This week Nobel Prizes will be announced. Predicting the awardees is a fun annual exercise. It is also good to reflect on what has been achieved, including outside our own areas, and big advances from the past we may now take for granted.
Before writing this I looked at suggestions from readers of Doug Natelson's blog, Nanoscale views, an article in Physics World, predictions from Clarivate based on citations, and recent recipients of the Wolf Prize.
Not surprisingly, this post is not that different from last year's.
Although we know little about how the process actually works or the explicit criteria used, I have a few speculative suggestions and observations.
1. The Wolf Prize is often a precursor. According to Wikipedia, for physics, "from the 26 prizes awarded between 1978 and 2010, fourteen winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, five of those in the following year." For chemistry, 13 awardees have subsequently won a Nobel.
2. Every now and then, the Swedes surprise us. Sometimes this may be because we now take for granted something discovered thirty or forty years ago.
3. Every few years, the physics committee seems to go for something technological, sometimes arguably outside physics, perhaps to remind people how important physics is to modern technology and other areas of science.
4. They seem to spread the awards around between different areas of physics.
5. Theory only gets awards when it has led to well-established experimental observations and new experimental fields. Brilliant theoretical discoveries that motivate large research enterprises (more theory and unsuccessful or ambiguous experimental searches) are not good enough. This is why predictions based on citation numbers may be misleading. High citations (particularly for a specific paper) are usually a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a prize.
6. Once an award has been made on one topic, it is unlikely that there will be another award for a long time, if ever, on that same topic. In other words, there is a high bar for a second award.
7. I don't think the logic is to pick an important topic and then choose who should get the prize for the topic. This approach works against topics where many researchers independently made contributions that were all important. The awardee needs to be a standout who won't be a debatable choice.
8. The prize can go to at most 3 individuals and does not go to groups. This works against the large collaborations in particle physics and cosmology that produce significant work.
What do you think of these principles?
For some of the above reasons, I discuss below why I am sceptical about some specific predictions.
My top prediction for physics is Metamaterials with negative refractive index, going to John Pendry (theory) and David Smith (experiment). I know little about this topic.
Is it just a matter of time before twisted bilayer graphene wins a prize? This might go to Allan MacDonald (theory) and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (experiment). They recently received a Wolf Prize. One thing that convinced me of the importance of this discovery was a preprint on moiré WSe2 with beautiful phase diagrams such as this one.
This is big enough to overcome 6. and the earlier prize for graphene.
The prediction of Berry and Aharonov for topological phases in quantum mechanics is reasonable, except for questions about historical precursors in optics and quantum chemistry.
The prediction of topological insulators goes against 6. and the award to Haldane in 2016.
Predictions of a prize for quantum algorithms (Shor, Deutsch, Brassard, Bennett), conformal field theories, and braiding statistics go against 5.
Chemistry
I don't know enough chemistry to make meaningful predictions. On the other hand, in 2019 I correctly predicted John Goodenough for lithium batteries. I do like the prediction (last year) from Clarivate for Biomolecular condensates (Brangwynne, Hyman, and Rosen). I discussed them briefly in my review article on emergence.
What do you think about my "principles"?
What are your predictions?
