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Nobel Prizes for Physics and Medicine Announced

Posted on: Tuesday, 5 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczeck won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics yesterday for their work in the discovery and exploration of the force that binds particles inside an atomic nucleus.

The research has helped take science a step closer to "fulfilling a grand dream, to formulate a unified theory comprising gravity as well - a theory for everything," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize.

The trio - researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - were cited for their important theoretical discoveries "concerning the strong force, or the 'colour force' as it is also called," the academy said in its citation. "The strong force is the one that is dominant in the atomic nucleus, acting between the quarks inside the proton and the neutron."

Their discoveries, published in 1973, led to the theory of quantum chromodynamics, or QCD.

"This theory was an important contribution to the Standard Model, the theory that describes all physics connected with the electromagnetic force (which acts between charged particles), the weak force (which is important for the sun's energy production) and the strong force (which acts between quarks)," the academy said.

Reached by Swedish radio at his home in Massachusetts, Wilczek, 53, said he was surprised and gratified by winning the prize.

"I'm in an unusual state of consciousness, and I'm definitely awake now," he said. "Of course it is something I've been dreaming about for quite awhile now."

Wiczek and Gross, 63, worked together in the 1970s. "In fact he was the professor and I was the student at the time," Wilczek said.

Asked he planned to spend his day, he said he would enjoy it "sort of floating six feet above the ground."

Last year physicists Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia and Americans A. Abrikosov and Anthony J. Leggett were honoured for their work on superconductivity and superfluidity, the motion of a fluid without internal friction.

Two US scientists also won the 2004 Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for showing how the sense of smell enables people to recall, for instance, the scent of spring lilac in winter or the stench of rotten food eaten long ago.

Scientists Richard Axel and Linda Buck, who published their ground-breaking research in 1991, discovered a large gene pool containing the blueprint for sensors in the nose that identify smells wafting through the air and send signals to the brain.

"Until Axel and Buck's studies the sense of smell was a mystery," said Professor Sten Grillner of the Nobel Assembly.

Columbia University professor Axel, 58, and 57-year-old Buck, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, discovered a large family of 1,000 different genes, 3 per cent of the total in the human body, that give rise to an equivalent number of sensors in the nose that identify smells.

"I'm ecstatic, it's quite an honour," Axel told Swedish radio after winning half of the US$1.38 crown award from the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

Axel, who was traveling in San Francisco, later told a New York news conference via satellite: "The hope is that I can return to the laboratory with even greater intensity to try and address a number of unsolved problems of perception in the future."

He said he was interested in the problem of "how the brain, which consists largely of nerve cells and neurons, is capable of representing in a meaningful and accurate way the richness of the external world."

At the Seattle research centre, Buck told reporters: "I am overjoyed and quite surprised to receive this great honour."

Many discoveries remain

"There is a lot left to discover even though we've been working on this problem for 16 years," she said, referring to the olfactory system structure. "We've only scratched the surface of it."

The Nobel citation said their work had illustrated the role of the nose in distinguishing good and bad.

"A single clam that is not fresh and will cause malaise can leave a memory that stays with us for years and prevent us from ingesting any dish, however delicious, with clams in it," the citation said.

"(On the other hand)... we can consciously experience the smell of a lilac flower in the spring and recall this olfactory memory at other times."

The sensors, known as "olfactory receptor types," sit on cells in the back of the nose and identify smells.

Each receptor cell has only one type of sensor, but the sensors react to more than one odour, explaining why humans can detect and remember around 10,000 different smells.

Dogs, renowned for their acute sense of smell, have a scent area in the nose 40 times larger than a human's.

The receptor cells in turn send signals back to the parts of the brain responsible for smell.

The Nobel award said fish had around 100 odour sensors, while mice, which the two researchers studied, have about 1,000. Humans have a slightly smaller number than mice.

The Nobel prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite who died in 1896. They are presented in glittering ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of his death.

The Nobel season continues with chemistry, literature and peace prizes this week and economics next week.

Fellow researchers hailed Axel and Buck's work. "It has also prompted a lot of research into related areas such as taste," said Professor Tim Jacob of Cardiff University in Wales, who also works on the sense of smell.

Other experts said it was not immediately clear what practical use could be made of the discoveries for disorders such as having too much sense of taste or very little.

"Today we don't see any implications of this for the development of new pharmaceuticals but it could well be that will come," said Karolinska expert Professor Tomas Olsson.

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