Monday, July 09, 2012

Nobel Prize For The Higgs

The news and euphoria surrounding the apparent discovery of the Higgs continue....

When they made the announcement last week, I mentioned that besides the effort of continuing the data analysis, the more difficult task now is to determine who deserves the Nobel prize for this discovery. There are at least 4 different theorists who could easily be credited for the theory, and then there are the people who lead the experiments. Who will get it? Or do you break it down into two different awards in two different years?

This news article looks at this issue, even up to considering that an award might be possible to whole groups, rather than individuals. While this has been done for the Nobel Peace prize, it hasn't been done to the original set of Nobel Prizes that Alfred Nobel created. And I don't think this will be done in this case either.

So I'm actually quite intrigue on how this will turn out. Either way, plenty of deserving people will be left out. I just hope that these people will still get the recognition and credit that they deserve, especially among their peers.

Zz.

4 comments:

Erik Edlund said...

The peace price is one of the original ones. It is the economic prize in Nobel's memory that was created later.

Professor R said...

I have a better idea. This is an opportunity for us bloggers to do something useful. Since it is clear that the discovery of a Higgs-like particle merits a top prize for both experimentalists and theoreticians, let’s get a campaign started to get some pressure on to revisit the Noble rules. I think one year’s prize should go to the five theorists you all know about, and the next year’s prize to the ATLAS and CMS teams

informatica said...

I think that exceptional discoveries -like this- deserve exceptional prices.

Unknown said...

i think he deserves it!