Information Age pioneers honored with Nobel prizes

(October 10, 2000 8:42 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Six scientists
who helped bring about the information revolution were recognized Tuesday
with the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry for their contributions to a
series of ever-smaller and faster personal computers, pocket calculators,
cell phones, CD players, lifelike TV screens and Gameboys.

The physics prize went to Jack Kilby, who invented the first integrated
circuit while at Texas Instruments in 1958, and two physicists whose work
contributed to satellite and cell phone technology: Herbert Kroemer of the
University of California-Santa Barbara and Zhores Alferov of the A.F. Ioffe
Physico-Technico Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The chemistry prize went to Alan Heeger, 64, of the University of
California-Santa Barbara, Alan MacDiarmid, 73, of the University of
Pennsylvania and Hideki Shirakawa, 64, of the University of Tsukuba in Japan.

The three modified plastics so they can conduct electricity; the pioneering
work with "brilliant plastics" could someday lead to computers as small and
light as a wristwatch.

The prizes awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences are each worth
$915,000. The chemistry prize will be split three ways, while Kilby will
receive half of the physics award and his co-winners will get the rest.

Recent Nobels have celebrated basic research into the behavior of subatomic
particles and chemical reactions - highly arcane subjects with few
real-world applications. This year's winners conducted experiments and
developed products that changed everyday life in the largest cities and the
most remote villages.

"These guys have controlled the properties of materials in ways that nature
wouldn't do on its own," said Louis Bloomfield, author of "Why Things Work"
and a University of Virginia physicist. "They made it complicated and
incredibly precise. They make cities possible."

Kilby's fingernail-sized integrated circuit, a forerunner of the microchip,
replaced bulky and unreliable switches in the first computing devices. The
Nobel panel said his work allowed electronics to become smaller, faster,
cheaper and more powerful. He also co-invented the first pocket calculator.

"It's a wonderful thing," Kilby said of his Nobel. He said he thought the
microchip "would be important for electronics as we knew it then, but I
didn't understand how much it would permit the field to expand."

Kilby and Robert Noyce, an industrial pioneer in the Silicon Valley, are
considered the co-inventors of the integrated circuit. Kilby built the
first circuit, but Noyce received the first patent for a microchip, in
1961, three years before Kilby. Noyce died in 1990.

"We shared credit for the invention over the years ... I'm sorry he is not
alive. I'm sure if he were, he would share in this prize," Kilby said.

Texas Instruments named its $154 million research complex after Kilby and
endowed a professorship at the University of Texas in his name. Kilby, 76,
started a foundation that distributes science and technology awards.

Alferov, 70, and Kroemer, a 72-year-old German-born U.S. citizen,
independently proposed the heterostructure laser, made of semiconducting
material as thin as a few atoms apiece. The technology has been used in
mobile phones and satellite links, and used to build laser diodes, which
drive the flow of information on the Internet and are found in compact disc
players, bar-code readers and laser pointers.

Alferov, who celebrated with colleagues in St. Petersburg, hinted at the
decline of his country's once-extraordinary scientific community amid the
upheaval in post-Soviet society.

"Without science, Russia will not revive. Here's to our science, to our
physics," Alferov said, raising a glass of champagne.

The three chemistry prize winners were cited for discoveries that
fundamentally altered how we think of plastic and how we use it.

The three developed conductive polymers that have been used to reduce
static electricity and interference on photographic film and computer
screens. They have been used in the development of color television
screens, cellular phone displays and "smart windows" that reflect sunlight,
and they are employed in operating rooms to reduce static charges that
could endanger patients during surgery.

"My colleagues all over the world have said, `One of these days ...,' but
it's still a fantastic surprise," Heeger said. "You can take simple things
like polymers that are made of plastics and from that one can make many
different applications and technologies."

The three scientists created polyacetylene, a plastic that acts much like a
very fine aluminum foil and can be made in a lab without mining raw materials.

Lighter and more flexible, the new plastics are being used in cheaper and
easier-to-manufacture versions of many electronic products, including light
emitting diodes in digital displays. Sheets of conductive plastic films are
being incorporated into thin, flat TV screens, low-static computer monitors
and traffic signs that glow without bulbs.

On the horizon: molecular computers using plastic molecules to carry
electrical current.

"The physics prizes are about the electronics of today and the chemistry
prizes are about the electronics of the future," academy member Per Ahlberg
said.

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to a Swede and two Americans
for discoveries about how brain cells communicate.

The economics prize will be announced Wednesday and the literature prize
Thursday. The peace prize will be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway. The
prizes will be presented Dec. 10.


By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, Associated Press
Copyright 2000 Nando Media
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