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To: Reily
Theoretical Physics accomplishments never get Nobel prizes! It’s considered a form of Mathematics by the Nobel committee.

Ummm, you might want to actually look at the list of the physics recipients and the work that got them the prize.

59 posted on 08/19/2007 3:26:37 PM PDT by Erasmus (My simplifying explanation had the disconcerting side effect of making the subject incomprehensible.)
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To: Erasmus
I did !
Granted that Heisenberg’s Nobel and a few others sound more theoretical then applied, but in those days the distinction between physics, chemistry,experiment and theory, etc. were not as distinct as then are now. (For example, 'Did Otto Hahn make contributions in Physics or Chemistry?'. Can the question even be asked?) Now I do think these demarcations are more artificial then real! Bureaucracies exist every where even in those hallowed Nobel halls and bureaucracies make rules both sensible & nonsensical.
Einstein’s 1921 Nobel Prise was for the photoelectric effect. This was viewed as “practical”! Cosmology (i.e., Relativity) was viewed as “mathematical” hence not “practical”! So no Nobel Prize for the work that fundamentally changed physics, Relativity (General & Special). (Same goes for Hawking !) You can disagree but the "Rule of Thumb" about the Nobel Prize" is theoretical (meaning mathematical) physicists need not apply! I have heard this my entire professional life. If you look at the work that won the prizes in the past, what theory that is present is accompanied by experimental results. (I guess this what keeps the work from being labeled "mathematial"!) The more "mathematical" the body of work looks the less likely it will be considered. I think this is unfair. I think its divorced from reality, but thats pretty much the way it is.
61 posted on 08/19/2007 4:27:28 PM PDT by Reily
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