Well, it's happened again and for the 4th time, the Nobel Prize has been awarded for an invention. Nobel's will specifically says the award should be for a discovery or an invention, but there has historically been some apparent bias against inventions. Even when great new experimental inventions such as the bubble chamber led to many great discoveries, it was the discoveries, not the invention itself, that won the prize.
The inventions winners are (and this is my own editing to make it more understandable)
1909, Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun, Wireless Telegraphy
1912, Nils Gustaf Dalen, automatic gas regulators for lighthouses and buoys.
2000, Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, Diode laser (used in fiberoptic communications, laser scanners of all kinds, and CD, DVD, and blueray players)
Jack S. Kilby, Integrated Circuit
2009, Charles K. Kao, Fiber Optics
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, CCD imaging device (used in digital cameras)
According to Kroemer in a colloquium I attended years ago, the 88 year break was something of a backlash to Dalen's prize. (The following is my explanation, not Kroemer's.) While the gas regulators were a tremendous boon to shipping on the rocky shores of Scandanavia, they were basically an engineering feat not a unique new application of physics for a revolutionary device. Many felt that choice had lessened the value of the prize so inventions were passed over for many decades.
Personally, I'm glad to see that inventions are back, that they are being chosen with care, but are in fact excellent examples of putting basic physics to practical use.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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