The Nobel Prize Race

       
The Nobel Prize Race
  By: Ivy Armstrong
    The Nobel Foundation is responsible for the rules and
everything else for the Nobel Prizes. There are five prize areas
including our area of interest, the Physics Prize. In Alfred
Nobel’s will stated that the award would go to something who in
the last year “shall have made the most important discovery or
invention within the field of physics”. This, however, is not the
current statute regarding who can win the Nobel Prize. The
statute today reads “one part to the person who shall have made
the most important discovery within the field of physics.” and it
clears up that the work does not have to be done within the last
year.  Other criteria include, “To be eligible to be considered
for a prize, a written work shall have been issued in print or
have been published in another form, to be decidedd on its own
behalf by each prize-awarding body.” The statues also states that
the winner must be alive unless he or she dies between the
announcing of the winner and the Nobel Prize ceremony.
    The process of people that select the winner goes like this.
Nominations are submitted by people that have been invited by the
prize winning institutions.  The people selected are Nobel
laureates, members of the prize winning institutions, people that
are currently active in the fields of the award or a diverse
selection of people from other academies and universities. It is
an automatic forfeit of your nomination if you nominate yourself.
These nominations must be submitted prior to January 31st. Then
the nominations are given to the Nobel Committee which is
selected by the prize winning institutions and may include up to
1000 people used to find the validity of the nominations. The
committee then submits their recommendation and it almost always
is followed.  The award decision can not be appealed.
    I think the method used to pick the Nobel Prize winners is a
good system with two exceptions. I believe that a deceased person
should be able to win the prize because they may not have gotten
recognised in their life. The other thing that needs to be
changed is that each person should only be able to win the Nobel
Prize once.  This makes it so more people can be recognised.
    Sharon C. Glotzer from N.I.S.T is the person who will win
the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. Ms. Glotzer will win
because of her research in Filler-induced composition waves in
phase-separating polymer blends. Sharon is a former winner of the
Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for Physics and has many other things
to her credit.
    Sharon Glotzer will win this prize because of her researched
illustrated in the article, “Filler-induced composition waves in
phase-separating polymer blends.” (Physical Review E, Volume 60
Number 5, November 1999). Her research shows that the computer
model she made illustrates the same thing as other experiments
have proving further the validity of it. It proved that filler
particles that remain stationary in polymer blend may become
attracted to certain polymers during phase changes instead of
separating like most polymer blends during phase changes.
    Sharon remains a role model for females entering the mainly
male-dominated field of physics. Her continued research is very
important in the field of physics right now and in the future.