6 U.S., British Scientists Win Chemistry, Physics Nobels
Six researchers from the United States and Britain were awarded Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry Wednesday for discovering unexpected phenomena that defied known laws of nature.
The physics prize--for finding a unique form of helium that can flow uphill--went to Stanford University’s Douglas D. Osheroff and Cornell University colleagues David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson.
The chemistry prize--for discovering the soccer ball-shaped, 60-atom carbon molecule affectionately known as the buckyball--was awarded to Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl of Rice University and Sir Harold W. Kroto of the University of Sussex, England.
“It’s a great Nobel Prize,” said Cornell chemist Roald Hoffmann, himself a laureate, about Smalley’s ability to deduce the carbon structure based on only a few molecules. “It was an inspired piece of guesswork.”
UCLA physicist Steve Kivelson was equally enthusiastic about the physics prize: “I think it’s long overdue,” he said. “They discovered an entirely new state of matter; it bred a whole new field.”
Kivelson was especially pleased that in this era of big science where physics is done by casts of hundreds, the prize went for a down-to-earth experiment. “This wasn’t three guys who were the head of a huge group,” he said. “They were the guys who did the experiment.”
Stanford’s Osheroff reacted to the 2:30 a.m. call from Stockholm with annoyance, and chided the voice on the line for waking him up. “Then he said the matter was of considerable urgency,” said Osheroff, “and I thought, oh my God, my mother’s in the hospital.”
Cornell’s Lee was up and doing his back exercises when the call came at 5:30 a.m. Eastern time.
Neither said he was expecting the prize.
Nor were they looking for so-called superfluid helium-3 when they stumbled upon it. In this superfluid phase, the helium atoms are so well ordered that they move in lockstep, behaving in effect like a single atom. This allows them to flow virtually friction-free, climbing up and out of bottles and down through the pores of ceramic containers.
“It’s the purest material that humans can create; it’s incredibly uniform,” said Osheroff, who got his undergraduate training in physicist David Goodstein’s lab at Caltech.
Like most atoms, helium comes in several versions, or isotopes. Helium-4, which has four nuclear particles, was known to be a superfluid. But helium-3, with only three particles in its nucleus, shouldn’t have been able to behave in the same way.
The three researchers were conducting experiments at Cornell on helium-3 at temperatures very close to absolute zero when Osheroff picked up extremely subtle clues that the helium had suddenly changed phase--in the same way that water changing to ice turns from a liquid into a solid. The Nobel committee made special note in its citation of Osheroff’s “vigilant eye.”
Superfluidity is similar to the better known phenomenon superconductivity, the ability of electric currents to flow forever without losing energy--a feat with enormous potential applications.
Superfluid helium-3 appears to use the same mechanism as superconductors to transform into its frictionless state--pairing off particles into couples that act as one.
“It shows that the [theory of superconductivity] is broadly applicable to different systems,” Osheroff said.
Even more important, helium-3 shares the same complex structure as so-called “high temperature” superconductors, which are still very poorly understood. If superconductivity is ever to make good on its promises of cheap electric power and efficient magnets and motors, these exotic materials will have to be pinned down. And superfluid helium-3 might well hold the key.
The discovery of buckyballs--formally called buckminsterfullerenes after the architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes of the same shape--also depended on some clever observing by researchers. The chemists figured out the structure of an unknown form of carbon from a sample of only a few molecules.
All life on Earth is carbon-based, in part because carbon arranges itself into long chains that are the basis of all biological molecules. Pure carbon takes two natural forms on Earth: graphite, which is a six-membered ring, and diamond, which is a four-membered pyramid. No one expected that the omnipresent atom could also arrange itself into another perfect geometric solid--an icosahedron, or soccer ball-shaped sphere constructed of 60 carbon atoms.
Since the surprising discovery of this new form of carbon, researchers have published thousands of papers spelling out its potential applications, including drug delivery systems for cancer treatment.
“It’s well deserved,” said Stanford chemist Richard Zare of this year’s prize. “It inspired chemists to study a whole new class of compounds.”
Smalley was looking at what happens when groups of atoms cluster together when he saw what he now calls a “stunning [result] . . . we saw carbon’s genius for self-assembly into these structures.”
Many researchers in the 1980s were probably producing buckyballs in experiments with carbon in their labs, said MIT’s Mildred Dresselhaus, but didn’t know what they were looking at. “That’s the art in science,” she said, “knowing what you’re looking at.”
Once researchers started looking for fullerenes, however, they turned up in a wide variety of places--ranging from interstellar clouds to ordinary candle flames. Smalley now says he believes they are probably ubiquitous.
“That’s a nice point of dinner table conversation when you’re having a bad date,” offered Smalley, who was still somewhat stunned--and extremely hoarse--after the excitement.
Indeed, fullerenes were recently discovered in the worldwide layer of soot left by the meteorite that crashed into Earth 65 million years ago and apparently altered climate drastically enough to kill off the dinosaurs.
Buckyballs were found in the charred remains of the impact, and now Smalley and his colleagues joke that inside the hollow cavity of each ball, “there’s a little bit of the last breath of dinosaurs.”
Because buckyballs are empty cages of carbon that can be stuffed like pastry shells with a variety of different molecules, some researchers foresee vast potential for drug and other applications.
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The Science Winners
Nobel Prizes went to six scientists, including five Americans, for discoveries of whimsically named molecules known as “buckyballs” and a bizarre form of helium that may shed light on how superconductivity works.
THE CHEMISTRY PRIZE
* The winners: Robert F. Curl, Jr., 63, and Richard E. Smalley, 53, both of Rice University in Houston and Harold W. Kroto, 57, of Sussex University in England.
* They discovered: A family of soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules, known unofficially as “buckyballs” and officially as fullerenes after R. Buckminster Fuller’s famed geodesic domes. Previously, carbon was thought to form just two stable structures: diamond and graphite.
* Applications: Fullerines are molecular cages that can be stuffed with various smaller molecules. They have opened the door to a whole new kind of chemistry, and could have brought applications in medicine and the development of new materials.
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THE PHYSICS PRIZE
* The winners: David M. Lee, 65, and Robert C. Richardson, 59, both of Cornell University and Douglas C. Osheroff, 51, of Stanford University.
* They discovered: That at extremely low temperatures, the isotope helium-3 becomes a “superfluid” that flows without friction, and has an array of unusual properties.
* Applications: Since superfluid helium 3 is quite similar to superconducting materials, in which electric currents can flow forever without losing energy, understanding it could help physicists develop practical superconductors for use in electric power lines and motors.
Sources: Times staff and wire reports
