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NOBEL PRIZE

Nobel Physics Prize: Will light, new materials or cosmic exploration win this year?

Experts warn it is difficult to predict a winner in the vast field of possible contenders for Tuesday's Nobel Physics Prize.

Published: 3 October 2023 08:15 CEST
Nobel Physics Prize: Will light, new materials or cosmic exploration win this year?
King Carl XVI Gustaf awards the 2022 Nobel Physics Prize to Alain Aspect. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

The award, to be announced at 11.45am in Stockholm, is the second Nobel of the season after the Medicine Prize on Monday went to mRNA researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their groundbreaking technology that paved the way for messenger RNA (mRNA) Covid-19 vaccines.

Lars Broström, science editor at Swedish Radio, told AFP ahead of the Physics Prize announcement that while it was “as usual hard to know” who would win, one potential laureate was French-Swedish atomic physicist Anne L’Huillier.

She could be honoured for her work into “really short laser pulses that allow you to follow the super-fast movement of electrons inside molecules”, Broström said.

L’Huillier was one of the recipients of last year’s prestigious Wolf Prize, whose laureates occasionally go on to win the Nobel.

Only four women have won the Nobel Physics Prize since the award was first handed out in 1901: Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018) and Andrea Ghez (2020).

Another woman believed to be in the running this year, according to Broström, is Denmark’s Olga Botner, whose work focuses on exploring the universe with cosmic neutrinos – technology used in the IceCube Observatory in Antarctica.

Another quantum prize?

Magazine Physics World noted that three of the last six Physics Prizes have honoured research in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, making it unlikely that work associated with the James Webb Space Telescope would receive the nod this year.

But it would likely be in the committee’s sights in the future, it said.

Last year, Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Austria’s Anton Zeilinger won the Nobel for their work into quantum entanglement, a concept once dismissed by Albert Einstein as “spooky action”.

Physics World admitted it “might seem foolish” to predict another prize in the field of quantum mechanics, but the field still had many deserving scientists, it said.

“Quantum computing has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few decades,” it said, citing Spain’s Ignacio Cirac, the UK’s David Deutsch, Peter Shor of the US and Austria’s Peter Zoller as potential candidates.

Other notables in the field of quantum mechanics are Israeli Yakir Aharonov and Briton Michael Berry, who have both made discoveries which now bear their names.

David Pendlebury, head of analytics group Clarivate that keeps an eye on potential Nobel science laureates, told AFP the prize “may come back to something more practical” this year.

He pointed to the work of Stuart P Parkin of Britain, a pioneer in the field of spintronic materials, which has been critical in the increased data density and storage capabilities of computer disk drives.

Light

Clarivate also put US physicist Sharon Glotzer among its top picks, for “introducing strategies to control the assembly process to engineer new materials.”

Italian-American Federico Capasso was also mentioned for research into photonics – the science of lightwaves – and contributing to the invention and development of the quantum cascade laser.

Previous years have also seen work into light tipped for the prize, with many pointing to Britain’s John B Pendry, who has become famous for his “invisibility cloak”, where he uses materials to bend light to make objects invisible.

Research into photovoltaics – the conversion of light into electricity – and work into the conductive properties of twisted graphene have also sparked buzz among commentators.

The Physics Prize will be followed by the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday, with the highly watched Literature and Peace Prizes to be announced on Thursday and Friday respectively.

The Economics Prize – created in 1968 and the only Nobel not included in the 1895 will of Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel founding the awards – closes out the 2023 Nobel season on Monday.

Article by AFP’s Johannes Ledel

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NOBEL PRIZE

Nobel Prize to economist who explained why women earn less than men

The Nobel prize in economics was on Monday awarded to American economist Claudia Goldin for research that has helped understand the role of women in the labour market.

Published: 9 October 2023 14:16 CEST
Nobel Prize to economist who explained why women earn less than men

The 77-year-old Harvard professor, who is the third woman to be awarded the prestigious economics prize, was given the nod “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”, the jury said.

Speaking to AFP, Goldin said the prize was “important”, but there are “still large” gender inequalities on the labour market.

By studying the history of women in the US workforce, Goldin has demonstrated several factors that have historically influenced, and in some cases still influence, the supply and demand for women in the labour force, the jury explained.

“She has demonstrated that the sources of the gender gap change over time,” Nobel committee member Randi Hjalmarsson told a press conference.

Hjalmarsson added that while Goldin had not studied policy, her work had provided an “underlying foundation” that had different policy implications in different places around the world.

Globally, about 50 percent of women participate in the labour market compared to 80 percent of men, but women earn less and are less likely to reach the top of the career ladder, the prize committee noted.

The Nobel prize in economics has the fewest number of women laureates, with just two others since it was first awarded in 1969 – Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019 – and Goldin is the first woman to receive the prize as the sole laureate.

‘Detective’

Goldin has “trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the US”, the jury said.

“She studied something that many people, many historians, for instance, simply decided not to study before because they didn’t think these data existed,” Hjalmarsson said in an interview, calling Goldin “a detective”.

Among other things, Goldin’s research showed that female participation in the labour force had not always followed an upward trend, and instead followed a “U-shaped curve” as the participation actually decreased with the transition from an agrarian to industrial society.

Participation then started to increase in the early 20th century with the growth of the service sector, with Goldin explaining the trends as the result of both “structural change and evolving social norms”.

The jury also noted that despite modernisation – coupled with economic growth and a rising proportion of women in the labour market – the earnings gap between men and women hardly closed for a long time.

“According to Goldin, part of the explanation is that educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of career opportunities, are made at a relatively young age,” the jury said.

While much of the earnings gap historically could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices, Goldin “has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men and women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child.”

The pill

Goldin’s work also demonstrated that access to the contraceptive pill played an important role in accelerating the increase in education levels during the 20th century, by “offering new opportunities for career planning”, the Nobel committee said.

The economics prize is the only Nobel not among the original five set out by the will of Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

It was instead created through a donation from the Swedish central bank in 1968, and first awarded in 1969.

The economics prize wraps up this year’s Nobel season, which saw four women awarded the prestigious prize – just one shy of the record five from 2009.

On Friday, the Peace Prize went to imprisoned Iranian women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi.

Earlier in the week, Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse was rewarded in literature.

The chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for their work on nanoparticles called quantum dots.

In physics, Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz were honoured for using ultra-quick light flashes that enable the study of electrons inside atoms and molecules.

The medicine prize, the first to be announced, went to a duo – Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman – for their groundbreaking technology that paved the way for mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.

Article by AFP’s Johannes Ledel

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