Friday, October 10, 2008
It has been said that the most common characteristic of Nobel Prize
winners is longevity. The prize is not awarded posthumously; it can take
years before the full significance of a discovery becomes obvious. So it
was with Professor Yoichiro Nambu, 87, a particle theorist at the
University of Chicago who discovered the mechanism of spontaneous broken
symmetry in the 1960s. It is now at the very heart of the so
called "standard model" of particle theory. A naturalized U.S. citizen
born in Japan, Nambu shared the prize with Japanese physicists Makoto
Kobayashi, 64, at the High Energy Accelerator in Tsukuba, and Toshihide
Maskawa, 68, at Kyoto University. On the basis of a slight asymmetry
between matter and antimatter they predicted in 1973 that in addition to
the three quarks already known, there should be three additional quarks;
they were subsequently found.
The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Luc Montagnier
and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in Paris for
discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. A third prize went to German
virologist Harald zur Hansen for finding that human papillomavirus can
cause cervical cancer. Nobel rules limit winners to three. Left out was
Robert Gallo of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in
Baltimore, where he directs the Institute of Human Virology. Montagnier's
group first identified HIV, but Gallo's group did much of the science that
made the discovery possible and proved that the virus causes AIDS. Gallo
contends that Montagnier relied on a technique developed by Gallo's lab.
In 1993 the Office of Research Integrity charged that Gallo seriously
hindered progress in AIDS research by denigrating the French contribution,
but two years later Science magazine hailed as "one of the top scientific
breakthroughs" Gallo's discovery that chemokines halt the progression of
AIDS. Scientists need the access to research support the prize gives
them. That will be even more important in the economy Bush is bequeathing
us.
Last week we reported that Michael Reiss, education director of the Royal
Society and an ordained priest in the Church of England, was pressured to
step down. He was quoted, incorrectly I'm told, as favoring teaching of
intelligent design. Several WN readers said Reiss was unfairly dealt
with; one asked if I favored a religious test in my department. Maybe.
We have a number of deeply religious faculty members; they interpret
sacred texts that conflict with scientific fact metaphorically. It's not
my taste, but I don't have a problem with it. I would, however, vote
against appointment of a physicist who believes the world is 6,000 years
old.
Several readers sent me articles about a McCain ad that ridiculed $3
million for a study of grizzly DNA. The object is to match DNA against
fur samples taken from back-scratch trees to get population trends without
following the bears around, which is expensive. Congress requires that
the information be collected. It's not "pork." Pork-barrel refers to
lines inserted into bills by Appropriations Committee members in
conference without any vote. It is reprehensible and should be stopped -
but that's not what happened here.
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