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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

The Nobel in Physics only goes with experimental discoveries, Peter Higgs didn't get his (deserved since the 70s) until the LHC directly observed the particle.

I agree that Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines are a surprisingly arbitrary choices. It is like they wanted to give a prize to someone for neural networks, but had to pick people from inside their own field to represent the development, which limited the range of options. There is also the aspect of the physics community wanting to give somebody that they liked a Nobel, and then trying to fit them in. (The prize isn't handed out by a shadowy committee of Swedes, there's an involved and highly bureaucratic process for nomination that requires your colleagues to take up your case.)

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I've never heard that it had to be tied to experimental discoveries. For example, Feynman got the prize for Feynman diagrams, path integrals and QED calculations. None of that directly tied to experimental work.

It has definitely been awarded for both theoretical and experimental contributions throughout its history. Many theoretical physicists have received the prize for their conceptual breakthroughs, even without direct experimental verification at the time.

Interesting. Those are essentially inventions, not discoveries?

That was the reasoning given when Einstein won his prize for the photoelectric effect, not relativity (although the reasons were actually fairly complicated: https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/the-dramatic-story-behin...)

That was relatively early and it had clearly changed later when they started giving folks like Feynman the prize for something that wasn't at all experiment related.

Giorgio Parisi's prize proves the committee gives prizes for theoretical discoveries nowadays. This year's prize is more proof.

But, as you said, Higgs got his prize once theories were tested. Hence, theoretical contributors (still alive as per prize rules) could have been included here as well.

Nor did Georges Lemaître, nor other theorists, and in that case the experimental physicists who (accidentally!) discovered the evidence did win Nobels.

Mmmmhhhhh… What about Penrose? Honest question.

And also why Einstein didnt get Nobel prize for his theories of relativity, but rather the 'discovery' of photoelectric effect.

The photoelectric effect was known before Einstein, so the award was for theoretical achievements. (But only after Millikan had done precision measurements on it)

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