Higgs boson: So who is getting the Nobel?

The discovery of a particle thought to be the elusive Higgs boson has prompted a new investigation: Whose names will be engraved on the Nobel Prize in Physics medal?

By Francie Diep,?InnovationNewsDaily Staff Writer / July 6, 2012

British physicist Peter Higgs, right, congratulates Fabiola Gianotti, ATLAS experiment spokesperson, after her results presentation during a scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday.

Denis Balibouse, Pool/AP

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There's the science, and then there's the glitter. As researchers celebrate the best-yet evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, some are already thinking about who's going to get the Nobel Prize in physics for the seminal discovery.

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Stephen Hawking told the BBC that he thinks Peter Higgs, who first theorized about the particle, should get the prize. But the award can go to as many as three people and even to groups, though the science Nobel committees haven't yet seen a need to recognize groups, says Sven Lidin, chairman of the Nobel committee in chemistry. So who else may share the podium with Higgs?

The talk around the physics prize for the Higgs boson is especially hot because so many people were involved in the research teams that worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Modern physics is?bigger than ever.?

The great majority of research performed since the 1940s has been conducted by teams of people working in laboratory groups, said Tom Broman, a historian of science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"The problem of making awards to individuals has been exacerbated, but by no means created, by the scaling up of research projects," Broman said in an email.

Nowhere is scientific teamwork more evident than in physics. Many physics experiments today use instruments that cost millions or billions to build, such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These complex instruments require many scientists to run them, to analyze data from them, and to share them, as no small group could afford to build a space telescope just for itself. So when something exciting comes out of those instruments, there are many people who contributed to the discovery.?

CERN announced "strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson" on Wednesday (July 4). The existence of the Higgs boson would lend crucial support for the?Standard Model, a major physics theory about how matter in the universe works.

A modern prize is a collaborative one?

"A situation like this certainly puts those seeking to recognize individuals in quite a quandary," said Adam Riess, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who won the Nobel Prize in physics last year.?

Riess' own win sparked some conversations about prizes in modern physics. He used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure supernovae, concluding the?universe is accelerating in its expansion, and shared his Nobel with two other scientists from two different teams. One of the teams was made up of about 20 people and the other, about 35. "So there were many more people who were involved," he said.?

Finding just three people to recognize often means looking for people who contributed just slightly more than others, Riess said. He compared Nobel-awarding to his work as a professor. At the end of the semester, he has to decide how to divide the top of the class into A and B grades. "You look for a natural break, but it doesn't always exist," he said. "This quandary isn't just in prizes. It's all facets of life." [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

While they might pretend otherwise sometimes, many scientists still care deeply about recognition. "Scientists are people, too," Riess said. Although each category's Nobel is worth about $1 million, Riess said, "It's not a money issue, generally. It's being able to identify yourself as being involved in work that was recognized as being important."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/2DTHsZD-oYE/Higgs-boson-So-who-is-getting-the-Nobel

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