Three Americans Win 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

Three Americans win 2004 Nobel Prize in physics

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) — Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for explaining how the basic building blocks of nature, quarks, build the entire universe.

The discovery has helped science get “one 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’ citation said.

Their research on the strong force acting between quarks inside the proton and the neutron within an atomic nucleus helps explain “an everyday phenomenon like a coin spinning on a table,” the jury for the prize said.

Gross from the University of California, Politzer from the California Institute of Technology and Wilczek at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will share the 10 million Swedish crowns (about 1.36 million US dollars).