Skip to main content
Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Secrecy keeps the Nobel prize fresh and exciting

27 Sep 2021 Hamish Johnston
Nobel Discipline Infographic 2021

We are getting excited here at Physics World because on Tuesday 5 October, the Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced. I have been writing about the physics Nobels for 15 years and now – as ever – I can honestly say that I have no idea who is going to win. And I am very happy about that.

For me, this uncertainty is the most exciting thing about the Nobel prize. There is no public shortlist and no-one except for the Nobel prize committee members has any clue about who will be getting the telephone call from Stockholm next Tuesday morning. What is more, nominations for the prize are kept secret for 50 years so it is impossible to know who has been in the running recently.

If you are interested in how the committee makes its decision – and the veil of secrecy surrounding it – check out this article I wrote about Lars Brink, a Swedish particle theorist who served on the Nobel Committee for Physics on eight separate occasions.

Bolts from the blue

For me, some of the most memorable prizes have come as bolts from the blue. These can be awards honouring important work that was done a very long time ago and all but forgotten by most Nobel pundits. My favourite example is the 2009 prize shared by Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith for work done in the 1960s on technologies that eventually made the Internet possible.

I also find it very exciting when the prize is given for recent work, which can equally come as a surprise. Indeed, just one year later in 2010, Andre Geim and Kostantin Novoselov were honoured for their isolation of graphene, which they did in 2004. Novoselov was just 36 when he bagged his prize, compared to Boyle who was 85.

Only once in the past 15 years have I predicted the Nobel winners. That was in 2013 when François Englert and Peter Higgs shared the prize for their theoretical prediction (made in the early 1960s) of the existence of the Higgs boson. That was an easy one because the Higgs boson was finally discovered experimentally at CERN in 2012 and it would have been a travesty if Englert and Higgs had not been honoured promptly.

Looking for patterns

Several years ago, I thought that I could improve my predictive powers by looking for patterns in how physics disciplines are favoured by the Nobel committee. As a guide, we produced the above infographic, which shows both the prevalence and chronological order of prizes in seven disciplines – and you can see the updated version above.

To me, the most striking recent feature in the infographic is the dominance of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology prizes in the past decade. There have been four prizes in this discipline since 2011, with two in the past two years. The next most popular discipline is nuclear and particle physics, with two prizes in the past decade.

Since its inception in 1901, 11 Nobel prizes have been awarded (at least in part) in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. The first was in 1936 when Victor Hess shared one half of the prize for his discovery of cosmic rays. It took more than 30 years for the next prize to come round, which was bagged by Hans Bethe in 1967 for his work on nuclear reactions in stars. The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s saw at most two prizes per decade and it was not until the 21st century that numbers started to pick up.

Precision cosmology

Of these recent awards, I find the 2019 prize the most telling. Half of the award went to James Peebles for his theoretical work in cosmology. Peebles is celebrated for forging links between what had been the highly speculative world of cosmology and the increasingly precise observations of the universe being made by astronomers. This ushered in the era of “precision cosmology” whereby physicists have already made great strides in understanding the origins and nature of the universe.

The second half of the 2019 prize was shared by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of the first known planet orbiting a Sun-like star. That discovery was made in 1995 using exquisitely precise observational techniques, which astronomers continue to improve on. So, if I am going to make a prediction, I would say to expect more Nobel prizes related to precision measurements of the cosmos.

Oxford Instruments Logo 2021

Physics World‘s Nobel prize coverage is supported by Oxford Instruments Nanoscience, a leading supplier of research tools for the development of quantum technologies, advanced materials and nanoscale devices. Visit nanoscience.oxinst.com to find out more.

Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors