Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

wondersofphysics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 110 posts

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#51

Post by SommerfeldNobel »

Any list that doesn't include Sommerfeld is written by amateurs. But it's unsurprising. He's the best physicist no one has heard of.

Aside his long list of accomplishments which span pioneering work in all of physics, from QM, relativity, to fluids, he also accomplished:

- Arguably the father of QM, since the "founders" were all his students and built upon, or generalized his ideas.

- Four of his students got Nobel prizes. Three of his post-docs got the nod. One of them, Pauling, got two Nobel prizes. His students include Heissenburg, Debye, Bethe, Pauli.

- Nominated 84 times.

- His work on Special Relativity helped it gain acceptance

- Wrote some of the best physics books.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#52

Post by roberto »

SommerfeldNobel wrote: post #51

Any list that doesn't include Sommerfeld is written by amateurs. But it's unsurprising. He's the best physicist no one has heard of. Aside his long list of accomplishments which span pioneering work in all of physics, from QM, relativity, to fluids, he also accomplished: - Arguably the father of QM, since the "founders" were all his students and built upon, or generalized his ideas. - Four of his students got Nobel p…

> Nominated 84 times.

Interesting, the article says that "Poincaré was nominated a record 51 times for the Nobel Prize but never won."

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#54

Post by etrautmann »

dekhn wrote: post #39
julienchastang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Noller. In a previous life, I worked as an undergrad in an RNA lab (remains the best job I have ever had) and we studied Noller's work closely.

Harry was a great teacher (I had him for Biochem 101 and a lab class). Very understated but quite good at communicating his enthusiasm for the biophysics underlying biology). The lab class, "Biology of Macromolecules" was challenging: you're handed a pile of microbial cells, told the species, and then you have to go to the primary literature and learn how to purify restriction endonuclease from it (using the original…

I know plenty of scientists who perform at the very highest levels at top tier institutions and have families. Yes, they're quite busy, but I strongly disagree with the framing that scientists can't have families. I know you're not advocating that in your post, but figured it was worth mentioning (especially as these tropes can negatively impact representation of women in science)

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#55

Post by dekhn »

etrautmann wrote: post #54
dekhn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harry was a great teacher (I had him for Biochem 101 and a lab class). Very understated but quite good at communicating his enthusiasm for the biophysics underlying biology). The lab class, "Biology of Macromolecules" was challenging: you're handed a pile of microbial cells, told the species, and then you have to go to the primary literature and learn how to purify restriction endonuclease from it (using the original…

I know plenty of scientists who perform at the very highest levels at top tier institutions and have families. Yes, they're quite busy, but I strongly disagree with the framing that scientists can't have families. I know you're not advocating that in your post, but figured it was worth mentioning (especially as these tropes can negatively impact representation of women in science)

I know such people too, but most of them said they've had to make major sacrifices in their family life to be successful.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#56

Post by bobmalone123 »

The problem is: who cares about the Nobel price! A bunch of Swedes announced that they will be judging human achievements and give out a stupid prize, and everybody is now pending from their lips. The problem is not them, the fools who give them importance, and not the wack jobs that self-appointed themselves. Ignore them.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#57

Post by vonmoltke »

roberto wrote: post #52
SommerfeldNobel wrote: post #51

Any list that doesn't include Sommerfeld is written by amateurs. But it's unsurprising. He's the best physicist no one has heard of. Aside his long list of accomplishments which span pioneering work in all of physics, from QM, relativity, to fluids, he also accomplished: - Arguably the father of QM, since the "founders" were all his students and built upon, or generalized his ideas. - Four of his students got Nobel p…

> Nominated 84 times. Interesting, the article says that "Poincaré was nominated a record 51 times for the Nobel Prize but never won."

The article is wrong on it being a record. According to the Nobel Foundation's nomination database, Arnold Sommerfeld was indeed nominated 84 times and won 0: https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.ph...

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#59

Post by iaw »

Early in my life I met a former nuclear physicist who had worked explicitly on nuclear counter-intelligence against the Russians during the cold war immediately post-WW2. The story was that he was being considered for a nomination but declined because publicizing who he was would've created a security issue.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#60

Post by CydeWeys »

rxhernandez wrote: post #41
scottlocklin wrote: post #7

Sticking Hawking and Tesla in with Bose and Poincare is .... eccentric. It's not a popularity contest. Fun fact: one of Bose's grandsons worked as a bartender at Triple Rock in Berkeley for a while.

I mean, Tesla was as ubiquitous (if not more) in my EE degree as Bose and Poincare were in my Physics degree. I don't think I heard Hawking mentioned once during my Physics degree but I also didn't care to take any astronomy coursework.

Hawking came up a decent number of times in my astronomy/astrophysics classes. Hubble came up everywhere.
Post reply on HN