As part of the special New Years list theme issue, this month\u2019s column is going to propose a ranking for the top 10 Nobel Prizes in physics out of the 117 that have been awarded.\u00a0 The primary criterion employed is that the work had to have a profound effect on the daily human quality of life in contrast to having a deep and lasting influence on our general knowledge of the universe.\u00a0 The recent buzz about the discovery of the Higgs boson captured the imaginations of the public at large and advanced our knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature but has currently had no practical impact on the day-to-day lives of most people.\u00a0 The energies required to unleash the Higgs are enormous and the idea that Higgs physics will be featured in the latest tech gadget absurd.\u00a0 Thus, its discovery has no place on this list, even though it was an amazing accomplishment.<\/p>\n
Each entry in the list will be cited first with the year, followed by the text the Nobel committee used to describe the discovery followed by the person or persons to whom the prize was awarded.\u00a0 For those prizes where more than one discovery was recognized, the ordering will be alphabetical.<\/p>\n
The one that started the whole enterprise of quantum mechanics.\u00a0 When faced with the puzzle of how to solve the ultraviolet catastrophe in the modeling of black body radiation, Planck proposed a radical concept:\u00a0 the energy in an oscillating mode couldn\u2019t be any arbitrary value but had to be a multiple of some elementary packet of energy.\u00a0 The fact that is fit the experimental data so well launched a mode of physical investigation that enabled all of the incredible technology that we all enjoy.<\/p>\n
This entry is primarily on the list due to the last cited development of the atomic clock.\u00a0 It is hard to reckon how important good time keeping and synchronization is to the underlying aspects of human activity.\u00a0 Knowing when to plant is vital to good harvests; knowing when to debit or credit an account is vital to good business; and knowing how to accurately keep good time opens the door for greater exploration of the universe.<\/p>\n
The digital age has profoundly enriched lives all over the world and this entry is the first of 3 concerning that aspect of our lives. \u00a0The discovery of giant magnetoresistance immensely increased the areal density of information that could be stored on hard drives and it is the most important reason why huge amount of data can be placed in clouds and servers.\u00a0 Each of us is now endowed with the ability to store and access digital data in a way that only the richest corporations could a few decades earlier.\u00a0 It is not an over-statement to conclude that the new fields of data science and machine learning would not be possible with this discovery.<\/p>\n
What Planck began with his quantization of radiation, de Broglie finished with his proposal that matter had a wave-like nature of its very own.\u00a0 Arguing from symmetry and well-established physical models of classical mechanics, de Broglie\u2019s idea of matter waves solidified quantum mechanics as the preeminent science and paved to way for the formal development of the theory by Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, and Dirac.<\/p>\n
Nuclear magnetic resonance is one of the two non-destructive imaging techniques on this list.\u00a0 Mostly known under its more politically-correct name of magnetic resonance imaging, this technique complements the use of X-rays in viewing the inner workings of the body with invasive surgery.\u00a0 It also has applications beyond medical imaging in a variety of situations where non-destructive investigation is required.<\/p>\n
Like the discoveries of Planck and de Broglie, Pauli\u2019s idea is profound not for it intrinsic nature but for the doors it opened.\u00a0 Advances in chemistry and material sciences, research fields that have opened up miracle drugs and novel new plastics, semi-conductors, and other materials would not have happened without the idea that electrons pack into an atom in a way that prevents them from having the same quantum numbers.<\/p>\n
We all take for granted the ability to take out a phone to film or photograph something of interest to us and to use the information superstructure to post or share what we\u2019ve captured with others.\u00a0 In this way we communicate with love ones not present and memorialize for later study.\u00a0 In this way, we also make up an army of citizen-journalists who have created a new type of politics not filtered through official channels.\u00a0\u00a0 All of this is having a profound effect on society and is enabled by the CCD and the fiber optics.\u00a0 I\u2019ve often thought that perhaps the best name for this entry is the YouTube prize.<\/p>\n
The first Nobel Prize ever awarded, Rontgen\u2019s discovery of X-Rays was also the first type of non-invasive imaging.\u00a0 Due to their ability to penetrate matter, X-Rays allowed the first views into the workings of the human body without the need to cut it open.\u00a0 Broken bones, infections, and tumors are only some of the maladies that could be treated with greater precision and with less pain for the patient.\u00a0 X-Rays also proved useful in investigating the goodness of welds, the stability of structures, and the like.<\/p>\n
It is hard to underestimate the importance of the transistor.\u00a0 Without it, logical gates, programming and practical computing, the entire digital age would not have come about.\u00a0 The idea that millions of these devices can be packed into an area about the size of a postage stamp staggers the imagination.\u00a0 And, as we are just at the beginning the road, it is hard to see just where all of this technology will lead.\u00a0 But one thing is certain, the transistor has had one of the most profound influences on society of any modern human invention.<\/p>\n
And number one on the list is Braun\u2019s and Marconi\u2019s invention of radio.\u00a0 \u2018Wireless Telegraphy\u2019, as the Nobel Committee called it, ushered in telecommunications and all that comes in its train: television, cell phones, radio, wireless routers, etc..\u00a0 Man is a social creature and language is the glue that holds society together.\u00a0 Telecommunications allows the reach of language to go further linking far-away with close-to-home.\u00a0 No other entry in this list has done more to knit the world together as a single family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"