http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091017/jsp/frontpage/story_11626164.jsp
India’s Nobel no-list longer
G.S. MUDUR
New Delhi, Oct. 16: An India-born American has joined a century-old league of legendary physicists from India overlooked by Nobel prize selection panels while others were awarded for similar or derived research, some physicists said.
Narinder Singh Kapany, who pioneered the science of transmitting light through glass fibres, is in a league established in 1909 when Guglielmo Marconi received the Nobel prize for work on wireless telegraphy that relied on an invention by India’s Jagadish Chandra Bose.
The Royal Swedish Academy last week announced the 2009 Nobel physics prize for Shanghai-born Charles Kao for his work on transmission of light in fibres for optical communication and two others for their invention of an imaging semiconductor.
The groundbreaking work by Kao in 1966 led to the development of long-distance optical communications. But Kapany had constructed optical fibres and demonstrated the transmission of light across optical fibres of short lengths 12 years earlier.
The Academy itself has acknowledged Kapany’s contribution to fibre optics, citing his paper published in the journal Nature in 1954.
Science historians and sections of physicists believe the Nobel Committee appears to have distinguished between Kapany’s work involving short-distance transmission and Kao’s subsequent feat, which opened doors for long-distance transmission.
“The work on long-distance transmission was a logical extension of the earlier work,” said Kapany, who was born in Moga (Punjab).
“The (Nobel) Committee has its own methodology — but I’m fine with it. I fully accept this situation. Let’s leave it at that,” Kapany told The Telegraph, chuckling over the phone from Palo Alto (California).
A senior scholar of the history of physics at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, who has studied trends in Nobel prizes for many years, said he was not surprised at Kapany’s omission.
“There are cases where the first scientists who established something novel did not get the prize,” Falk Riess said.
“There are at least three other instances over the past century where contributions of Indian physicists appear to have been ignored by Nobel committees,” said Shivanand Kanavi, a physicist-turned-author who had documented Kapany’s contributions to fibre optics in a book Sand to Silicon, published five years ago.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Telegraph: Kapany -Missed Nobel
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091017/jsp/frontpage/story_11626020.jsp
Hat-trick of Nobel misses
G.S. MUDUR
New Delhi, Oct. 16: In at least three instances over the past century, Nobel committees appear to have ignored the contributions of Indians while picking physics prize-winners, according to Shivanand Kanavi, a physicist-turned-author. The three scientists are E.C. George Sudarshan, Meghnad Saha and Satyen Bose.
Narinder Singh Kapany, who pioneered the science of transmitting light through glass fibres but was overlooked by the Royal Swedish Academy when it chose to award Shanghai-born Charles Kao this year, is an addition to the list.
In 2005, several physicists argued that Indian-born US physicist Sudarshan should have shared the prize with Roy Glauber for his own contributions to quantum optics.
“The prize-winners are chosen by the Royal Academy, but no one has the right to take my discoveries and formulations and ascribe them to someone else,” Sudarshan had written in a communication to the academy.
In 1999, Falk Riess, of the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his colleague Rajinder Singh used decades-old documents translated from the Swedish to describe how Meghnad Saha had not received the Nobel Prize despite outstanding research in astrophysics for which he had received two Nobel nominations in 1930.
Satyen Bose, who in the early 1920s helped develop Bose-Einstein statistics that explains the behaviour of some atoms when they are cooled to temperatures just a whisker above minus 273.15 degrees Celsius — the lowest possible temperature — also didn’t get the prize.
Kanavi, who has documented Kapany’s contributions to fibre optics in a book Sand to Silicon published five years ago, said that over the decades, three Nobel Prizes in physics have gone to research derived from Bose-Einstein statistics: superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensate.
Einstein had won the Nobel in 1921 for other work.
Hat-trick of Nobel misses
G.S. MUDUR
New Delhi, Oct. 16: In at least three instances over the past century, Nobel committees appear to have ignored the contributions of Indians while picking physics prize-winners, according to Shivanand Kanavi, a physicist-turned-author. The three scientists are E.C. George Sudarshan, Meghnad Saha and Satyen Bose.
Narinder Singh Kapany, who pioneered the science of transmitting light through glass fibres but was overlooked by the Royal Swedish Academy when it chose to award Shanghai-born Charles Kao this year, is an addition to the list.
In 2005, several physicists argued that Indian-born US physicist Sudarshan should have shared the prize with Roy Glauber for his own contributions to quantum optics.
“The prize-winners are chosen by the Royal Academy, but no one has the right to take my discoveries and formulations and ascribe them to someone else,” Sudarshan had written in a communication to the academy.
In 1999, Falk Riess, of the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and his colleague Rajinder Singh used decades-old documents translated from the Swedish to describe how Meghnad Saha had not received the Nobel Prize despite outstanding research in astrophysics for which he had received two Nobel nominations in 1930.
Satyen Bose, who in the early 1920s helped develop Bose-Einstein statistics that explains the behaviour of some atoms when they are cooled to temperatures just a whisker above minus 273.15 degrees Celsius — the lowest possible temperature — also didn’t get the prize.
Kanavi, who has documented Kapany’s contributions to fibre optics in a book Sand to Silicon published five years ago, said that over the decades, three Nobel Prizes in physics have gone to research derived from Bose-Einstein statistics: superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensate.
Einstein had won the Nobel in 1921 for other work.
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