Three Americans Share Nobel Physics Prize

From: LeMod Pol (mod_pol_at_igs.net)
Date: 10/05/04 

Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:35:05 -0400

Three Americans Share Nobel Physics Prize

MATT MOORE
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and
Frank Wilczek won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their
explanation of the force that binds particles inside the atomic nucleus.

Their work has helped science get closer to "a theory for everything,"
the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the physics prize.

It was a 1973 breakthrough by the trio - researchers at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Technology
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - that explained how the
so-called "strong force" works. The force keeps quarks, the building
blocks of protons and neutrons, tightly bound to one another even
though the positive electromagnetic charge of protons in the nucleus
would break them apart.

"I'm shocked, very surprised and honored," Gross said of winning the prize.

Reached by Swedish radio at his home in Massachusetts, Wilczek, 53,
said he was surprised and gratified.

"Of course it is something I've been dreaming about for quite a while
now," he said.

He said he would spend the day "sort of floating six feet above the ground."

The three physicists came by their discovery through a brilliant and
non-intuitive insight. They showed that unlike forces such as
electromagnetism and gravity, which grow more powerful as two
particles get closer to one another, the strong force actually gets
weaker as two quarks converge. It is as if the particles were
connected by a rubber band that pulls them together more tightly as it stretches.

Wilczek and Politzer, 55, were still graduate students at the time of
the discovery; Gross, now 63, was a young professor. Their achievement
cemented the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which describes the
interactions of quarks and other subatomic particles inside the atomic nucleus.

It also filled a critical remaining gap in what physicists refer to as
the Standard Model, the theory that governs physics at the microscopic
scale. It accounts for the behavior of three out of nature's four
fundamental forces - electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak
force, which governs radioactive decay.

The ultimate goal of physics would be to unify the Standard Model with
Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity
works and predicts the existence of black holes, wormholes and other
far-out phenomena. The work of Wilczek, Gross and Politzer brought
science one step closer to that "grand dream," the Swedish academy noted.

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of
dynamite who endowed the prizes, left only vague guidelines for the
selection committee.

In his will, he said the prize should be given to those who "shall
have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "shall have made
the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics."

The academy, which also chooses the chemistry and economics winners,
invited nominations from previous recipients and experts in the fields
before cutting down its choices.

Last year physicists Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia and Americans A.
Abrikosov and Anthony J. Leggett were honored for their work on
superconductivity and superfluidity, the motion of a fluid without
internal friction.

This year's award announcements began Monday with the Nobel Prize in
medicine going to Americans Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck.

Axel, 58, and Buck 57, were selected by a committee at Stockholm's
Karolinska Institutet for their work on the sense of smell. They
clarified the intricate biological pathway from the nose to the brain
that lets people sense smells.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be named Wednesday and
the literature prize will be announced Thursday. The Bank of Sweden
Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced
Oct. 11.

The winner of the coveted peace prize - the only one not awarded in
Sweden - will be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway.

The prizes, which include a $1.3 million check, a gold medal and a
diploma, are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder 

--
LP
"We are fighting today for security, for progress, 
and for peace, not only for ourselves but for all 
men, not only for one generation but for all 
generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world 
of ancient evils, ancient ills." 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
State of the Union Address - 1942

Relevant Pages