Physical Nobel Committee

See brochure of Nobel Committees for Physics and Chemistry, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, List of the Nobel Prize Laureates 1901-1994, Alm-quist Wiksell Tryckeri Uppsala, Sweden, 1995. 

Ten books and ten years later, we are delighted to present you the decennial volume of the series. This volume will be released just few months prior to the 15th CCTCC conference that is scheduled for November 2006. There have been important developments during this decade — computers are more powerful and faster, code features are enhanced and more efficient, and studied molecules are larger and can be studied not only in vacuum but also in an environment of a solvent or in crystal. In addition, the chemical and physical community celebrated the 1998 Nobel Prize that was awarded to two leading computational experts. It was not by chance that Walter Kohn and John A. Pople have been recognized by the Nobel Committee for their contributions to the development of efficient computational methods for quantum chemistry. 

The stipulation that the prizes should be given for work done during the preceding year was obviously not practicable. Instead, it became possible to reward also older work in case its significance had not been established until recently. Furthermore, the prize could be divided between two different works and could also be awarded to several persons, who had performed a certain work together, but with the limitation that the prize could not be divided into more than three shares. The institutions awarding the prizes for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature were to appoint Nobel Committees of three to five members to help them evaluate the candidates. 

Bjorn O. Roos received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1968 at the University of Stockholm. He became Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Lund in 1983 and formally retired in June 2002. He is, however, still active as a project leader of the MOLCAS group. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and served as a member of the Nobel Committee for chemistry 1986-2000. Roos research has specialized around the description of electron correlation in molecular systems. He has published more than 300 scientihc articles. Also, since 1989 Roos has been the leader of the European Summer school in Quantum Chemistry (ESQC). 

Frumkin was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on several occasions (1946, 1966, 1974), by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences USSR, and by various authoritative Soviet and foreign scientists. The details of these nominations came to light only decades after the events. As regards Soviet nominations, the relevant information has been collected and discussed by A. M. Blokh in a monograph [34]. It appears that contact with the Nobel Committees on Physics and Chemistry was initiated in 1945, when various Soviet scientists were invited to nominate candidates. Unfortunately, the Nobel Committee waited in vain for a formal reply. The mail system between the Soviet scientists and foreign colleagues was blocked. 

The letter to the Nobel Committee below was written in response to the Scientific Background document issued by the Nobel Committee in support of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded jointly to Geim and Novoselov for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene (an updated version of the Scientific Background document can be found at Ref. [1]). The letter has been reproduced in full from Ref. [2] for scientific clarity. 

When the question of the award of a Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of nuclear fission arose at the end of World War II, it was complicated by the fact that both Hahn and Strassmann were chemists. Another complication was that the Nobel Prize Committee had always considered radioactivity and radioactive atoms the responsibility of their chem-istiy committee—despite the fact that the discovery of fission had been interdisciplinai y from beginning to end. The Swedish Academy of Science was divided on whether the Chemistry Prize should be given jointly to Hahn and Meitner, or to Hahn alone. Finally they decided by a close vote to give the 1945 chemistry prize solely to Otto Hahn. 

Andrei Sakliarov was a Soviet physicist who became, in the words of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, a spokesman for the conscience of mankind. He made many important contributions to our understanding of plasma physics, particle physics, and cosmology. He also designed nuclear weapons for two decades, becoming the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb in the Ih.SOs. After recognizing the dangers of nuclear weapons tests, he championed the 1963 U.S.-Soviet test ban treaty and other antinuclear initiatives. 

As one might expect, the setting up and operation of the committees presented the problem of distribution of power between the committees and the Academy. The committees, each with its five members, were anxious to keep as much power as possible regarding prize decisions on the other hand, the physics and chemistry classes of the Academy were required by statutory rules to examine and write a statement about the suggestions from the respective committees. Finally, it was the Academy in plenum who made the actual decision of which person or persons should be awarded the Nobel prize. 

What is not so well known about Einstein is that he made contributions to the development of modern chemistry, particularly to the area of quantum mechanics. The Nobel Prize Committee awarded Einstein the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. His explanation of the photoelectric effect helped to validate Planck s view of quantized energy, and has become the basis of the quantitative laws of photochemistry. 

For fourteen years Ingvar was a member of the Nobel Conunittee for physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and chaired the Conunittee for three years at the end of this period (1989-91). He served on the Swedish Natural Science Research Council (NFR) 1971-77 and was entrusted in 1991 with the task of evaluating the Swedish National Research Facilities. Academic memberships and awards, university committees and national commitments include an APS fellowship, a membership of the Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences (1995), a von Humboldt Research award (1993) and many others. He has been a member of many scientific conference conunittees, the main organizer of two Nobel... 

Nobel gave instructions that the prizes for chemistry and physics were to be awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, for physiology or medicine by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, for literature by the Swedish Academy, and for peace by a five-person committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. The deliberations are secret, and the decisions cannot be appealed. In 1969, the Swedish Central Bank established a prize in economics in Nobel s honor. The recipient of this prize is selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. On December 10—the anniversary of Nobel s death—the prizes are awarded in Stockholm, except for the peace prize, which is awarded in Oslo. 

In 1909, Ostwald was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in catalysis. My suspicion is that the committee decided to award him the prize - he was the "Mr. Physical Chemistry" of his day -and they chose his work in catalysis as providing as good a basis as any other. In fact, not much of his career had been devoted to catalysis. In 1884, he reported a study of the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of methyl acetate which introduced kinetics, in the modern sense, into catalysis. He also tied the concept of catalytic activity to rate. Both of these items were important. Then in 1901-1904 he and his former student, Brauer, developed the Ostwald process for the oxidation on platinum of ammonia to nitric oxide. The first plant went on stream in Bochum in 1906 at a level of 300 kg of nitric acid per day. In 1908, the production was 3000 kg per day. The process actually goes back to Kuhlmann in 1838, but there had been no industrial interest in such a process, because Chili saltpeter was cheaper source of nitric acid than ammonia. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the ease with which the British fleet could sever the sea lane between Chili and Germany had become a stimulus to the development of the Ostwald process. 

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