Six scientists win Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry

Web posted October 16, 1997

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Six scientists - including three Americans - won Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry today for discovering how atoms can be slowed down and how the body's cells get revved up.

Two American physicists and a French colleague won the Nobel prize in physics for ground-breaking experiments that trap atoms and chill them to the brink of what nature allows.

The chemistry winners - an American, a Dane and a Briton - received their prize for work on how the body's cells store and transfer energy.

Steven Chu, 49, of Stanford University, William D. Phillips, 48, of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, 64, of France, were cited for developing novel ways to cool atoms to super-low temperatures with laser light.

Their work ``may lead to the design of more-precise atomic clocks for use in space navigation and accurate determination of position,'' said the citation for the $1 million prize.

``It's wonderful. I'm delighted to be sharing it with some good friends, and I'm so happy for Stanford,'' Chu said this morning in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The physicists' work allows researchers to manipulate matter at the lowest temperatures achievable, and raises the possibility of 21st-century technologies based on the behavior of individual atoms. It already has led to the creation of the Bose-Einstein condensate, a form of matter that was theoretically described by Albert Einstein and an Indian colleague in the 1920s but never existed until 1995, when Colorado physicists created it in their laboratory.

The three researchers worked independently, each taking the technology one step further. A laser cooling method, developed by Chu in 1985, works by bombarding atoms from all sides with six lasers. That confines a few thousand atoms to one spot, robbing them of motion and thus temperature.

Further cooling is derived from a magnetic trapping method developed by Phillips in 1987. A final level of cooling, developed by Cohen-Tannoudji, can bring atoms to within one-millionth of a degree of absolute zero, the theoretical point where all atomic motions cease. Absolute zero is -459 F.

``One never knows the applications (of one's work). They appear several years after the discovery,'' Cohen-Tannnoudji said. ``But one of them which is already working is the atomic clock.''

An invention of Chu's, dubbed the ``atomic fountain,'' can improve the precision of the clocks 100 times. Normally accurate to one second in 32 million years, Chu's improvement makes them accurate to a second in more than 3 billion years.

It is the second year in a row that the physics prize has gone for work done at temperatures of near-absolute zero. Last year's prize went to Americans David M. Lee, Robert C. Richardson and Douglas C. Osheroff for discovering that a helium isotope behaves in unusual ways at extremely low temperatures.

This year's chemistry prize went to Paul D. Boyer of the University of California at Los Angeles, John E. Walker of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Cambridge, England and Jens Christian Skou of Aarhus University in Denmark.

``The three laureates have performed pioneering work'' on enzymes that participate in the conversion of the ``high energy'' molecule adenosine triphosphate, according to the citation by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

For their discovery of the process that creates adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, Boyer and Walker each will receive $250,000. The other half of the prize money goes to Skou, who discovered an enzyme that works with ATP to regulate the concentration of sodium and potassium inside a cell.

Virtually every cell function, from the building of bones to the contraction of muscles and the transmission of nerve impulses, relies on ATP.

Reached by telephone at his home in Sea Ranch, Calif., Boyer described ATP as ``the currency of the cell.''

``This is the machine that makes the money that the rest of the body spends,'' he said. ``Without it there would be no life at all.''

Lars Ernster of the sciences academy said the discovery ``does not necessarily have any practical application now ... (but) like with a car, if we want to repair it, we must first understand how it works.''

Of the prize, 79-year-old Skou laughingly told Danish Radio, ``I don't know why I got it now.''

The 1996 Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded for the discovery of ``buckyballs,'' a type of soccer ball-shaped carbon molecule that spawned a new field of study.

The discovery, by Harold W. Kroto of Britain and U.S. scientists Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, at the time had no practical applications, according to the Royal Academy. But it promises new discoveries and technologies in the next century, the academy said.

On Tuesday, Americans Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes won the economics award for their theories on stock options and other ``derivatives'' that are key elements of today's booming markets.

On Friday, the peace prize went to the U.S.-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator, Jody Williams, for gathering global support for a treaty banning the deadly devices.

The literature prize was awarded to the controversial Italian playwright, Dario Fo, a well-known figure on European stages. His biting social commentary often caused officials to ban his plays, but audiences in dozens of countries have rocked with laughter at his satirical farces.

Last week, American Stanley Prusiner won the medicine prize for discovering prions, an infectious agent that causes brain-wasting afflictions.

All the prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. The peace prize is presented in Oslo, Norway; the others in Stockholm.