Russian, US scientists share Nobel Prize in Physics

Jack 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.

The prize this year is worth nine million kronor.

Hermann Grimmeiss, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the work of the three men had been invaluable in the development of modern information technology.

"Without Kilby it wold not have been possible to build the personal computers we have today, and without Alferov it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to the earth or to have so many telephone lines between cities," Grimmeiss said.

The awards started yesterday with the naming of Arvidrlsson 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 category of economics were to be announced on Wednesday and literature on Thursday in Stockholm. This week’s prizes culminate on Friday with the coveted peace prize – the only one awarded in Oslo, Norway.

Stanford University’s Robert Laughlin shared the 1998 Physics prize with Horst Stormer of Columbia University and Daniel Tsui of Princeton University for research into how electrons can change behaviour and act more like fluid than particles.

The 49-year-old Laureate said the Physics award didn’t bring him much fame outside scientific circles, but he wouldn’t expect it to.

"Physics is hard for people to understand, unlike literature," he said in a telephone interview from his office on the California campus. "Literature is designed to appeal."

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 on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.