[Mb-civic] Norway's Nobel agenda - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Norway's Nobel agenda

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  October 16, 2005

SCIENTISTS HAVE known since the early 20th century that quantum theory 
applied to light -- sometimes it behaves like waves, sometimes like a 
stream of particles. But it wasn't until Roy Glauber's work in the early 
1960s that physicists began to understand the mathematical architecture 
that underlay light's double nature. In particular, a paper he published 
in 1963 made it possible to explain in theoretical terms how the hot 
light emitted by an incandescent bulb differed from the focused beam of 
a laser.

Glauber's insights spawned a host of practical applications. From the 
ultraprecise measurement of time to the accurate determination of the 
color emitted by molecules to -- someday, perhaps -- the invention of 
3-D holographic movies, much of modern optics's cutting edge can be 
traced back to Glauber's work. For his 1963 paper, he came to be known 
as the ''father of quantum optics" and was honored by the Royal Swedish 
Academy of Sciences with the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2005.

If good things come to those who wait, a Nobel Prize must be a very good 
thing indeed. According to Alfred Nobel's will, the annual prizes were 
to go to those who had conferred the greatest benefit on mankind 
''during the preceding year." Yet the Swedish committees that award the 
science, literature, and economics prizes routinely choose honorees 
whose greatest work was done years, even decades, earlier. Glauber was 
38 when he published his seminal paper; only now, at 80, has he become 
(with John Hall and Theodor Hansch) a Nobel laureate in physics.

At 84, Thomas Schelling is older and has waited even longer. One of this 
year's two winners in economics, Schelling was hailed by the Nobel 
committee for his pathbreaking analysis of game theory in ''The Strategy 
of Conflict," a book he published in 1960. His fellow recipient, Israeli 
mathematician Robert Aumann, is being honored for a body of work 
stretching back to 1959.

Most of this year's other Nobel recipients have also waited quite a 
while for that phone call from Stockholm. It was more than 20 years ago, 
for example, that Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren, the newest 
laureates in medicine, proved that gastritis and stomach ulcers are 
caused by a bacterium, thereby overturning the conventional wisdom that 
blamed such ailments on stress. One of the winners of the chemistry 
prize is Yves Chauvin, whose breakthrough discovery came in 1971. Harold 
Pinter, this year's Nobel laureate in literature, published his first 
play, ''The Room," in 1957. Whatever one thinks of his s strident 
politics, Pinter has long been considered one of the great dramatists of 
the 20th century.

In short, the Swedish committees that choose the Nobel laureates in 
physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and economics have again 
selected persons of undoubted accomplishment whose work has stood the 
test of time. The Swedes may not move as fast as Alfred Nobel 
envisioned. But the prizes they confer tend to stand the test of time as 
well.

Then there is the peace prize, which this year went to Mohamed ElBaradei 
and the International Atomic Energy Agency he heads. Unlike the other 
Nobels, the peace prize is awarded not by Swedish scientists and 
scholars but by a committee of Norwegian politicians. That no doubt 
explains why the choice so often seems political.

The selection of ElBaradei and the IAEA certainly can't be a reward for 
results. The international nuclear watchdog failed to uncover Iraq's 
nuclear weapons program before the 1991 Gulf War. It missed Libya's 
nuclear activities, which Moammar Khadafy voluntarily gave up after 
Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. ElBaradei was shocked when 
Pakistan's global nuclear black market came to light -- which 
underlined, as The Economist noted, ''how little he and his agency had 
known about an enormous operation that had been going on right under his 
inspectors' noses." They found out about Iran's nuclear program only 
after Iranian dissidents told them where to look.

Then again, ElBaradei was a vocal opponent of the US war in Iraq, and 
the Norwegians are not above using the peace prize to send a message to 
the United States. When they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002, the 
committee chairman emphasized that it was intended to be ''a kick in the 
leg" of the Bush administration. This year, the committee insisted that 
any nuclear threat from rogue regimes ''be met through the broadest 
possible international cooperation" -- a condemnation in advance of any 
US decision to deal with Iran unilaterally if worse comes to worst.

The five Swedish Nobels are almost always rewards for true achievement. 
The one Norwegian Nobel too often smacks of an agenda. What a pity that 
the peace prize isn't chosen in Stockholm too.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/16/norways_nobel_agenda/
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