Three share Nobel Prize in physics

British professor Anthony Leggett, Russian Alexei Abrikosov and American Vitaly Ginzburg yesterday shared the Nobel Prize in physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

The trio was awarded the prize for their work in quantum physics concerning superconductivity and superfluidity.

Prof Leggett, aged 65, who holds three degrees from Oxford University, has been on the staff of Illinois University in the US for ten years. He also holds US citizenship.

The prize includes a cheque for pounds 776,000 and bestows a deeper sense of academic and medical integrity upon the winners.

The two phenomena the researchers studied are linked, in that superconductivity arises from how pairs of electrons behave, while superfluidity comes about from a pairing off of atoms.

Superconductivity is the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance when they are chilled to extremely low temperatures.

Superconducting magnets are used to produce powerful magnetic fields for the standard body scanning technique called magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

Researchers hope to harness superconductivity for such uses as power lines that can conduct current without waste to resistance and high-speed trains that float above the tracks.

Other discoveries concerning MRI were honoured on Monday with the Nobel medicine prize which was won by three men, including Nottingham University physicist Sir Peter Mansfield.

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who endowed the prizes, left only vague guidelines for the selection committee. In his will he said the prize should be given to those who ‘shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind’ and ‘shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics.’

Prof Leggett said he was surprised by the announcement.

‘I guess it had occurred to me that it was a possibility I might get the Nobel Prize, but I didn’t think it was particularly probable,’ he added.