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MIT physicist among three American Nobel Prize winners
By Associated Press
Tuesday, October 5, 2004CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - MIT Physicist and newly minted Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek said Tuesday that his research on the interaction of particles inside the atomic nucleus is ``vindication of the idea that it is possible to understand nature precisely.''
``I'd like to thank Mother Nature for her good taste,'' Wilczek said at a morning news conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wilczek, 53, was awarded the prize in Physics on Tuesday, along with David J. Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and H. David Politzer of California Institute of Technology, for their research on the force that binds particles inside the atomic nucleus.
The three researchers made important theoretical discoveries ``concerning the strong force, or the 'color force' as it is also called,'' said the Nobel committee in Stockholm, Sweden.
Their achievement cemented the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which describes the interactions of quarks and other subatomic particles inside the atomic nucleus.
It also filled a critical remaining gap in what physicists refer to as the Standard Model, the theory that governs physics at the microscopic scale. It accounts for the behavior of three out of nature's four fundamental forces - electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force, which governs radioactive decay.
The ultimate goal of physics would be to unify the Standard Model with Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity works and predicts the existence of black holes, wormholes and other far-out phenomena. The work of Wilczek, Gross and Politzer brought science one step closer to that ``grand dream,'' the Swedish academy noted.
Wilczek has been at MIT for five years.
``I can't say it was a shock'' to win the coveted prize, he said, ``because the work has been out there.''
Still, he said, the odds of winning are quite small.
``Every year at this time for the past 20 years I've had an unpleasant week and a sleepless night so I'm glad that's come to an end,'' he said.
He said his wife, Betsy, was ``very happy (at the news). She's bouncing up and down.''
Born in Queens, New York, Wilczek got his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and earned his doctorate in physics from Princeton University in 1974.
When he was only 21 and a graduate student at Princeton, he and Gross defined the properties of color gluons, which hold atomic nuclei together.
Wilczek said sharing the Nobel Prize won't change his life.
``I think, at the very least, I'll cancel my class today,'' he said. ``In most ways, I am very satisfied with my life. I don't want to change anything, really.''
He said he knows future investigation could find problems with his theory.
``I'm not going to give back my Nobel Prize if it doesn't work,'' Wilczek said. ``However, I'll be in the market for a second one.''
( © Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )
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