The very Nobel art of winning

Prizes, poverty and pasta: a week in the life of a winner

The UK does well at producing Nobel laureates, coming second only to the US. The exception is in physics: it has been more than 20 years since Sir Nevill Mott of the University of Cambridge won the prize for his theoretical work on the conditions under which certain metals can become insulators.

Is it because Brits excel in theoretical physics whereas many recent prizes have gone to experimental physicists? Funding for particle physics and astronomy has been falling in real terms for the past 20 years. Since experimental physics costs a lot more than theoretical work, maybe the cut in funding has scuppered our prize-winning potential.

Another theory is that researchers have been encouraged to play too safe. When Ian Halliday took over as chief executive of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in March he criticised the council for having been too reluctant to take risks. The council promptly approved an open competition to support truly new ideas. Halliday hopes this will boost our chances of winning a Nobel prize.

A third possibility is that we are lousy at campaigning for the prize. Each year the various awarding committees solicit nominations from thousands of scientists worldwide. Nominations are evaluated by a panel and a shortlist is drawn up. The committee votes on the laureate immediately before the prize is announced.

Stephen Hawking at Cambridge is widely acclaimed as the best physicist since Einstein but he still has not scooped a Nobel. With Roger Penrose of Oxford (another strong Nobel candidate), Hawking showed that Einstein's general theory of relativity implied that space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. The research had far-reaching implications; it pointed to the unification of the two great theories of the early 20th century - general relativity and quantum theory.

One consequence of such a unification is that black holes should not be completely black but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear.

Earlier this year another British physicist, Sir Michael Berry of the University of Bristol, shared the Wolf prize, considered the next best thing to a Nobel. His highly theoretical work led to the discovery of a subtle and unexpected consequence of quantum theory - that a certain beam of particles can possess a sort of memory. Sir Michael must be another prime candidate for a Nobel.

And British physicists could benefit from a new particle collider being built at Cern, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva. It is designed to answer fundamental questions about the universe within the next ten years. The origin of mass could be revealed - at present, no one knows how a point-like entity such as an electron can have mass. Physicists would also like to know why there are three families of matter and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. And the nature of "missing" matter - which accounts for some 90 per cent of the mass of the universe - remains a mystery. Whoever answers these questions is almost guaranteed a trip to Stockholm.

FACTS AND FABLES

Fact: Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics prize was not initiated by Alfred Nobel. His will, opened after his death in 1896, established the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Then in 1968 the Bank of Sweden established the prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, to mark the bank's 300th anniversary. It was first awarded in 1969.

Fable: Alfred Nobel did not establish a Nobel prize in mathematics. A popular myth explains why. Nobel caught his wife in flagrante delicto with a leading mathematician. If Nobel had established a prize in mathematics, there would have been a good chance this calculating Casanova would win it, so Nobel refused to create the prize. But there is a small problem with this tale - Nobel never married.

IGNOBEL PRIZES

These honour achievements "that cannot or should not be reproduced" and are awarded by "The Annals of Improbable Research". This year's winners include:

* Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac;

* Jacques Benveniste of France for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet;

* Jerald Bain of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta for their carefully measured report "The relationship among height, penile length and foot size".