The season of the Nobel Prizes: Three scientists share the award in Physics
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Three scientists, namely Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger, will share the Nobel Prize in Physics, 2022, for their “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.”
Among the Nobel Prizes in sciences, the one for physics often takes center stage, as it features household names of scientists who reshaped human understanding of natural laws. In the 20th century, they included Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Pierre Curie, and his wife Marie Curie.
Last year, three scientists—Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi—shared the physics Prize for their work on complex physical systems such as Earth’s changing climate, which is key to understanding global warming.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Prizes, will announce the remaining awards this week for Chemistry (Wednesday), Literature (Thursday), and Peace (Friday). It will also announce on October 10 the Nobel Prize in Economics, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, which was added in 1969.
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly USD 900,000) and will be presented to the winners on December 10. The money comes from a legacy left by the Prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, launched the Prizes in 1901. Barring exceptions, like the two World Wars, they have awarded Prizes yearly.
Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week after Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo, whose father had also got it for biochemistry, won the prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday, for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.
The prestigious prizes for achievements in science, literature, and peace were created in the will of Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune from his invention of dynamite.
