9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
About half those awards went to string theorists, and they'll likely be waiting a lot longer than a few decades for experimental verification. Try centuries or never.
While I'm in favor of this kind of prize, I think this crop of winners shows a clear bias towards things that may not ever pan out while ignoring much more important contributions to science that are actually verifiable. Untestable theories are all well and dandy in that they might one day lead to something testable, but there's not much point in handing out awards for such stuff until it does!
But even theories that are not proved correct can advance human knowledge, by giving inspiration to other theories - even in different fields. So, in my opinion, an award for that kind of work could be useful in advancing science even if it doesn't award proven theories.
What are you referring to here? (Honest question.) Supersymmetry as a solution to the Hierarchy problem was an extremely important idea, and it is in the process of being ruled out by the LHC now (after hopes that is appear at LEP and the Tevatron also failed to materialize).
From the AdS/CFT correspondence (Maldacena), it's possible to calculate the ratio of viscosity to entropy in the quark-gluon plasma. This ratio has been measured at heavy ion colliders (well at least one heavy ion collider).
I think most people who are consistent with their Bayesian reasoning would grant that SUSY as a solution to the Hierarchy problem is ruled out at the 90% level. More precisely, if you had asked these theorist 25 years ago where they would expect to see SUSY conditional on it existing and solving the Hierarchy problem, they would have put well over 90% of their confidence weight in regions that have already been ruled out. (But obviously, if your prior for SUSY is sufficiently high, you can still claim its likely no matter how much parameter space is ruled out.) I am eager to take 10:1 bets that SUSY will not be found at the LHC.
It does seem telling to say "Well, yes, most of these guys haven't produced theories which are testable, but these two guys have! Oh, and yes, of two places where they have produced testable predictions, one (SUSY for hierarchy) is very likely ruled out and the other (AdS/CFT for QGP calculations) is a mathematical technique (rather than a new theory of physics) used to calculate something that few people care about other than because it is mathematically related to quantum gravity speculation.
(I mean, don't get me wrong, these guys are very smart and some, especially Witten, have made very important contributions to understanding the math of QFT better. And Nima has made all sorts of testable models that were eminently worth developing even if they turn out to be wrong. These are awesome physicists. It's just that $3M each is a lot of money...)
However, having visited IAS, where 4/9 of those guys are faculty I believe they are probably the ones who least need it.
They already are at the top of their career, they've secured a position in one of the most prestigious institutions in the world and they have amazing material conditions. They don't need to take students (they are actually discouraged to do so) and they have access to the most amazing cafeteria!
I'm also pretty sure that the prestige of the institution lands them some pretty good speaking gigs and consulting jobs on top of all that.
I don't mean to sound sour-grapey, but please give this money to people for whom this might actually make a big difference.
It reminds me of Richard Feynman not seeing any point in honors like the Nobel Prize. It may apply here, though many people think differently than he. Still, I suspect people don't go into physics for the money. They probably like the recognition of their peers, but I expect winners of this new award will already have that.
Feynman said, "I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish academy just decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize — I’ve already gotten the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it — those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors."
From the article: "future recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize, to be awarded annually, will be decided by previous winners."
More on Feynman, again not directly related, but close: he became so exasperated [at the National Academy of Sciences] that he resigned his membership, saying that he saw no point in belonging to an organization that spent most of its time deciding who to let in.
I'm puzzled by Feynman's attitude in those comments - he doesn't discuss the prize money at all, which one can easily see e.g. funding a number of students who might otherwise not be able to afford the type of education he received and thereby not receive the type of pleasure he speaks of.
I feel that as the physics gets increasingly complex to formulate, the prize money should go up too. And there's no better time to give away generous prizes than the highly skewed economy of today.
What a wonderful way to encourage physicists to resist the lure of Wall St.