Physics Prize Research Articles

The Nobel “Pride” Phenomenon: An analysis of Nobel Prize discoveries and their recognition

The Nobel Prize is considered one of the highest forms of recognition of scientific accomplishment, conferring immense prestige upon its recipients. Given the significant time lag between the award and the discovery, Nobel Prizes are bestowed to individuals associated with institutions and countries other than the original place of the discovery. Contextualizing our research in status-seeking literature, we define the imprecise and sometimes excessive appropriation of Nobel Prizes by institutions and even countries as the “Nobel ‘Pride’ Phenomenon”. Our empirical analysis focuses on the time and location of the 653 discoveries underlying each of the 350 Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics, and chemistry until 2024. About one-third of all Nobel laureates came from another institution or country. Furthermore, Nobel Prize creativity is highly concentrated, with more than 80 % of discoveries made in just five countries. These findings cast new light on the Nobel laureates' demographics, geographic and historical movements, and institutional affiliations, and have implications for research policy at institutions and national levels.

2023 Nobel Prize in Physics and Medicine

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their contributions to the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Dr. Karikó obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Szeged before moving to the United States and obtaining the position of an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.1 Dr. Weissman obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. degree at Boston University and subsequently obtained a faculty position at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The two researchers met during their shared time at the University of Pennsylvania and collaborated in exploring mechanisms in which mRNA can be used to stimulate immunity development in the body.2 By modifying nucleotides in mRNAs, the pair discovered that the subsequent introduction of mRNAs into cells led to reduced inflammatory responses and increased immune protein production. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most vaccines stimulated immune responses via attenuated viruses, proteins, or viral genetic code-carrying vectors. These vaccines, while effective, required substantial resources to produce the number of cell cultures needed to synthesize adequate supplies of vaccine to combat pandemics, such as COVID-19.3 Contrastingly, mRNA vaccines can be prepared without cell cultures through in vitro transcription and nucleotides can be modified to adapt to mutating pathogens - flexibilities that allowed more than 12 billion COVID-19 vaccines to be produced and administered in less than three years of the start of the pandemic.4,5

Leaders in artificial neural network development share 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics

Leaders in artificial neural network development share 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics

Нобелевская премия 2022 года по физике и конец механистического материализма. Часть 1: Исторический обзор

The ideas and results that are in the background of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics had an immense impact on our understanding of reality. Therefore, it is crucial that these implications reach also the general public, not only the scientists in the related fi elds of quantum mechanics. The purpose of this review is to attempt to elucidate these revolutionary changes in our worldview that were eventually acknowledged also by the Nobel’s committee, and to do it with very few references to mathematical details (which could be even ignored without undermining the take-away essence of the text). We fi rst look into the foundational disputes between Einstein and Bohr about the nature of quantum mechanics, which culminated in the so-called EPR paradox – the main impetus for all the research that would ensue in this context. Next, we try to explain the statement of the famous Bell’s theorem – the theorem that relocated the Einstein-Bohr discussions from the realm of philosophy and metaphysics to hard-core physics verifi able by experiments (we also give a brief derivation of the theorem’s proof). Then we overview the experimental work of 2022 year’s Nobel laureates, which had the fi nal say about who was right in the debate. The outcome of these experiments forced us to profoundly revise our understanding of the universe.

STUDYING INDICATORS OF CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS OF MACROELEMENTS CONCENTRATION IN HUMAN SALIVA UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS

Seasonal and circadian research in the field of chronobiology and chronomedicine is currently of particular interest to scientists. Chronobiology has discovered previously unknown approaches to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases. For biological objects, as an open thermodynamic system, in their development have absorbed all the laws of the rhythmically oscillating external world and interact with it with the help of these vibrations. Therefore, at the present stage of the development of chronobiology, any research that fills, like bricks, still empty niches of new knowledge reflects the advanced frontiers of natural science and is included in the creation of a future general theory of biology. This is confirmed by a number of discoveries of scientists in the field of physics, physiology and medicine. Thus, a group of scientists became laureates of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017 for the discovery of gravitational waves, and in the field of physiology and medicine, a number of scientists (Hall, Rosbash, Young) became Nobel laureates for a series of works on the topic: "Studying the mechanisms of the circadian dynamics of the body." Today, chronobiology can characterize periodic fluctuations of, perhaps, all organs, all body systems. A large amount of data has been accumulated on the daily and seasonal rhythms of the digestive and urinary tract organs, respiratory and cardiovascular systems, brain, etc. A violation of biorhythms can lead to the development of defects in oral and maxillofacial tissues, the development of inflammation and tumors, which affects cell proliferation, apoptosis, oxidative stress, etc. The main purpose of this work was to study the characteristics of circadian rhythms of macroelement concentrations in human saliva under normal conditions. A feature of the research work is the determination of the concentration of macroelements in saliva in the summer. The saliva of 12 healthy volunteers was taken as the study material. Age 22-30 years. The method of spectrophotometry was used in this research work. The research work was carried out in the summer at the Department of Biophysics, Biomedicine and Neuroscience of the al-Farabi Kazakh National University and at the City Clinical Hospital №1 in Almaty. During the study, a saliva sample was collected on 1.5 ml of Eppendorf. All samples were stored in the freezer. Before the experiment, the material was soaked at room temperature for 30-40 minutes. Using the spectrophotometric method, we determined the concentration of macroelements in saliva using a set of special reagents. We have identified the features of the daily dynamics of the concentration of macroelements in the saliva of healthy people in summer: K, Na, Ca, Mg and P. The concentration of macroelements varied widely throughout the day. As a result of the study, the concentration index of K during the day normally ranges from 528±36 µg/ml to 634±42 µg/ml; Na - from 153.4±19.8 µg/ml to 144.9±25.1 µg/ml; Ca-from 35.4±4.0 µg/ml to 45.5±5.1 µg/ml; Mg-from 2.12±0.15 µg/ml to 4.02±0.25 µg/ml and P-from 134.5±7.7 µg/ml to 151.6±10.1 µg/ml. Summing up, we have identified the features of the daily dynamics of the concentration of macroelements in the saliva of healthy people in summer. In summer, the daily dynamics of the concentration of macroelements in saliva ranged from 2.12±0.15 µg/ml (Mg) to 634±12 µg/ml (K).

Discovery of neutrino and oscillation phenomenon

As an intersection of particle physics, nuclear physics and geophysics, neutrinos are currently a hot research direction in the physics field, and it plays an important role in the study of the origin and evolution of the universe and the formation and evolution of celestial bodies. The Standard Model of particle physics has achieved great success in describing experimental phenomena in particle physics and correctly classifying known particles. In 2015, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of neutrino oscillations, which brought neutrino research to a climax. In recent years, major breakthroughs have been made in the study of neutrinos, with the discovery that neutrinos have mass and that different neutrinos can be transformed into each other in a way known as neutrino oscillations, or neutrino mixing. Neutrino oscillations are the only physical phenomenon so far that cannot be explained by the Standard Model. Because neutrinos play an important role in both the most microscopic particle physics and the most macroscopic formation and evolution of the universe, the study of neutrinos is increasingly becoming a popular research direction. In this paper, the neutrino oscillation experiment is comprehensively studied and interpreted from the perspective of historical development. Designed to verify the existence of neutrino oscillations and thus prove that neutrinos have mass.

Analysis of One-dimensional Double-potential Barrier Structures Resonant Tunnelling Based on Transmission Matrices

The comprehension of the tunnel effect, the passage of matter waves and particles across a high potential barrier, was the most astounding of all discoveries in quantum mechanics. Research on tunnelling in semiconductors and superconductors, as well as the development of scanning tunnelling microscopy, garnered five Nobel prizes in physics. In this study, the resonant tunnelling effect of electron tunnelling through a one-dimensional double-potential barrier was found and verified by solving the time-independent Schrödinger equation and calculating the transmittance rate of the electron tunnelling through the two potential barriers by using the transmission matrix technique performed by MATLAB. According to the analysis, the transmittance rate was one under certain specific conditions (under some specific incident energy values or some specific distance between two potential barriers), which was called as resonant tunnelling. However, in this study, square potential wells were analyzed, which can be considered merely as ideal models in real life, and therefore all results are idealized. For further investigations, researchers can use more realistic parameters to set up potential wells and analyze real-life problems.

Marie Curie: Forged in the Name of Science

The most common name that is used by the feminist movement is Marie Curie's name as the first woman who conquered the men's world at that time (i.e. science). A deep and thorough investigation of the historical facts from first-source witnesses and physical evidences will prove what Marie Curie did and what her real achievements are. Where did she learn and earn her degrees? If there are any. Did she marry her professor? How did her husband die in a mysterious way? Was she involved in his death? Did she cheat on her husband? Did she have any sexual affairs with junior staff members? Why did the French Academy of Science (i.e. 100 scientists, professors, and doctors) voted to reject her application for membership in the academy? Why did the French public protest against her? Why did she work as a radiographer on a portable X-ray machine to image the wounded French soldiers? Was that a strategy to absorb the public heat? Was any of this have to do with anti-Semitism? Were her achievements exaggerated in the media? How did she win a Nobel Prize in physics and another Nobel Prize in chemistry? All these questions will be answered in this paper based on strong evidences. Naomi Pasachoff wrote a biography where she made Marie Curie a hero! But was she a hero? This paper will highlight all the propaganda written about this individual.

Robert Millikan, Japanese internment, and eugenics

Robert A. Millikan (1868–1953) was the second American to win the Nobel Prize in physics. At the peak of his influence, no scientist save Einstein was more admired by the American public. Millikan, the head of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) during its first 24 years, oversaw its rapid growth into one of the leading scientific institutions of the world. However, in response to demands for social justice following the murder of George Floyd, Caltech launched an investigation into Millikan. Caltech reached a decision to strip Millikan of honors (such as the library named after him), following accusations from various sources that he was a sexist, racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, pro-eugenic Nazi sympathizer. In short, Caltech threw the book at him. This article analyzes two accusations against Millikan. The first of these accusations was published in Nature: that he collaborated to deprive Japanese Americans of their rights during their forced relocation to internment camps during the Second World War. An examination of original historical sources will show that this accusation is false. On the contrary, Millikan actively campaigned during the war to promote the rights of Japanese Americans. This article traces the stages of misrepresentation that led to current false beliefs about Millikan. In view of Millikan’s extraordinary position in American science, this misrepresentation is a cautionary tale. The article also treats Caltech’s central accusation against Millikan: he lent his name to “a morally reprehensible eugenics movement” that had been scientifically discredited in his time. The article considers the statements purporting to show that eugenics movement had been denounced by the scientific community by 1938. In a reversal of Caltech’s claims, all three of Caltech’s scientific witnesses against eugenics—including two Nobel laureates—were actually pro-eugenic to varying degrees. This article concludes that Millikan’s beliefs fell within acceptable scientific norms of his day.

Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in Composite Materials: A Device Perspective.

ConspectusMagnetism is an area of immense fundamental and technological importance. At the atomic level, magnetism originates from electron "spin". The field of nanospintronics (or nanoscale spin-based electronics) aims to control spins in nanoscale systems, which has resulted in astronomical improvement in data storage and magnetic field sensing technologies over the past few decades, recognized by the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. Spins in nanoscale solid-state devices can also act as quantum bits or qubits for emerging quantum technologies, such as quantum computing and quantum sensing.Due to the fundamental connection between magnetism and spins, ferromagnets play a key role in many solid-state spintronic devices. This is because at the Fermi level, electron density of states is spin-polarized, which permits ferromagnets to act as electrical injectors and detectors of spins. Ferromagnets, however, have limitations in terms of low spin polarization at the Fermi level, stray magnetic fields, crosstalk, and thermal instability at the nanoscale. Therefore, new physics and new materials are needed to propel spintronic and quantum device technologies to the true atomic limit. Emerging new phenomena such as chirality induced spin selectivity or CISS, in which an intriguing correlation between carrier spin and medium chirality is observed, could therefore be instrumental in nanospintronics. This effect could allow molecular-scale, chirality controlled spin injection and detection without the need for any ferromagnet, thus opening a fundamentally new direction for device spintronics.While CISS finds a myriad of applications in diverse areas such as chiral separation, recognition, detection, and asymmetric catalysis, in this focused Account, we exclusively review spintronic device results of this effect due to its immense potential for future spintronics. The first generation of CISS-based spintronic devices have primarily used chiral bioorganic molecules; however, many practical limitations of these materials have also been identified. Therefore, our discussion revolves around the family of chiral composite materials, which may emerge as an ideal platform for CISS due to their ability to assimilate various desirable material properties on a single platform. This class of materials has been extensively studied by the organic chemistry community in the past decades, and we discuss the various chirality transfer mechanisms that have been identified, which play a central role in CISS. Next, we discuss CISS device studies performed on some of these chiral composite materials. Emphasis is given to the family of chiral organic-carbon allotrope composites, which have been extensively studied by the authors of this Account over the past several years. Interestingly, due to the presence of multiple materials, CISS signals from hybrid chiral systems sometimes differ from those observed in purely chiral systems. Given the sheer diversity of chiral composite materials, CISS device studies so far have been limited to only a few varieties, and this Account is expected to draw increased attention to the family of chiral composites and motivate further studies of their CISS applications.

Cryogen-free 400-MHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer as a versatile tool for pharmaceutical process analytical technology.

The discovery of new ceramic materials containing Ba-La-Cu oxides in 1986 that exhibited superconducting properties at high temperatures in the range of 35 K or higher, recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987, opened a new world of opportunities for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMRs) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to move away from liquid cryogens. This discovery expands the application of high temperature superconducting (HTS) materials to fields beyond the chemical and medical industries, including electrical power grids, energy, and aerospace. The prototype 400-MHz cryofree HTS NMR spectrometer installed at Amgen's chemistry laboratory has been vital for a variety of applications such as structure analysis, reaction monitoring, and CASE-3D studies with RDCs. The spectrometer has been integrated with Amgen's chemistry and analytical workflows, providing pipeline project support in tandem with other Kinetic Analysis Platform technologies. The 400-MHz cryofree HTS NMR spectrometer, as the name implies, does not require liquid cryogens refills and has smaller footprint that facilitates installation into a chemistry laboratory fume hood, sharing the hood with a process chemistry reactor. Our evaluation of its performance for structural analysis with CASE-3D protocol and for reaction monitoring of Amgen's pipeline chemistry was successful. We envision that the HTS magnets would become part of the standard NMR and MRI spectrometers in the future. We believe that while the technology is being developed, there is room for all magnet options, including HTS, low temperature superconducting (LTS) magnets, and low field benchtop NMRs with permanent magnets, where utilization will be dependent on application type and costs.

The Nobel family

Nobel laureates cluster together. 696 of the 727 winners of the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics belong to one single academic family tree. 668 trace their ancestry to Emmanuel Stupanus, 228 to Lord Rayleigh (physics, 1904). Craig Mello (medicine, 2006) counts 51 Nobelists among his ancestors. Chemistry laureates have the most Nobel ancestors and descendants, economics laureates the fewest. Chemistry is the central discipline. Its Nobelists have trained and are trained by Nobelists in other fields. Nobelists in physics (medicine) have trained (by) others. Economics stands apart. Openness to other disciplines is the same in recent and earlier times. The familial concentration of Nobelists is lower now than it used to be.

Analysis for Science Librarians of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics: The Possibility and Promise of Attosecond Physics

ABSTRACT The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini, and Ferenc Krausz for their pioneering work using laser harmonics to observe attosecond-scale electron phenomena. L’Huillier pioneered the background experimental techniques in harmonics, Agostini provided an important analysis technique that confirmed the pulses were at the attosecond-scale, and Krausz was the first to isolate an attosecond pulse. This paper describes the citation patterns of each scientist in the context of their research using data from the Web of Science and Scopus.

The Method of Everything vs. Experimenter Bias of Loophole-Free Bell Experiments.

Experimenter bias compromises the integrity and advancement of science, especially when awarded as such. For example, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for the loophole-free experiments that tested physicist John S. Bell's inequality theorem. These experiments employed the logic of conducting local experiments to obtain local evidence that contradicted local realistic theories of nature, thereby validating quantum mechanics as a fundamental non-local theory. However, there was one loophole that was wittingly not tested by the Nobel laureates. The notable exception was Bell's "super-deterministic" loophole, which was validated (2000) (2001) (2002) (2003) (2004) (2005) (2006) (2007) (2008) (2009) (2010) (2011) (2012) non-locally, thus compromising the subsequent Nobel Prize. More importantly, the discovery of two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive non-local hidden variables revealed why local scientific methods obtain false-positive and false-negative results. With knowledge of this fundamental omission, the inclusion of the non-local hidden variables in the local methods used in science can then advance it to be a complete study of nature.

Attosecond Science and Technology

The quest for how quantum systems evolve, and eventually, how to induce such quantum systems to behave as desired has been growing during the last two decades in a new paradigm, “Control Age” of the 21st century science. The past two decades have witnessed the remarkable advance in the new metrology for ultrafast electron dynamics, which allows one to control material processes at electron level and study dynamics far away from equilibrium, to which the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. This article reviews recent progress in the generation of isolated attosecond pulses and their applications for characterization and real-time measurement and manipulation of electron dynamics in atoms, and condensed matters, providing the audience with the new insights and perspective that these tools can provide in aspects of both fundamental science and future technology.

Measurement of a Photoionization Delay Using Attosecond Pulses

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2023 was awarded to three distinguished scientists: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier. This recognition honors their significant contributions in the field of experimental methods, specifically for generating attosecond pulses of light to study electron dynamics in matter. Anne L’Huillier and her research team made a groundbreaking discovery by utilizing a long-wavelength laser driver to achieve high harmonic generation. Pierre Agostini’s team accomplished the first-time measurement of the temporal profile of attosecond pulse trains, while Ferenc Krausz’s team successfully produced and measured an isolated attosecond pulse. These achievements have greatly advanced attosecond science, enabling the investigation of ultrafast electron dynamics in matter with unprecedented temporal resolution.

Jeszcze szybsza lampa błyskowa czyli Nagroda Nobla z fizyki 2023

Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 was awarded for generation of attosecond (1 as=10−18 s) pulses of electromagnetic radiation and application of attosecond pulses in studies of electrons in condensedmatter. I show basic physicalmechanisms leading to generation of such pulses and methods to measure them. I also show an exemplary application of attosecond pulses - studies dynamic of photo effect.

“Three Quarks for Muster Mark!” A Slavic gloss to Joyce’s 'Finnegans Wake'

The unclear verse “Three Quarks for Muster Mark!”, introduced by James Joyce (1882–1941) to his novel entitled Finnegans Wake (first published in 1939), was a literary source for the English word quark denoting ‘an elementary particle with a fractional electric charge that is part of a proton, neutron or other interacting elementary particle’. The American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969, was the first researcher to introduce the English word quark into scientific terminology as early as in 1964. After accepting his hypothesis of quarks in the world science, most physicists adopted the English term quark as standard in the physical terminology of most international languages (e.g. French quark, German Quark, Italian quark, Polish kwark, Portugal quark, Russian кварк, Spanish cuark, Turkish kuark, Ukrainian кварк ‘an elementary particle’) and it quickly became a widely recognized internationalism. It is not commonly known that Joyce’s verse facetiously imitated loud cries of German dairy women: Drei Mark für muster Quark! (literally “Three Marks for an excellent curd!”). In other words, E. quark ‘an elementary particle’ is motivated by the German term Quark m. ‘weiser Käse / curd, white cheese’, metaphorically ‘trifle, nonsense, trash, worthless thing’, which – according to most German and Slavic etymologists – represents an obvious Slavic borrowing (especially a Polish or Lower Sorbian loanword), cf. Pol. twaróg, dial. kwaruk m. ‘curd, white cheese’ (< Proto-Slavic *tvarogъ m. ‘id.’). It is suggested that the specialized term kwark represents the so called back-borrowing in the Polish language.

Attosecond pulses of light: Shining the way to the world of electrons in matter——Commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

Attosecond pulses of light: Shining the way to the world of electrons in matter——Commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

A brief history of attosecond optics—The story behind the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

A brief history of attosecond optics—The story behind the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023