Tips to win the Nobel Prize in Physics: curiosity, competitiveness, creativity, stubbornness, self confidence, scepticism and patience. Yeah, well surely it can’t be that easy, but these are words of wisdom yesterday from the 1973 Nobel Physics prize winner, Prof. Ivar Giaever from Norway. His light-hearted talk today to the 500 young researchers about how he discovered superconductive tunnelling mad a lot of people jealous at what this man achieved, and was full of anecdotes and humour. Not something we expect from a Nobel Laureate, but it got more interesting. By his own admission, he was a terrible student, scamming his way into a job at GE (General Electric) in New York due to a mistake by the interviewer (the interviewer thought his 4.0 grade in Maths and Physics was top class because this is the highest grade in the US, in fact a 4.0 grade is a fail grade in Norway). He forgot to include words like “complete determination” into his list, which won this mechanical engineer the Nobel Physics prize. His many mantra such as “Ideas come to the prepared mind,” “if there are no experiments, there is no Physics” and “prove yourself wrong” are definitely applicable to any student who is studying any subject, and struck a chord with the audience, most of whom have had the joy (if they see it as so!) of teaching other students our understandings of Physics. It is hard not to admire the humbleness and modesty of this guy, which was even more evident in his 2 hour question and answers session in the afternoon. The questions were more general than project-specific, broad debate-raising questions about the future of Physics, how do we improve the numbers attending undergraduate courses, how to balance a family life with that of a budding scientist and what makes a successful research career. Prof. Givaer definitely is a man of much wisdom, spreading far outside the realm of superconductor energy gaps and tunnelling for which he is most famous. Another few words of wisdom came from the mouth of Prof. John Hall, winner of the 2005 prize when me discussed how to “inspire the young” with Physics. In his talk about the optical frequency comb he mentioned the health applications of his research such as precision spectroscopy, and isotope selection from the human breath. Apparently a smoker who had given up smoking 2 years previously still breathes out carbon monoxide, shown up by their system (it acts similar to mass spectroscopy if you know how that works). 
In between lunch and the discussions, I got the opportunity to interview Prof. Peter Grunberg, the latest Physics Laureate (2007). In 1988 he discovered a physical effect known as Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR for short), probably unknown to most physicists, but an effect which is so important that its used in almost every electronic storage device in the world. It is for this reason we have the smaller hard drives, mp3 players and mobile phones that we take for granted so often.
Ever heard of a Bose Einstein condensate or the quantum Hall effect? Probably something you might have heard once or twice, but not at the front of your brain though. The Director of the Max-Planck Institutes here in Germany (there are 19 of them) and 1985 prize winner, Prof. Klaus von Klitzing gave a lecture about the quantum Hall effect and atom-thin sheets of carbon called graphene and rolled into a tube shape (now its called a nanotube), which he forsees being used as interconnects between layers in tiny circuits instead of conventional copper connections. 2 lectures involved the strange material known as a Bose Einstein condensate. Prof William Phillips (1997 winner, in the pic above) and Theodor Hanch (2005 winner) explained the workings of a BEC and what can be done with it (a BEC is a gas which is supercooled by a laser to about 200nK – its a different state of matter from the 3 we normally know where the atoms lose individuality!). An option with these BECs is to separate the atoms and place them onto an egg-box like surface (called a lattice), and not a mechanical normal lattice mind you, nope, that would be too easy, but a lattice made from interfering laser beams. So it represents an atom trap. Very interesting I hear you say. It represents a further step towards a “quantum computer,” which I won’t bore you about!
After a hard day it was time to relax with a few (>ahem<) pints at the get together organised at the conference centre (complete with cheesy German jazz band), followed by a 20 minute cycle home in total darkness around the lake.......lucky my German landlady wasn’t up! Tschuss! Anyone interested in watching the talks, you can watch them at http://nobellaureate.feedroom.com/?skin=showcase
Or simply look up http://www.lindau-nobel.de/
Ever heard of a Bose Einstein condensate or the quantum Hall effect? Probably something you might have heard once or twice, but not at the front of your brain though. The Director of the Max-Planck Institutes here in Germany (there are 19 of them) and 1985 prize winner, Prof. Klaus von Klitzing gave a lecture about the quantum Hall effect and atom-thin sheets of carbon called graphene and rolled into a tube shape (now its called a nanotube), which he forsees being used as interconnects between layers in tiny circuits instead of conventional copper connections. 2 lectures involved the strange material known as a Bose Einstein condensate. Prof William Phillips (1997 winner, in the pic above) and Theodor Hanch (2005 winner) explained the workings of a BEC and what can be done with it (a BEC is a gas which is supercooled by a laser to about 200nK – its a different state of matter from the 3 we normally know where the atoms lose individuality!). An option with these BECs is to separate the atoms and place them onto an egg-box like surface (called a lattice), and not a mechanical normal lattice mind you, nope, that would be too easy, but a lattice made from interfering laser beams. So it represents an atom trap. Very interesting I hear you say. It represents a further step towards a “quantum computer,” which I won’t bore you about!
After a hard day it was time to relax with a few (>ahem<) pints at the get together organised at the conference centre (complete with cheesy German jazz band), followed by a 20 minute cycle home in total darkness around the lake.......lucky my German landlady wasn’t up! Tschuss! Anyone interested in watching the talks, you can watch them at http://nobellaureate.feedroom.com/?skin=showcase
Or simply look up http://www.lindau-nobel.de/
