Nobel or Not? Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The Nobel Prize system rewards people for significant contributions to science, amongst other topics. There are significant areas with no prize categories, for example, in computing, mathematics or engineering so the development of Chaos Theory did not qualify, nor did the internet. It is generally not awarded posthumously or where there are too many contributors involved. There have been disputes over the credit for a discovery and some early pioneers have also been ignored. The first award was made in 1901 so discoveries such as heliocentricity and evolution theory pre-date the award system. Dynamite, which was invented by Alfred Nobel, did not qualify "for the greatest benefit to humankind", not to mention that he was the founder of the prizes.

First on the list is X-rays. The earliest experiments (unknowingly) involving X-rays may have been as early as the 18th century. It was German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen who first described and named the rays. He was also the first to discover the medical use of X-rays when he took an X-ray picture of his wife's hand. He was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

The discovery of radioactivity was serendipitous. Henri Becquerel had long been interested in phosphorescence. Having heard of the discovery of X-rays, he thought that phosphorescent material charged by sunlight might emit X-rays. He discovered by accident that it was the phosphorescent material (in this case, a uranium salt) which was fogging the photographic plate. He received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Marie and Pierre Curie.

In 1908 Dutch experimental physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was the first to liquefy helium, which has a boiling point of -269 degrees C or 4.2 Kelvin (K). In the process he achieved the lowest recorded temperature on Earth at the time (1.5 K). It was, however, for his discovery of superconductivity in 1911 that he won the Nobel Prize. Some scientists believed that resistivity would become infinitely large at the temperature of absolute zero. In fact he showed that the opposite happened to mercury at 4.2 K. He was also the first to observe superfluidity.

The photoelectric effect was discovered in 1887 by Heinrich Hertz, after whom the SI unit of frequency was named. It was Albert Einstein who received the Nobel Prize 1921 for the discovery of the law to explain the effect. This was based on light consisting of discrete particles rather than waves. Robert A Millikan sought to prove him wrong, however his measurements proved Einstein's theory appeared to be correct. Millikan received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 as a result.

The discovery of one of the most important antibiotic drugs came about as a result of a contamination incident in 1928. Because of the difficulty in isolating penicillin and hence mass producing it, it took years before the importance of the drug was recognised. A mouldy cantaloupe from Peoria, Illinois proved to be important to the WW2 war effort as six times as much penicillin could be obtained, compared to the Alexander Fleming-sourced sample. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1945 to Fleming, Florey and Chain.

Northern Ireland physicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell gets the credit for discovering the first radio pulsars whilst doing research for her doctorate. This work resulted in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, although she was not one of the recipients. This caused some controversy at the time. She was to receive many other awards and honours during her career. The 1974 Prize was to go to Antony Hewish (Bell Burnell's supervisor) and astronomer Martin Ryle for their contributions.

Various scientists have been measuring cosmic background radiation since the end of the 19th century, leading to various estimates of the background temperature of the galaxy. Temperature measurements of the narrower microwave radiation band in the 1960s led to the discovery of unexpected noise. After removing potential sources of error (including pigeon droppings on the antenna), it was interpreted as cosmic microwave background radiation and corroborative evidence for the Big Bang theory. This resulted in Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson sharing the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Although believed for some time to be causing gastric ulcers, it was not until 1983 that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori was formally blamed. H. pylori was first cultivated from samples from the stomachs of people with gastritis and ulcers in 1982 by Australian physician-scientists Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. At one point Marshall ingested some of the bacteria to prove that it would cause him to get a peptic ulcer. More than half the world's population are infected by the bacterium although people are normally asymptomatic. The research opened up the possibility of using antibiotics in treatment regimes. It also has led to discovering a causative link between the bacterium and stomach cancer. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Marshall and Warren in 2005.

A paradigm shift in the field of crystallography occurred with the discovery of real-world examples of quasicrystals. Initially, the materials scientist Dan Shechtman was reluctant to publish his 1982 findings as these challenged the long-held belief that all crystal structures were periodic (where the spatial pattern repeats itself periodically). The discovery of quasicrystals has resulted in new materials with some unusual (and useful) properties. Shechtman received his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.

Black hole research arose with Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1917, although such ideas had been around since the 18th century. The first black hole accepted as such was Cygnus X-1 in 1972. Since then two Nobel Prizes connected to black holes have been awarded. The one in 2017 (to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish) confirmed the existence of gravitational waves (a prediction of general relativity), which occurred as a result of two black holes colliding. The 2020 Nobel Prize was shared, half to Roger Penrose for proof that black holes are a natural result of general relativity and half to Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for evidence of a super massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.