every year around this time, announcing the coming of the much dreaded christian holiday season, the names of this year's nobel prizes winners are made public. somebody pointed out to me recently that i actually know a few of the laureates in both the post and pre award phases of their lives. i never gave this much thought, but indeed that is a fact that even i can not banter out of existence. it is not like it all has gone unnoticed by good old absent minded me. i do remember one occasion when i actually caught myself in a discussion with one of these good persons, and realized that i was explaining to him something that he did not know, or had not yet thought of. shortly thereafter i remember thinking to myself that i must have one hell of a lot of nerve to just not bow to his superior accomplishments and keep my big mouth shut. to be fair, i have to add that we were talking about my work, but then i was in my early thirties and a bit wet behind the ears. not that i am much wiser now, i just am at a different place.
why am i so thrilled about this year's nobel prizes? is it that i know two of the laureates? is it that i am delighted that one of my favorites, got it?
well, when it comes to the nobel prize, i have had a peculiar relationship to the whole enterprise. first, one of the business in my family is explosives, so clearly the man who created the foundation and the legacy of such a prestigious prize and i do have something in common, it is called dynamite. then there is my perception that at one of the places where i worked for a few years, that most of my colleagues were bent on getting one. so far two have, and neither of them was bent on it, they both loved and lived their discipline. so, yes, i am thrilled pink about seeing their life's love honoured.
second, i sometimes claim that i left the world of experimental physics because i just did not share my colleagues' ambitions of a nobel prize. there is some truth in that statement, and there is some funny logic in it too.
leaving experimental physics was perhaps my first act of rebellion against my parents. i was well over thirty, and i had yet to go through adolescence, i just had to start sometime.
by whatever interpretation mechanisms i had activated early in life, the impression that i got from my parents was that i was to achieve something great in the hard sciences, if i had declined to chose a profession that would make me rich, like medicine, engineering or law, then i better make it big in the hard sciences, something albeit esoteric, but considered serious. actually i was much more interested in architecture, agronomy, dance and sports but obviously i received no encouragement in that direction, and as a teen i was not into getting into conflicts, muss less with my parents. then in my early thirties i find myself in the ivory tower of academia, going through a five year long litigious divorce, raising a challenging boy, and i find out that for all the glamour and glory of it, that is not where i want to be. after the divorce, i was exhausted. at the time i expressed this exhaustion by saying that i wanted to be put in an envelope with no return address and be mailed to china. i left academia then, and i still love physics. it was in recalling the fond memories of a few discussions with one of this year's nobel laureates that i realized how much i had and do love physics. this is really important to me, and it surprises me that i had almost forgotten how much i do love physics.
i tend to think that the idea of the nobel prize in physics had been somehow instilled by my mother. it is perhaps no wonder that i projected that internalized extraneous and foreign to me idea onto my colleagues, like it is not surprising that i found joy and satisfaction in discussions with colleagues who shared in the love for the discipline, the curiosity for the wonders of matter, and the detachment from any form of acknowledgment or honours.
oh, i could go on an exhilarant random ode about my love for physics...
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