What we can say about Google and 2024 Nobel Prizes

2024 Nobel Prizes spotlight breakthroughs in AI, neural networks, and protein folding advancements.

I apologize for the delayed publication of this post, but due to the problems with the security certificate that I was writing last week, I preferred to leave this article on hold, so I'm recovering it now.

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021: A scent of Feynman

One of the most famous speech by Richard Feynman is There's plenty of room at the bottom:

Now comes the interesting question: How do we make such a tiny mechanism? I leave that to you. However, let me suggest one weird possibility. You know, in the atomic energy plants they have materials and machines that they can’t handle directly because they have become radioactive. To unscrew nuts and put on bolts and so on, they have a set of master and slave hands, so that by operating a set of levers here, you control the “hands” there, and can turn them this way and that so you can handle things quite nicely.

The idea is to manipulate molecules to build, for example, an electric engine, or a book, or something else. The most curious fact about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 is that Johan Jarnestad has illustrated the work of Benjamin List and David MacMillan using a couple of workers, an image that, in a particular way, is very similar to Feynman's idea.

Building molecules is a difficult art. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.

I hope to write soon an article about Feynman and miniaturization obviously from the physics point of view.
Stay tuned!

Giorgio Parisi: A Nobel for complex systems

The last time an italian was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics was in 2002: Roberto Giacconi for his pioneering research in the field of X-ray radiation from the universe. Another italian research that probably could win the Prize was Adalberto Giazotto, who designed the VIRGO interferometer, that with LIGOs shared the first observation of gravitational waves. The Swedish Academy decided to assign the Prize to three of the LIGO's founders, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne. But this is not a great problem: after all, the Nobel Prize serves to emphasize personal contributions, but also to establish key points in the knowledge, and in this sense, the role of Italy had already been indicated as fundamental.
Today, however, a long-awaited award arrives: Giorgio Parisi, theoretical physicist, whose works have provided important contributions to field theory and statistical physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics

for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales

A brief history of neutrinos' oscillations

I just write a more detailed post about the model behind neutrino's oscillations. Here I would simply recall that the idea was proposed by Bruno Pontecorvo in 1957 and developed by Ziro Maki, Masami Nakagawa e Shoichi Sakata in 1962. Today I try to summarize the experimental way.

via nobelprize.org

Just a bit of blue

http://t.co/hgbABOxUlm by @ulaulaman about #nobelprize2014 on #physics #led #light #semiconductors

Created with SketchBookX

One of the first classifications that you learn when you start to study the behavior of matter interacting with electricity is between conductors and insulators: a conductor is a material that easily allows the passage of electric charges; on the other hand, an insulator prevents it (or makes it difficult). It is possible to characterize these two kinds of materials through the physical characteristics of the atoms that compose them. Indeed, we know that an atom is characterized by having a positive nucleus with electron clouds which rotate around it: to characterize a material is precisely the behavior of the outer electrons, those of the external band. On the other hand, the energy bands of every atom are characterized by specific properties: there are the valence bands, where the electrons are used in the chemical bonds, and the conduction bands, where the electrons are free to move, the "mavericks" of the atom, used for ionic bonds. At this point I hope it is simple to characterize a conductive material such as the one whose atoms have electrons both in the valence band, both in the conduction band, while an insulating material is characterized by having full only the valence band.
Now, in band theory, the probability that an electron occupies a given band is calculated using the Fermi-Dirac distribution: this means that there is a non-zero probability that an insulator's electron in the valence band is promoted to the conduction band, but it is extremely low because of the large energy difference between the two levels. Moreover, there is an energy level said Fermi level that, while in the conductors is located within the conduction band, in the insulation is located between the two bands, the conduction and valence, allowing a valence electron to jump more easily in the conduction band.

Teachers for the peace

http://t.co/W1K0rh9An6 #nobelprize2014 #peace #children #education #teaching

The Nobel Prize for Peace 2014 is awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai, teachers and activists for children rights,

for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education

The first atomic clock

The first atomic frequency standard, based on the ammonia molecule (1949).
Inventor Harold Lyons is on the right; Edward Condon, at the age the director of NBS, is on the left.

The story of the atomic clock is really interesting, because starts from a pure research and arrives to an incredible application. First of all we must start from Isidor Isaac Rabi, who started the studies about the atomic transitions, and we must arrive to Harold Lyons, who applied the devices developed during 1930s-1940s by Rabi's team⁽²⁾, who awarded the Nobel Prize for these studies in 1944⁽¹⁾, in order to construct an atomic clock.
In particular the key paper is published in 1938, A new method of measuring nuclear magnetic moment⁽³⁾

It is the purpose of this note to describe an experiment in which nuclear magnetic moment is measured very directly. The method is capable of very high precision and extension to a large number and variety of nuclei.

A beam of particles, in the case of the first experiment they used molecules of LiCl, passed through a group of magnets, so that the nuclear spins is decoupled from each other and from the molecular rotation. At this point an additional magnetic field, this time slightly oscillating, is applied such that the spin and the nuclear magnetic moment are redirected, obtaining at the end a sort of frequency's precession⁽³⁾.
At the end, Rabi and his colleagues were able to observe perfectly the separated resonance peaks of the two nuclei of lithium and chlorine and just a year later, as also promised in the conclusions of the first article, they were able to update the method using some new atoms, describing with more details the experimental apparatus used by the team:⁽⁴⁾:

Rita Levi-Montalcini, artist of science

portrait by orticanoodles - source: deviantart | flickr

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born on the 22nd april 1909 at Turin, Italy. In 1938 she came in Belgium because of the italian racial laws. After the war, she came back in Italy, at Asti, where she prepared a little laboratory in order to study the nervous system of chickens. In 1947, with her friend Renato Dulbecco, went in USA where she worked until 1977. In 1986 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine with her pupil Stanley Cohen

for their discoveries of growth factors.

About the potential of the NGF, she wrote in her Nobel Lecture:

For instance, whenever cell death of specific neuronal populations may be linked to a decreased local availability of neurotrophic factors, such as NGF, its exogenous supply or stimulation of its endogenous production via pharmacological agents may offer a promising approach to presently incurable diseases.

About the role of the women in science, she said:

Humanity is made ​​up of men and women must be represented by both sexes.

In 1975 she was was supported by the italian farmaceutical industry Fidia, but in about a decade was discovered that the advetrised drug was harmful. About this story she said to Riccardo Chiaberge:

Of course, I must admit that I yelled to see my name linked to Fidia. But I thought it was the price to pay, I don't care about anything to get some help for research. If we prevent the industry to help the laboratory, we die.

She had aprecise opinion on the relationship between young people and technology:

Today, compared to yesterday, young people benefit from an extraordinary breadth of information, and the price is the hypnotic effect exerted by television screens disaccustoming them to reason (in addition robbing them of time to devote to the study, sports and games that stimulate their creative capacity). They create for them a definite reality that inhibits their ability to "invent the world" and destroys the charm of the unknown.

In this sense she was an example for all of us:

I lost a little the eyesight, much the hearing. At the conferences I don't see the projections and don't hear so good. But I think more now than when I was twenty. The body does what it wants. I am not the body, I am the mind.

She passed away on the 30th december 2012 at Rome, Italy.

I've never been able to keep a log. Everything in me is imagination, intuition. Nothing is scientific.
I am not a scientist, I'm an artist of science.

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Levi-Montalcini R. (1987). The nerve growth factor: Thirty-five years later, Bioscience Reports, 7 (9) 681-699. DOI: 10.1007/BF01116861 (pdf)
Quotes by Rita Levi-Montalcini (italian)
Biographies on Wikipedia: italian | english
An interview with Tullio Regge (italian)

Renato Dulbecco

Renato Dulbecco was born on the 22nd february 1914 at Catanzaro, Italy. He worked between Italy and USA, where he went for the first time in 1947 with Rita Levi-Montalcini. He winned Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 with David Baltimore and Howard Martin Temin

for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell

At the conclusion of his Nobel Lecture he said:

This discussion about cancer prevention is a development of the experimental results obtained in the field of oncogenic viruses, but it is also strongly influenced by the new social conscience of many scientists. Historically, science and society have gone separate ways, although society has provided the funds for science to grow and in return science has given society all the material things it enjoys. In recent years, however, the separation between science and society has become excessive, and the consequences are felt especially by biologists. Thus, while we spend our life asking questions about the nature of cancer and ways to prevent or cure it, society merrily produces oncogenic substances and permeates the environment with them. Society does not seem prepared to accept the sacrifices required for an effective prevention of cancer. The situation is clearly unacceptable, and we biologists would like to see it corrected. We have ourselves begun to put our house in order, by banning some experiments that may contain a risk for mankind. We would like to see society take a similar attitude, abandoning selfish practices that are dangerous for society itself. We would also like to see a new co-operation of science and society for the benefit of all mankind and hope that the dominant forces in society will recognize that this is a necessity.

Recently (2008) he also writes:

We are at a turning point in the study of tumor virology and cancer in general. If we wish to learn more about cancer, we must now concentrate on the cellular genome. We are back to where cancer research started, but the situation is drastically different because we have new knowledge and crucial tools, such as DNA cloning. We have two options: either to try to discover the genes important in malignancy by a piecemeal approach, or to sequence the whole genome ofa selected animal species. The former approach seems less formidable, but it will still require a vast investment of research, especially if the important genes differ in cancers of different organs and if they encode regulatory proteins. A major difficulty for conventional approaches is the heterogeneity of tumors and the lack of cultures representative of the various cell types present in a cancer. I think that it will be far more useful to begin by sequencing the cellular genome. The sequence will make it possible to prepare probes for all the genes and to classify them for their expression in various cell types at the level of individual cells by means of cytological hybridization. The classification of the genes will facilitate the identification of those involved in progression.⁽²⁾

He passed away on the 19th february 2012 at La Jolla, USA.

In one generation we have come a long way in our efforts to understand cancer. The next generation can look forward to exciting new tasks that may lead to a completion of our knowledge about cancer, closing one of the most challenging chapters in biological research.⁽²⁾

The mathematics in the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 is assigned to Daniel Shechtman

for the discovery of quasicrystals

The paper of the discover, written with Blech, Gratias and Cahn, starting with the following worlds:

We report herein the existence of a metallic solid which diffracts electrons like a single crystal but has point group symmetry $m \bar{35}$ (icosahedral) which is inconsistent with lattice translations.⁽²⁾

The lattice translations are, indeed, most important tools in order to classify crystals. Indeed in 1992 the definition of crystals given by the International Union of Crystallography was:

A crystal is a substance in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating three-dimensional pattern.

So the discover of Shechtman and collegues was very important: they introduce a new class of crystals, named quasicrystals by Levine and Steinhardt some weeks later⁽³⁾, and a new way to view crystals.
In particular Shechtman, studying Al with 10–14% Mn, and collegues observed that

The symmetries of the crystals dictate that several icosahedra in a unit cell havedifferent orientations and allow them to be distorted (...)⁽²⁾

And when they observe crystal using lattice translations:

crystals cannot and do not exhibit the icosahedral point group symmetry.⁽²⁾

They also oserve that the formation of the icosahedral phase is a transition phase of the first order, because the two phases (the other is translational) coexist for a while during translation⁽²⁾.

Super-Nobel in Physics 2011

The first observation of a supernova is dated 1572 by Tycho Brahe, but the hystorically most important supernova's observation is the Galilei's observation in 1604:

The supernova of 1604 caused even more excitement than Tycho's because its appearance happened to coincide with a so-called Great Conjunction or close approach of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.⁽¹⁾

The Galilei's discover was revolutionary for one important reason:

Galileo's observations and those made elsewhere in Italy and in Northern Europe indicated that it was beyond the Moon, in the region where the new star of 1572 had appeared. The appearance of a new body outside the Earth-Moon system had challenged the traditional belief, embodied in Aristotle's Cosmology, that the material of planets was unalterable and that nothing new could occur in the heavens.⁽¹⁾

About the new star

Galileo states that [it] was initially small but grew rapidly in size such as to appear bigger than all the stars, and all planets with the exception of Venus.⁽¹⁾

We can confrount the observation with modern definitions:

Novae are the result of explosions on the surface of faint white dwarfs, caused by matter falling on their surfaces from the atmosphere of larger binary companions. A supernova is also a star that suddenly increases dramatically in brightness, then slowly dims again, eventually fading from view, but it is much brighter, about ten thousand times more than a nova.⁽¹⁾

These dramatical events became soon a good tools in order to observe the expansion of the universe:

Type Ia supernovae are empirical tools whose precision and intrinsic brightness make them sensitive probes of the cosmological expansion.⁽⁵⁾

And observing a series of supernovae the team of Brian Schmidt (1967) and Adam Riess (1969) in 1998⁽³⁾ and the team of Saul Perlmutter (1959) in 1999⁽⁴⁾ found an important consmological observation: Universe is accelerating!