Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize Winning Indians… 1913 to 2014 !!!

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Rabindranath Tagore was the only Indian Nobel literature laureate. In 1913, In his acceptance speech, he said, “I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother.”
Sir C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for his work in the field of light scattering. This effect is now named after him — the Raman scattering. In his speech, he said he was inspired by the “wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea”, during a voyage to Europe in 1921.
Hargobind Khorana (Far right) shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1968, with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley by showing the the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids. In his speech, he thanked ” a very large number of devoted colleagues, chemists and biochemists” .
S. Chandrasekhar, along with William A. Fowler won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for their mathematical theory of black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. In his speech, he quoted Tagore’s Gitanjali and said, “May I, on behalf of my wife and myself, express our immense gratitude to the Nobel Foundation for this noble reception in this noble city?”
Again a first and only, Amartya Sen won The Prize in Economics in 1998. In his speech, which he began with a “silly thought”, he said, “economists too can learn from the kind of open minded reasoning employed by Tagore and Chandrasekhar”.
Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace prize in 1979. In a lecture played on the day of the ceremony, she said, “We must give each other until it hurts. It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour.”
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009, along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath, “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”. In his speech, he thanked “the dedicated work and intellectual contributions of generations of talented postdocs, students and research assistants”.
Kailash Satyarthi who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 at his Bachpan Bachao Aandolan office soon after announcement of the prize, in New Delhi. An avid follower of Gandhian philosophy, he vowed that “the fight would continue”. Photo: V. Sudershan
SOURCE:::: http://www.the hindu.com
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“How to Get Your Nobel Prize Medal Pass Airport Security … ” !!!

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How to Get Your Nobel Prize Medal Past Airport Security

Brian P. Schmidt (L) of the United States receives the Nobel Prize for physics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf on December 10, 2011.

Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011, had a close encounter with the airport security in Fargo, Nebraska. The details were reported on Friday on the blogScientific America.

Schmidt’s grandmother wanted to see the 24-carat gold medal that he’d been awarded and so, he decided to take it with him to Fargo. But first, he had to get it past airport security.

“You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine,” he says on the blog.

He was carrying the medal in his laptop bag, and when it went through the X-ray machine, it left the airport officials bewildered. Schmidt knew the cause of their concern. He was prepared to answer a few questions but wasn’t anticipating this conversation (in Schmidt’s words):

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Sweden.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’

At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?'”

Last week, the Nobel Prize winners for 2014 were announced, including India’s Kailash Satyarthi who was awarded the Peace Prize.

Source::::ndtv.com
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Why Blue LEDs are Worth a Nobel Prize ….

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Blue light-emitting diodes help create the glowing screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs and promises to revolutionise the way the world lights its homes and offices.

Shivanand Kanavi reports on the importance of these little lights that won the Nobel Prize this year.

White and blue light emitting diodes used as Christmas decorations in Tokyo. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

That bluish-white light glowing from the screens of most new televisions, smartphones, laptops and tablet computers?

It comes from light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs. Many businesses light their work spaces with LEDs. More and more, LEDs light up outdoor street signs and traffic lights.

Some homeowners have begun turning to this new form of lighting to illuminate their rooms. And most cars and trucks now use these same LEDs in their tail lights.

Three scientists have now won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for developing the technology that has made this lighting possible.

On Tuesday, October 7, three Japan-born scientists — Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura — won the Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes — a new energy-efficient and environmentally friendly light source.

According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the committee that bestows the honour, which includes a prize money of 8 million kronor (Rs 6.8 crore/Rs 68 million), when Nakamura, Akasaki and Amono ‘produced bright blue light beams from their semiconductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a fundamental transformation of lighting technology.’

Explaining further, the committee said, ‘The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids.’

The question now that arises is can semiconductor chips, which have revolutionised the way we live, give us light? The answer today is, it can.

Such chips for lighting are not made of silicon, which is used in electronics but more complex semiconductors, made of alloys of gallium, indium, arsenic, nitrogen, aluminum, phosphorous.

It has been known since the turn of the century that some semiconductors emit light when a current is passed through them. However, it has taken almost a hundred years for technology to do it efficiently and inexpensively.

The discovery and perfection of direct conversion of electricity into light has also led to the reverse that is the development of more efficient solar panels to convert light into electricity.

The first bright LEDs to be invented were emitting red, then orange and yellow light. However, attempts at producing green and blue LEDs were not very successful till a Japanese scientist Shuji Nakamura invented a bright blue LED and later white LED in the mid-1990s.

Nakamura’s work brightened up the whole field and intense activity ensued leading to fast growth. He worked hard with very little funding and repeated disillusionment for several years to come up with blue LEDs.

The company he worked for at that time, Nichia is today one of the world leaders in blue and white LEDs and lasers. A few years ago, he moved out of Nichia and today, is a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

LEDs for lighting purposes have many advantages. They convert electricity much more efficiently into light than say incandescent bulbs or fluorescent lamps. In fact, 90 per cent of energy in incandescent bulbs is wasted as heat.

LEDs also last much longer — up to 1,00,000 hours — that is more than 12 years of continuous operation. Whereas in the case of incandescent lamps, they last for 1,000 hours while fluorescent lamps last for 10,000 hours.

LEDs also consume less electricity, which is why batteries in a LED flashlight, for example, seem to go on forever. These make LEDs ideal if you are in a remote area on your own, camping or even in times of natural disaster.

However, LEDs do, like with all technology, have some flaws and weaknesses.

One the brightness of LEDs — that is measured in Lumens per Watt of electrical power — is still nowhere near the standard required for high brightness lighting. Secondly, the products are still expensive and lastly, the light is extremely bright in one direction hence, a LED light directed towards your work bench or a flashlight works well but if you try to light up your room with it then you end up using too many LEDs.

Image, Below: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, this year’s Nobel Prize winners for Physics.

ALSO READ:  Trio win Nobel for invention of blue LEDs

Shivanand Kanavi  in redii.com

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