Your Questions about the Nobel Prize in Physics

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Question: Dear Professor Bergström,
I would like to know what is Magnetoresistance? And furthermore why are some research honored by the prestigious Nobel Prize so late after the research started. Sometimes the Nobel Prize honors a research that started 20 years ago. Why so much time?
Anwar Hussain MD, MHA

Answer: Magnetoresistance is the effect that was discovered long ago (by Lord Kelvin) about how the resistance of a current depends on an external magnetic field. Giant Magnetoresistance is the discovery that one can obtain a much greater effect by having nanometre-thin layers of magnetic and non-magnetic metals stacked on each other. The discovery was made in 1988, but it took until the mid-1990's until the effect was used in applications, and only in recent years has this technology been revolutionizing disk drives for computers.

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Question: How does the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance affect our lives?

Question: What has this technology done for the world - or put the other way around; how would the world look like without this technology?

Answer: There have been 3-4 billion of GMR read heads used for storing data in computers made up until this date. The large storage capacity of modern laptop computers would not have been possible without GMR. MP3 players use them. There are also medical applications such as hearing aids that use this technology. Perhaps most important is that the discovery started the field of spintronics, that is, how to make use of the different properties that electrons with different spin have. The full applications (for example, magnetic random access memories for computers) of this new field can only be guessed.

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Question: Does this year's Physics Award signal a new era that will award more discoveries in applied physics that are rapidly converted to key technological advancements, and possibly resulting in younger and younger Laureates.
Ramani

Answer: The Nobel Committee never makes statements about future Prizes. You'll just have to wait and see.

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Question: Today the Nobel Prize was awarded to people who, in the words of Börje Johansson, discovered an effect where "You would not have an iPod without this effect." Is it the habit of the Nobel Prize Committee to be an advertisement for a proprietary product? The fact that he mentioned "iPod" several times does not seem fair or right.

Answer: I am sure it was not intended to be interpreted as a brand name but rather as a generic term (used by many in Sweden) for MP3 players.

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Question: Hello, Mr. Bergström, What are the criteria to select a Nobel winner?

Answer: The general criteria are still the ones spelled out in Alfred Nobel's will: It is a truly international Prize, and in physics it is to be given to those that have during the last year made the "most important discovery or invention within the field". (Of course, later this was reinterpreted to mean that the significance of the discovery or invention should be evident at the time of the award.) The Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences investigates the nominations that arrive by January 31 every year, and after evaluation by experts in the field of those nominated it makes a recommendation. After several stages within the Academy the final vote takes place the same day that the Prize is announced.

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Question: Respected Professor, it takes many years to realise that a discovery or invention or finding has been useful to the society or mankind how your committee takes this into account for selecting the Prize winner?
Sundararagavan

Answer: In fact, this is one reason it sometimes takes a long time before a discovery or invention is rewarded with a Nobel Prize.

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Question: Do you take into account, admitting Nobel Prize, the usefulness of the discovery and its future applications for development of civilisation? Is it an important criterium?
Monika Florek, Weekly Wprost, Poland

Answer: Some years, like this year, the Prize is evidently rewarding physics with immediate technological applications. Other years, like last year, the Prize went to fundamental discoveries about the nature of our Universe. Thus the sentence "... the greatest discovery or invention ..." of Alfred Nobel's will allows rather wide possibilities of interpretation, and the beauty of physics is that it spans over such a remarkably wide range of phenomena.

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Question: Why is it that in the early 1900s physicists were almost immediately awarded the Nobel Prize when they discovered something profoundly new, and nowadays you have to be almost dead to receive something you have done when you were young? Is it that physicists are too lazy to come up with something useful nowadays since string theory?!

Answer: Times have changed, and so in a sense has physics. But still today a remarkable discovery, if properly confirmed, can without doubt be rewarded quickly.

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Interview with Professor Ingemar Lundström after the announcement of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics

Articles about the Nobel Prize in Physics

Find out more about nomination and selection of the Nobel Prize Laureates in Physics