Print

Print


Physics Nobel goes to 3 high-tech pioneers

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (October 10, 2000 6:17 a.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Zhores I. Alferov of Russia, Herbert Kroemer,
a German-born American and Jack Kilby of Texas won the Nobel Prize in
physics Tuesday for laying the foundations of modern information technology.

Alferov of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg,
Russia, and Kroemer of the University of California at Santa Barbara will
share half the $915,000 prize for their work in developing technology used
in satellite communications, cellular phones and bar code readers.

Kilby of Texas Instruments will get the other half for his part in the
invention and development of the integrated circuits and as a co-inventor
of the pocket calculator.

"Through their inventions, this year's Nobel laureates in physics have laid
a stable foundation for modern information technology," the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences said in its citation.

The awards started Monday with the naming of Arvid Carlsson of Sweden, Paul
Greengard and Eric Kandel of the United States, as the winners of this
year's medicine prize for discoveries about how messages are transmitted
between brain cells, leading to treatments of Parkinson's disease and
depression.

Carlsson, 77, a professor emiritus of the University of Goteborg in Sweden,
Greengard, 74, of Rockefeller University in New York and Kandel, 70, an
Austrian-born U.S. citizen with Columbia University in New York shared the
prize.

The winners in the categories of physics and chemistry were being announced
Tuesday, economics on Wednesday and literature on Thursday in Stockholm.
This week's prizes culminate Friday with the coveted peace prize - the only
one awarded in Oslo, Norway.

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite,
endowed the physics, chemistry, literature, medicine and peace prizes in
his will but left only vague guidelines for the selection committees.

The economics prize was established and endowed by the Swedish national
bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969.

The physics prize should go to those who "shall have made the most
important discovery or invention within the field of physics" and "shall
have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind," according to Nobel's will.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which also chooses the chemistry and
economics winners, invited nominations from previous recipients and experts
in the fields before whittling down its choices, but deliberations are
conducted in strict privacy.

Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, both of the Netherlands,
shared the physics prize last year for developing more precise calculations
used to predict and confirm the existence of subatomic particles.

The prizes always are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death
in 1896.

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press
Copyright 2000 Nando Media
http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500267288-500415312-50255711
5-0,00.html

janet paterson
53 now / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd
TEL: 613 256 8340 URL: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/
EMAIL: [log in to unmask] SMAIL: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada