Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and author of 355 patents, in his testament of 1895, wrote that he wanted to establish the Nobel Prize and described the rules for its presentation. After his death in 1896, the prize has been awarded annually since 1901, except for the period when Germany occupied Norway during the Second World War.In science, breakthroughs often occur in long strides. Looking back, it is quite simple to identify hundreds of small steps that led to an instantaneous discovery, but it seems that the coups occur at the same time. This does not mean that people who have made revolutionary discoveries are always given what they deserve. Undoubtedly, the Nobel Prize is considered the most prestigious scientific award, but it also sometimes quite impressively rejected the most worthy candidates. Our reader asked:
I would like to know who would you have chosen for the title of the most unjustly rejected candidate for the Nobel Prize, the person who deserved it, and with whom the Nobel Committee acted ugly. Personally, I would choose Wu Jian-Jun.
There are a lot of worthy candidates, so the least I can do is list them and highlight their achievements. Not in any particular order, I offer you a list of the 10 best scientists who have made incredible discoveries, but have not received well-deserved honors.
In O class stars, the hottest of all, the absorption lines in many cases turn out to be weaker, since their surface temperatures are so high that most of the atoms located there have too much energy to show characteristic atomic transitions.1)
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposhkina , for the discovery of the stars. Today we know that when matter is heated up, its electrons jump to higher energy levels, and at a sufficiently high level of energy, matter is ionized. We know that stars have different spectral features and absorption / emission lines, depending on the color of the star. But in 1925, Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkina brought all these phenomena of temperature, color and ionization together, so that the composition of the stars could be determined based on the strength of the spectral lines. It turned out that although they have the same elements that are found on Earth, helium in them is thousands of times more, and hydrogen is millions of times. But, despite all the praise of her doctoral dissertation, only her curator, Henry Norris Russell, managed to get some honors, and even then - only in the form of a
nomination for the prize .
The periodic table of elements is sorted precisely on the basis of the number of free and occupied valence electrons — and this is the first factor in determining their chemical properties. And this, in turn, is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus - this is how Mendeleev derived the classification of the elements in his table.2)
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev , for the creation of a periodic table of elements. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. Mendeleev, who discovered the method of periodically organizing elements (by the number of valence electrons occupying the electron shells), created the first exact scheme for predicting new elements. And when new elements were discovered, absolutely all of them fit into his predictions. But despite the nominations in 1905 and 1906, Mendeleev was denied a prize, on the grounds that, in the words of one of the commission members, his discovery "was too old and too well known." The prize in 1906 went to Henri Moissan for the discovery of one of the new elements, which turned out to be exactly at the same place in the table where Mendeleev had predicted. Dmitry Ivanovich himself died in 1907, without waiting for the award [
And DI Mendeleev - the author of basic research in chemistry, physics, metrology, meteorology, economics, basic works on aeronautics, agriculture, chemical technology, public education; to vodka, despite the folklore, had no relationship / approx. trans. ].
Parity, or mirror symmetry, is one of the three fundamental symmetries of the Universe, together with time reversal and charge conjugation. If particles spin in one direction and disintegrate along a certain axis, their reflection in the mirror means that they must spin in the other direction and disintegrate along the same axis. It turned out that with weak decays this was not the case, and this was the first sign that the particles may have an inherent right or left direction, which was discovered by Wu Jianxion.3)
Wu Jiansyun , for discovering the non-conservation of spatial parity in weak interactions of particles of the Universe. In the 1950s, physicists were just beginning to understand the fundamental properties of particles. Do spinning particles have a preferred decay direction? If nature obeyed mirror symmetry, it would not exist. But theorists Yang Zhang and Li Zongdao decided that under certain conditions this was not the case. Wu decided to test this by observing the radioactive decay of cobalt-60 in the presence of a strong magnetic field. When decay products, electrons, showed the presence of a preferred direction, it directly demonstrated parity violation. The 1957 Nobel Prize was awarded specifically for this discovery - but it was awarded to Li and Yang, and they ignominiously ignored Wu.
Early filament lamps with paper threads, invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. The plate reads "The famous horseshoe-shaped paper-thread lamps of Edison of 1870."4)
Joseph Swan and / or
Thomas Edison , for the invention of the incandescent lamp. Despite the rich history of awards (and their absence) for theoretical and experimental achievements, the Nobel Prize clearly stated the possibility of including inventors and inventions in the list of nominees, and few inventions had such a great impact on society as electric light, resulting in a modern electricity network and modern society. Despite the widespread use of his invention and the fact that Edison lived until the 1930s, the prize was never awarded for perhaps the greatest symbol of scientific inspiration in modern history [
it is worth noting that the history of the invention of the incandescent lamp is too rich and long so that you can select someone from the inventors / approx. trans. ].
Extended rotation curve of M33, Triangle galaxy . The rotation curves of spiral galaxies introduced the concept of dark matter into modern astrophysics.5)
Vera Rubin and Ken Ford, for discovering dark matter in galaxies. What does the universe consist of? If you asked this question 50 years ago, people would point out atoms and subatomic particles as an answer. They, of course, should have been responsible for all the gravitational interactions in the Universe, and even the galactic
Fritz Zwicky clusters probably contain gas, dust and plasma, which fill the missing mass. But it was no longer possible to explain the rotation of individual galaxies with the help of these particles. A careful analysis of the rotation of the Rubin and Ford galaxies demonstrated that they have more gravity in them than can be explained by the existing normal matter - this gave rise to the problem of dark matter. It is now generally accepted that dark matter is the main component of our Universe, but Rubin died in 2016, having waited more than 45 years for the Nobel Prize, which she was never awarded.
The section shows various areas of the surface and inner layers of the Sun, including the core in which nuclear fusion takes place. Over time, the region of helium combustion in the core expands and increases the energy output of the sun.6)
Fred Hoyle , for the theoretical work that predicted that stellar nucleosynthesis is a source of heavy elements. Where do heavy elements come from in the universe?
Georgy Antonovich Gamov believed that the Big Bang had become a nuclear stove in which all the elements could appear, but Hoyle turned to another source: the stars themselves. Through careful and complex calculations on nuclear physics, he identified several processes through which all elements could appear in the depths of stars, from carbon and above. He even determined the mechanism of the first important stage: that the three helium-4 nuclei may turn into carbon-12 as a result of the
resonance reaction , which prediction was confirmed by William Fowler in his laboratory many years later. And although Fowler was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, Hoyle was ignored - and this is one of the greatest omissions in the history of the Nobel Prize.
In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsar: a bright and periodic source of radio waves, which we now know as a rapidly rotating neutron star.7)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell , for her discovery of the first pulsar. The emergence of supernova pulsars was predicted as
far back as 1933, and the Nobel Prize for them was given in 1974 to
Martin Ryle and
Anthony Hewish . However, in fact, Hewish's student, Jocelyn Bell, first discovered the pulsar and determined the importance of its interesting signal. Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold, who conducted the final work and confirmed that Bell really opened the rotating and pulsating neutron star, argued that it had to be included in the nominees for the award. Despite her modesty and the statement: "I believe that the authority of the Nobel Prize would have been undermined if they awarded students, except for some extraordinary cases - but I do not think this is such a case," I would say that was the only moment in which she was mistaken. Her work was extraordinary, and her exclusion from the list of nominees was a mistake.
Chain reaction of uranium-235, leading to the explosion of a nuclear bomb, and to the generation of energy in a nuclear reactor8)
Lisa Meitner , for her discovery of nuclear fission. Meitner worked all her life side by side with
Otto Hahn , who unfairly received a single Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission in 1944. Probably, Meitner's contribution was even more important than that of Ghana, since it was she, not Gan, who divided the atom. In addition, she had to endure an unfair situation when she, a Jew, worked in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, despite all her complaints to Ghana, Heisenberg and others. Having escaped from Germany in 1938, Meitner continued to correspond with Gann, directing and prompting him important steps to create nuclear fission. Gan, however, did not indicate her co-author, despite her invaluable contribution. And although Niels Bohr nominated Meitner for the award along with Hahn, awarded him his one. When Meitner died, they simply wrote on her gravestones: "Lisa Meitner, a physicist who never lost humanity."
Energy levels of an electron in the configuration of a neutral oxygen atom with the lowest possible energy. Since electrons are fermions and not bosons, they cannot all exist in the ground state (1s), at arbitrarily low temperatures. And bosons can occupy the lowest level, because their properties do not obey the principle of prohibition.9)
Satendranath Bose , for the discovery and description of bosons, including their statistical properties. If you try to squeeze atoms together, you will come across a restriction on how close they can converge, thanks
to the Pauli exclusion principle , because of which two particles cannot be in the same quantum state. But this rule applies only to fermions, particles with half-integer spin. And then there are bosons that do not obey this principle, and Bose discovered them. He made many contributions to physics worthy of the Nobel Prize, including his description of boson statistics (now known as
Bose-Einstein statistics ) and works based on his legacy, for example,
Bose-Einstein condensates . As
Jayant Narlikar wrote:
Bose's work on particle statistics (ca. 1922), which clarified the behavior of photons (particles of light) and opened the way for new ideas on statistics of microsystems obeying the rules of quantum theory, was one of the ten greatest achievements of the 20th century in Indian science and can be considered worthy of the Nobel Prize .
And although many Nobel Prizes were awarded for work with boson-based systems,
the newest one was in 2001 , Bose remains one of the greatest scientists who have not received their award for decent work.
A schematic model of poliovirus from the work of 2000 "Interaction of poliovirus receptors with a polyvirus."10)
Jonas Salk for the development of polio vaccines. Today it seems unusual to us, but polio was a disease that paralyzed from 13,000 to 20,000 people a year, until Salk developed a vaccine that practically destroyed the disease. Salk ingeniously combined several new discoveries to apply them to the creation of a vaccine, and was nominated for a prize in 1955 and 1956. However, a member of the Nobel Committee, Dr. Sven Guard, stated the following:
When developing his methods, Salk did not introduce anything fundamentally new, but only took advantage of the discoveries of others; therefore, Salk's publications on the polio vaccine cannot be considered worthy of a prize.
Obviously, the criteria for issuing awards depend on the biased whims of committee members. Salk, whose legacy was his biological institute, nurtured five candidates and prize-winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, but his death in 1995 guarantees that he himself will not receive it anymore.
The front side of the Nobel Medal in Physiology or Medicine, awarded in 1950 to researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.There are many other Nobel Prize-worthy scientists, for example,
Rosalind Franklin ,
David Wilkinson ,
Ronald Drever , but they died before they managed to present the prize for their discoveries. According to the rules, it may be too late to award these incredible scientists with Nobel Prize, but it's never too late to recognize their amazing contribution to our knowledge of the Universe. Let us remember the most distinguished scientists, their outstanding work, and how their discoveries have helped humanity to take the greatest steps.