3, Informative)

    by davids-world.com ( 551216 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:47AM (#7153100) Homepage
    What's also astonishing is that one university (Dept of Physics [uiuc.edu] and the Beckman Institute [uiuc.edu] at University of Illinois at Urbana) can claim TWO nobel prizes this year -- Paul Lauterbur [uiuc.edu] (Medicine, for MRI) and Tony Leggett [uiuc.edu] (Physics). Quite impressing.
  • Huh? I thought any remark on superfluidity would be redundant. Well, here I am...

  • superconductivity ain't just zero resistance (Score:5, Informative)

    by elwinc ( 663074 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:53AM (#7153147)
    It's a common misconception that superconductivity means zero electrical resistance. This is true, but it's only one of the oddities of superconductivity. Another main one is the Meissner Effect. [msu.edu] This is the expulsion of magnetic fields from a material as it makes its transition from normal to superconducting.

    Pure zero resistance would prevent electric fields from entering a block of superconductor (the change in magnetic fields will induce eddy currents) to counter any change in the local magnetic field) and this effect is called perfect diamagnetism.

    The Meissner effect is different: it's a phase change effect -- it takes energy to expel the magnetic field. If the magnetic field is strong enough, the material may never superconduct. In any case, the transition temperature T_c is actually a function of the local magnetic field.

    Furthermore, if you boost the field enough, you can quench [imagesco.com] the superconductivity and initiate resistance heating -- it can get nasty with high currents. Is the magnetic expulsion perfect? Sometimes it is, and sometimes not, because of flux pinning. [imagesco.com]

    Since we often want to use superconductors to either make high magnetic fields (like in magnetic resonance imagers) or to carry large currents (that induce high magnetic fields) the Meissner Effect, [gsu.edu] and the magnetic dependence of the transition temperature are important considerations for practical superconductors.

    • Possibly because superconductivity is purely a quantum mechanical phenomena, applications don't get reported a lot, because it's hard to explain how such devices work to the general public.

      Superconductivity also encompasses the Josephson effect. This is where paired electrons in a superconductor, when driven by microwave frequency radio signals, can pass through a thin insulating layer. The voltage generated across this layer is proportional to the microwave frequency. Thus, the unit of voltage is now dete
  • Although I'm a bit upset. I thought SCO would win for their great leaps in temproal (god I hope I spelled that right) time travel.
  • The winners of the Physics prize are all old men, the youngest being 65 and the oldest 87. They did their groundbreaking research during the Cold War environment, when governments invested heavily in basic science research. One wonders if the same caliber of science research is being conducted today that are worthy of future Nobels. Physics research was dealt a heavy blow when Congress decided to kill the Superconducting Supercollider Project in 1990, which still remains, unfinished and abandoned, in Texas

  • Slightly offtopic, but did you hear who won the Nobel Literature Prize this year? I was listening to the radio and heard the announcer say this man's name over and over again, and could have sworn he was saying something else... something much more sinister and horrifying.

    The winner? Mr. Coetzee. I'm not making this up. [ft.com]

    Now that's one body of work I'd think twice about perusing.

  • I don't know if anyone cares on bit, but I would just like to say that I go to the same high school that Anthony J. Leggett, attended, in Sidney, Ohio. Actually, there are 2 schools, the public and private one. I go to the private one...same thing ;)
    • Actually, you dumbass it was, Paul C. Lauterbur, and he recieved the Nobel Price for medicine. Read your fucking local newspaper next time.... jeeeze.

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