Word: prize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that the world's second largest firm (after General Motors) had more than doubled its profits to a walloping $1.1 billion-its first billion-dollar quarter in history. Soon after, other U.S. energy corporations reported spectacular quarterly earnings. Among the majors, Texaco walked away with the dubious first prize of a 211% increase, while Standard Oil of Ohio was second at 191% and Conoco third...
...tenant, Shelly Glashow, is one of the three recipients of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. Had you glanced to your right some ten yards back, you would have been looking into the anteroom of the office of one of the others, Professor Steven Weinberg. His office is much like what you'd expect from a university big wig--carpeting, bound journals and paneling lend it an aura of the esoteric altogether absent in his neighbor...
Many think this is precisely the way the prize ought to remain. Arthur Jaffe, professor of Mathematical Physics, is one of them. Jaffe, who won the Heinemann Prize for mathematical physics this past week, contends that there's a good reason for the traditional lag: "the awarding of the Nobel Prize at too young an age can conceivably hamper a person's career. It focuses the attention, the publicity, in such a special way. You're so much in the spotlight, and your science suffers correspondingly." But Glashow, while feeling the immediate pressures of the prize and the extent...
Although the Nobel Prize Committee specifically cited these contributions, the public has latched on to Glashow's more recent hypothesis--that of the "charmed quarks." A testimony to what the imaginative selection of scientific names can do ("quark" originally comes from Joyce's "Finnegan s Wake"), charmed quarks are the next thread in this complex tapestry of theories. But while ingenious, the discovery of charm has no bearing on the awarding of the Nobel Prize. "No," Glashow bellows if you imply otherwise, "the citation from Sweden expressly doesn't mention charm. This is something else altogether...
Harvard is acknowledged to have the strongest particle physics department in the country, and Glashow and Weinberg are its two greatest luminaries. But even so, their selection is something of an anomaly. In the first place, the Swedish Academy generally doesn't award the prize to a theoretical physicist until after his theory is completely proven. Embarassing situations might otherwise arise. While all evidence points clearly toward its being correct, thorough proof remains elusive. So, as Glashow terms it, the award is "a leap of faith." Also, the prize traditionally is not awarded to a scientist right away. As colleague...