Comments on: More women physicists will *eventually* mean more Nobel prizewinners. http://www.shessuchageek.com/2007/10/03/more-women-physicists-will-eventually-mean-more-nobel-prizewinners/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:06:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Anne http://www.shessuchageek.com/2007/10/03/more-women-physicists-will-eventually-mean-more-nobel-prizewinners/#comment-26201 Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:04:29 +0000 http://www.shessuchageek.com/2007/10/03/more-women-physicists-will-eventually-mean-more-nobel-prizewinners/#comment-26201 Leaving aside the Nobel peace prize (won by such luminaries as Yasser Arafat), the Nobel prizes in science are customarily awarded to people after the effects of their discoveries have had time to be felt. It's not that it takes them a decade to notice that Mather and Smoot published some paper about the cosmic microwave background; it's that they're waiting to see if that discovery turns out to be an error or dead end, or whether it opens up a whole new field. Since Mather and Smoot's work turned cosmology from a speculative theoretical field into a field in which quantitative predictions could be made and statistically tested, their work was recognized as extremely valuable by the physics community itself. That's not to say there aren't foolish slips. As I understand it, Einstein won the Nobel prize not for his theories of relativity - they were too revolutionary and unsettling - but for his research on the photoelectric effect (which was important but seemed less likely to overturn the foundations of physics). Of course, Einstein's work on the photoelectric effect led directly to quantum mechanics and its children, which were more revolutionary than his theories of relativity... Leaving aside the Nobel peace prize (won by such luminaries as Yasser Arafat), the Nobel prizes in science are customarily awarded to people after the effects of their discoveries have had time to be felt. It’s not that it takes them a decade to notice that Mather and Smoot published some paper about the cosmic microwave background; it’s that they’re waiting to see if that discovery turns out to be an error or dead end, or whether it opens up a whole new field. Since Mather and Smoot’s work turned cosmology from a speculative theoretical field into a field in which quantitative predictions could be made and statistically tested, their work was recognized as extremely valuable by the physics community itself.

That’s not to say there aren’t foolish slips. As I understand it, Einstein won the Nobel prize not for his theories of relativity - they were too revolutionary and unsettling - but for his research on the photoelectric effect (which was important but seemed less likely to overturn the foundations of physics). Of course, Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect led directly to quantum mechanics and its children, which were more revolutionary than his theories of relativity…

]]> by: tekanji http://www.shessuchageek.com/2007/10/03/more-women-physicists-will-eventually-mean-more-nobel-prizewinners/#comment-26118 Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:46:41 +0000 http://www.shessuchageek.com/2007/10/03/more-women-physicists-will-eventually-mean-more-nobel-prizewinners/#comment-26118 And these are the people who are supposed to be qualified to decide who some of the brightest people of our times are??? Not that I had a lot of faith in them before, but, oi... And these are the people who are supposed to be qualified to decide who some of the brightest people of our times are??? Not that I had a lot of faith in them before, but, oi…

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