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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

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Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#81

Post by tzs »

hansjorg wrote: post #40
safgasCVS wrote: post #12

Still cant believe the economics profession managed to convince people it deserves a seat at the table of the hard sciences

It's not actually one of the Nobel prizes as set up by Alfred Nobel. The full name is the "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was set up by the Swedish central bank to free ride on the good reputation of the actual prizes. Their motivation was to push economic policies beneficial to themselves (mainly promoting the political independence of central banks in the beginning).

The bank paid to establish it, but it is run by the Nobel Foundation, and the winners are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which also selects the winners for chemistry and physics), and it follows the same rules as the original prizes.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#82

Post by vowelless »

ikhwan wrote: post #80
smhost wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the term "eurocentric" normally isn't about NA vs EU rivalry, but rather about "european identity" in the white supremacist sense. (the caveat is that radical equality is also a distinctly european tradition, but still, this tradition doesn't seem to get included under the "eurocentric" label, for whatever reason)

Ironically, only a Eurocentric worldview could have one believing that "racial equality is a distinctly european tradition" There were many celebrated anti-racist movement leaders across the world and in various time periods. The most well-known of these would be the Prophet Muhammad, who famously in one of his last sermons declared "Surely all of mankind – from the time of Adam until our time – are like the teeth of…

Your username is apt for this comment. Shukran akhi.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#83

Post by AmericanOP »

willyg123 wrote: post #33
scotty79 wrote: post #5

> "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star." "Solar-type star" is meaningful here because first extrasolar planets we discovered orbit the pulsar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12

This is why I love astrophysics. I assumed the supernova would obliterate any planet in the star's orbit.

No, but the price of rent drops precipitously.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#84

Post by oarabbus_ »

smhost wrote: post #14
shafyy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have deep knowledge about the Nobel Prize selection procedure, so I'm not going to go into that. But, obviously, all awards will have some kind of bias because a small group of humans make that decision. However, the US has more per capita prizes than the EU, so not sure that that critisicm is warranted. Anyways, I also wouldn't draw any conclusions about "the current status of a country" based on number of n…

the term "eurocentric" normally isn't about NA vs EU rivalry, but rather about "european identity" in the white supremacist sense. (the caveat is that radical equality is also a distinctly european tradition, but still, this tradition doesn't seem to get included under the "eurocentric" label, for whatever reason)

No, the term "eurocentric" in this context means that for the Nobel prize, european scientists' accomplishments are considered "more worthy" than that of non-Europeans.

And thanks for bringing up how racial equality is a European tradition. How could we forget historical eurocentric bastions of equality, like the study of Phrenology and Kipling's "The White Man's Burden".

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#85

Post by smhost »

ikhwan wrote: post #80
smhost wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the term "eurocentric" normally isn't about NA vs EU rivalry, but rather about "european identity" in the white supremacist sense. (the caveat is that radical equality is also a distinctly european tradition, but still, this tradition doesn't seem to get included under the "eurocentric" label, for whatever reason)

Ironically, only a Eurocentric worldview could have one believing that "racial equality is a distinctly european tradition" There were many celebrated anti-racist movement leaders across the world and in various time periods. The most well-known of these would be the Prophet Muhammad, who famously in one of his last sermons declared "Surely all of mankind – from the time of Adam until our time – are like the teeth of…

i didn't say "racial equality", i meant the radical equality that flattens everything. i'm talking about the tradition that rejects prophets, rejects hierarchy, rejects teleology, etc.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#87

Post by evanb »

whatshisface wrote: post #62

I am not such a fan of this one, they essentially gave two separate half-prizes this year. James Peebles’ contribution to science was not related to exoplanets, nor was the exoplanet discovery related to cosmology. Instead, they could have waited a year, and given them sequentially. Has this ever happened before in Nobel history? Will this lead to an era where one hundred $10,000 Nobels are handed out each year? ;)

This often happens, and it's why the committee distinguishes between splitting and sharing the prize. The first physics split by separate citations was 1903 Becquerel / Curie+Sklodowska-Curie, though their citation explicitly mentions how it's related to Becquerel's work.

But as early as 1961 Hofstadter and Mössbauer split the prize for two separate things that can be grouped together as "well... nuclear physics" in the same way as these prizes are "... SPACE!".

It's happened a lot in the past. Often the split allows them to cover two things that are only really related on a superficial level. Just going through the list:

1963: Wigner (symmetry) / Goeppert-Meyer + Jensen (nuclear shells)

1970: Alfvén (MHD) / Néel (anti/ferromagnetism in solid state)

1973: Esaki + Giaever (semi/superconductors) / Josephson (Josephson effect)

1978: Kapitsa (low T) / Penzias+Wilson (CMB)

1983: Chandrasekhar (stellar evolution) / Fowler (nuclear abundances)

1986: Ruska (electron microscope) / Binnig+Rohrer (scanning-tunneling microscope)

1989: Ramsey (masers) / Dehmelt+Paul (ion traps)

1994: Brokhouse (neutron spectroscopy) / Shull (neutron diffraction). This one is weird because they also get a joint citation for using neutrons to study materials.

2000: Alferov+Kroemer (heterostructures) / Kilby (integrated circuit)

2002: Davis Jr.+Koshiba (cosmic neutrinos) / Giacconi (cosmic x-rays)

2005: Glauber (coherent states) / Hall+Hänsch (laser spectroscopy)

2008: Kobayashi+Maskawa (CKM matrix) / Nambu (spontaneous symmetry breaking). I think most physicists I know agree that this one should really have been two prizes, one shared K+M+Cabibbo (C in CKM) and one shared Nambu+Goldstone.

2009: Kao (fiber optics) / Boyle+Smith (CCDs)

2018: Askin (optical tweezers) / Mourou+Strickland (chirped pulse amplification)

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#89

Post by evanb »

shafyy wrote: post #2

Two of the laureates are Swiss. This brings the total number of Swiss laureates to 28, making it the third country with most Nobel prizes per capita. The first two are Saint Lucia and Luxemburg, which have 180k and 600k inhabitants respectively. Among the bigger countries, Switzerland has the most per capita Nobel prizes. Interestingly, UK is on number 9 on that list and has a significantly bigger population than the…

If Bronx High School of Science (8 graduates have Nobels---7 physics, 1 chemistry) were its own country and we dramatically overestimate the total number of students who have graduated by multiplying current student population (about 900) by (2019-1935) = 75600 alumni all-time total living and dead, we get one prize per ~10k people. More realistically it's about one prize per 5k graduates or maybe another factor of two better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bronx_High_School_of_S...

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

#90

Post by vinay427 »

greatpatton wrote: post #76
vinay427 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National borders do actually have a relevance for Switzerland IMO because it involves serious hurdles, particularly today, for many people to move there so it often isn't just a haven for the best-educated and/or wealthiest people in a region. Switzerland has relatively strict immigration policies, always maintaining a layer of separation from the EU/EEA and other developed countries though that's less true for EU/EE…

Switzerland is part of the EU free movement zone, so European citizen can settle in Switzerland automatically is they find a job.

Right, that's why I mentioned that it's less the case today, but that freedom of movement is always at risk of being cancelled much more easily than a country leaving the EU. There has already been a referendum that passed that would have done so. Also, non-Swiss Europeans can be expelled for certain criminal convictions and (as you mentioned) need to be able to support themselves financially which aren't generally the case between EU states except in extreme circumstances.
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