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Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

wondersofphysics.com

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Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#71

Post by ChrisLomont »

catmistake wrote: post #62
catmistake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think his work on the Photo-Electric Effect deserved the recognition that it received. But Albert Einstein is far more myth than man. Everyone idolizes Einstein, he was the quintessential mad scientist. And it is difficult to challenge the notion of this myth without being accused of anti-semetism. But I risk doing so... When one actually studies the History of Science, one discovers shocking things. No…

Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) was the first to propose a theory of light, and claimed that light has a finite speed. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing Empedocles emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This led Alhazen to propose that light must have…

>the modern origin of Relativity is rooted in Poincaré's work,

And Poincare never developed it from first principles, elevating the speed of light being fixed in all frames. Poincare only noted that this was a solution to Lorentz invariance.

Einstein did take this as a first principle, and demonstrated what follows: time dilation (something completely alien to all before him, including Galileo). He then derived E=mc^2 from relativisitic momemtum (another completely alien concept to those before him).

> and it's deeper origins first appears nearly 300 years earlier in the 1632 Galilean Invariance, aka Galileo's Theory of Relativity

Galieo's view of the word is that velocities add, which Special Relativity shows to be incorrect. Galileo's theory of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same for all observers, which no one claims Einstein created.

Galileo had zero idea that velocities are sub-additive.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#72

Post by ChrisLomont »

catmistake wrote: post #64
catmistake wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) was the first to propose a theory of light, and claimed that light has a finite speed. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing Empedocles emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This led Alhazen to propose that light must have…

It is well-known that Einstein was notoriously bad at mathematics. The sole reason for the decade of delay between his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity and his 1915 General Theory of Relativity is that Einstein did not have the mathematics to calculate the formulas. He needed some of the work done by Hermann Minkowski. By 1908 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by his former student…

>It is well-known that Einstein was notoriously bad at mathematics.

That's pop nonsense. The quote people take out of context was not applicable to what you're implying. Simple googling shows this claim to be a misconception.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#73

Post by ChrisLomont »

catmistake wrote: post #64
catmistake wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) was the first to propose a theory of light, and claimed that light has a finite speed. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing Empedocles emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This led Alhazen to propose that light must have…

It is well-known that Einstein was notoriously bad at mathematics. The sole reason for the decade of delay between his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity and his 1915 General Theory of Relativity is that Einstein did not have the mathematics to calculate the formulas. He needed some of the work done by Hermann Minkowski. By 1908 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by his former student…

> the German mathematician David Hilbert published them in an article before Einstein's article.

Not correct. Hilbert submitted a paper before Einstein, but the paper did not contain the field equations. After seeing Einstein's field equations, Poincare added them to his paper.

Also, Hilbert's paper didn't get published until 1916, after Einstein's.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#74

Post by dekhn »

Pulcinella wrote: post #70
dekhn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think what you said is accurate. First, the work was done in fibre diffraction (2d pattern), not crystal diffractionso I'm not certain that crystallographic groups even apply (typically for representing 3d symmetry groups). Second, nothing in the W&C paper has to do with determining the crystallographic group, rather they proposed a model which was consistent with the diffraction data, but also with a wide ra…

I will second “The Eighth Day of Creation” (which despite its cool title, has nothing to do with religion). I can’t agree with your conclusion, though. It’s very clear she should have been awarded the prize, not Wilkins (who I think should not have received the prize even “in place of” Franklin). The book paints a picture of Wilkins not doing much more than management work and training Raymond Gosling (Franklin’s PhD…

But... what exactly did Rosalind Franklin do in this case, other than collect the raw data (not Nobel-worthy) and notice that it was consistent with a helix (not enough of the elucidation to be useful for molecular biology)? She didn't come up with any of the subtle guesses about nucleic acid pairing, antiparallel strands, or the exact atomic positions (later shown to be mildly erroneous due to the water/alcohol content).

it's clear Franklin was mistreated, but far from clear that there is evidence of Nobel-worthy work by Franklin in this case.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#75

Post by dfphil »

catmistake wrote: post #64
catmistake wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) was the first to propose a theory of light, and claimed that light has a finite speed. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing Empedocles emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye. This led Alhazen to propose that light must have…

It is well-known that Einstein was notoriously bad at mathematics. The sole reason for the decade of delay between his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity and his 1915 General Theory of Relativity is that Einstein did not have the mathematics to calculate the formulas. He needed some of the work done by Hermann Minkowski. By 1908 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by his former student…

I heard Kip Thorne say, "Einstein was a mediocre mathematician. Now don't get me wrong; he was a vastly better mathematician than I'll ever be, but Hilbert was a great mathematician." We undergrads are sitting around thinking "great: Hilbert > Einsten > Thorne >>>> us. We're doomed"

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#76

Post by krnsll »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #63
krnsll wrote: post #13

Freeman Dyson is a glaring miss here. Feynman and Schwinger shared the 1965 Nobel in Physics for their respective perspectives on Quantum Electrodynamics. But it was Dyson who unified Feynman's diagram approach with Schwinger's field model.

Shinichirō Tomonaga also shared the 1965 Nobel for this work, and his work was much more fundamental to QED than Dyson. The Nobel Prize can go to at most three people.

Thanks for pointing that out. My apologies for missing Tomonaga. Was going on my anecdotal memory, should have researched.

Re: Scientists who never won a Nobel Prize

#80

Post by rurban »

giloux314 wrote: post #68

I'd add Emmy Noether to this list : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

I had the same thought. But mathematicians who just help physicists rarely get a nobel. Even if its work is invaluable, such as Emmy's work. You could call her one of the "fathers" if modern theoretical physics, if it wouldn't be too ironic.

Thanksfully they didn't forget to mention Lise Meitner

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