Word: glashow
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...good reason for the traditional lag: "the awarding of the Nobel Prize at too young an age can conceivably hamper a person's career. It focuses the attention, the publicity, in such a special way. You're so much in the spotlight, and your science suffers correspondingly." But Glashow, while feeling the immediate pressures of the prize and the extent to which they impinge on his study, does not agree. "It is only a short-term interruption, just look at all the other cases in which it was awarded young...
Although the Nobel Prize Committee specifically cited these contributions, the public has latched on to Glashow's more recent hypothesis--that of the "charmed quarks." A testimony to what the imaginative selection of scientific names can do ("quark" originally comes from Joyce's "Finnegan s Wake"), charmed quarks are the next thread in this complex tapestry of theories. But while ingenious, the discovery of charm has no bearing on the awarding of the Nobel Prize. "No," Glashow bellows if you imply otherwise, "the citation from Sweden expressly doesn't mention charm. This is something else altogether...
...Glashow's candor is characteristic of the genial working environment of the Harvard cooperative. Unlike other departments, neigh-neighboring professors often work on identical problems, and one's breakthough could well pave the way to a breakthrough by another. One graduate student says he has learned as much if not more from his fellow students than from his professors...
Harvard is acknowledged to have the strongest particle physics department in the country, and Glashow and Weinberg are its two greatest luminaries. But even so, their selection is something of an anomaly. In the first place, the Swedish Academy generally doesn't award the prize to a theoretical physicist until after his theory is completely proven. Embarassing situations might otherwise arise. While all evidence points clearly toward its being correct, thorough proof remains elusive. So, as Glashow terms it, the award is "a leap of faith." Also, the prize traditionally is not awarded to a scientist right away. As colleague...
...anomaly though, it is an anomaly that many had expected. Many physics graduate students believe the department has been waiting for years for the two to get the award. Glashow himself cagily suggest that he had more than an inkling of its imminent arrival. The first overt hint came last year during a trip he took to a conference abroad. He tells the story with delight: "I was cornered by one of those gray-haired Swedish physicists. I was armed with information about charm, all the information he could have wanted. It was my baby and I wanted to talk...