ABSTRACT
In conclusion, we would like to use this opportunity and make a few remarks on the developments related to Nobel Prize awards for physics which are a subject of considerable public interest. W Roentgen was the first to receive such a prize in 1901 for the discovery of the X-ray. To the best of our knowledge, he had no co-authors. Thereafter, prizes continued to be awarded only to those who were directly involved in the research. In the course of time, however, the number of both nominees and nominators increased [1]. As many as 38 nominators proposed 21 candidates for the 1930 Prize that was eventually awarded to C Raman. The Nobel statutes give little opportunity for knowing much about the work of Nobel Committees over the past 50 years. However, P Rodgers [21] reports that the Committee on physics sent out over 2000 invitations to nominate candidates for the 2000 Prize. About 300 proposals were received from the respondents of which 10-15 were selected for further consideration. According to the interesting information presented in [22], some candidates were nominated many times during 1901-50. The record-holders are 0 Stern who was nominated 81 times and eventually awarded the Prize in 1943 and A Sommerfeld who was also nominated 81 times but who never received the prize and died at the age of 82 in 1951. It is known that no more then three persons are entitled to receive the prize in one year. However, only four years are on record throughout the first 24 years (up to 1924) when the prize was awarded to more than one person (H A Lorentz and P Zeeman in 1902, A Becquerel and the Curies in 1903, G Marconi and F Braun in 1909, and the Braggs, father and son, in 1915). Conversely, only four persons have been the sole awardees during the last 24 years (1979-2002) whereas in all other cases the annual prize was shared jointly by two or three winners. Moreover, in many cases, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the heads of large research teams. The authors of original papers sometimes represented several groups of physicists and engineers numbering tens of specialists of whom only three should have been selected. This gives an idea of the great challenges that such a situation presented to the members of the Nobel Committee. Its work remains exceedingly difficult to-day when, at least in certain cases, it appears to be closely akin to refereeing sport competitions in running or swimming [23]. This observation should not be interpreted as pique. What is said only reflects objective changes and trends in the character of physical and astronomical studies. Many, if not most, of the topical problems are beyond the power of individual researchers to address and they can be solved
only by the collective efforts of large research groups. In this situation, it is only natural that preference should be given to the leaders. There seems to be no other way to award Nobel Prizes. An example is the 2002 Nobel Prize. R Giacconi who received one-half of it is characterized by R A Syunyaev, his colleague and a known astrophysicist working in Russia and Germany, in the following way: "He is a great scientist and truly big American manager" (Izvestiya [News] 9 October, 2002) . Indeed, the joint work of Giacconi, Gurskii, Paolini, and Rossi [24]led to the discovery of the first bright 'X-ray star' , Scorpius X-1, which in turn lent a powerful impetus to the advancement of X-ray astronomy. To our knowledge, however, the first leading figure in this field was Bruno Rossi, a distinguished physicist who deceased in 1993. This, of course, does not belittle the achievements of Giacconi, all the more so that he afterwards directed the work of the Hubble Space Telescope. Such outstanding organizers and scientists as he play an exceedingly important role in modern physics and certainly in other disciplines (in our country, S I Vavilov, M V Keldysh, and IV Kurchatov acted in this capacity). We are aware that Mandelshtam, one of the highly reputable theorists in this country, was of the same opinion.
