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Comment by lhd1 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder - was there really no other people they could have given it to? The detection of gravitational waves was split between a theorist, experimentalist and a person who had a big hand in shepherding the project along. Could not the same have been done here?

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I would imagine the problem is that there are too many of them.

For better or worse the prize can only go to 3 people. Over the years there are generally many dozens of people who make absolutely critical contributions to these kinds of experiments. In this case, though, the same guy was listed as the PI of the UW Madison group, and Madison is very clearly "the" operator of the project.

Halzen is by any measure an awesome physicist, but he's also a good "fit" for the Nobel because of this unique situation.

I was in the IceCube experiment for a bit as well as the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. So you could say I contributed a bit to both this and the Higgs Nobel. Being part of these big collaborations, you know what the deal is. The Nobel is excellent PR for physics, and science in general, but it is just a prize. Francis is the singular leader of IceCube, and a visionary in the area, it is perfectly fair to award it to him, if not to the total collaboration. As for theory, I don’t think this award hinges on theoretical predictions but the enablement of observation itself.

other relevant people are probably dead

I can confirm. The most relevant other contributors are dead but even then Francis is the most deserving.

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