Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor

408 Pages·2018·19.68 MB·English

by  Brian Keating

LOSING
THE
NOBEL PRIZE
A STORY OF COSMOLOGY,
AMBITION,
AND THE PERILS OF
SCIENCE’s HIGHEST HONOR
BRIAN KEATING
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
Inde pendent Publishers Since 1923
NEW YORK LONDON
To my mother, Barbara, who gave me life,
and to Sarah, who gives me life.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: A NOBLE WILL
Chapter 1 READING THE COSMIC PROLOGUE
Chapter 2 LOSING MY RELIGIONS
Chapter 3 A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME MACHINES
Chapter 4 THE BIGGER THE BANG, THE BIGGER THE PROBLEMS
Chapter 5 BROKEN LENS 1:
THE NOBEL PRIZE’S CREDIT PROBLEM
Chapter 6 ASHES TO ASHES
Chapter 7 THE SPARK THAT IGNITED THE BIG BANG
Chapter 8 BICEP: THE ULTIMATE TIME MACHINE
Chapter 9 HEROES OF FIRE, HEROES OF ICE
Chapter 10 BROKEN LENS 2:
THE NOBEL PRIZE’S CASH PROBLEM
Chapter 11 ELATION!
Chapter 12 INFLATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Chapter 13 BROKEN LENS 3:
THE NOBEL PRIZE’S COLLABORATION PROBLEM
Chapter 14 DEFLATION
Chapter 15 POETRY FOR PHYSICISTS
Chapter 16 RESTORING ALFRED’S VISION
Epilogue AN ETHICAL WILL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
ILLUSTRATIONS
INDEX
Introduction
A NOBLE WILL
E
ACH YEAR, ON DECEMBER TENTH, THOUSANDS of worshippers convene in
Scandinavia to commemorate the passing of an arms dealer known as the
merchant of death. The eschatological ritual features all the rites and incantations
befitting a pharaoh’s funeral. Haunting dirges play as the worshippers, bedecked
in mandatory regalia, mourn the merchant. He is eerily present; his visage looms
over the congregants as they feast on exotic game, surrounded by fresh-cut
flowers imported from the merchant’s mausoleum. The event culminates with
the presentation of gilded, graven images bearing his likeness.
This ritual is the annual Nobel Prize award ceremony, but you’d be
forgiven for thinking it was an occult sacrament. The focus on death might be
surprising. But, in truth, the Nobel Prize was born in death. The death of Alfred,
inventor of dynamite, birthed the prize that redeemed the Nobel name, achieving
the ultimate in posthumous public relations.
The Nobel Prize is not merely science’s most esteemed accolade, but the
world’s most prestigious award. Its goal: to recognize humanity’s crowning
achievements in the sciences, free from ideological agendas or fashion, as well
as to reward poets and peacemakers who enrich mankind. When it’s “done
right,” it is a truly lustrous meritocratic reward system. Yet, in this book, I
explore the case against the Nobel Prize in Physics, arguing that its days may be
numbered unless it is radically reformed.
In a society that seemingly has more awards ceremonies than talented
celebrities, you might wonder what’s wrong with a single award celebrating the
most honorable of goals, the betterment of mankind via science? I would answer
that, like a coin, the Nobel Prize has three sides. Its obverse, or positive side,
corresponds to the respect and admiration it brings to science and scientists. Its
reverse, or negative side, reflects how it punishes collaboration and causes
ferocious competition for scarce resources. Lastly, the gilded medallion’s
unstable rim evokes the prize’s uncertain future in our modern scientific era.
Many young scientists now ask: Is the Nobel Prize a fair coin?
This book is not a polemic, nor is it a scorched-earth attack on the prize.
Instead, I offer a unique, insider’s glimpse into the power of the prize to refract
reality, as it did for me, an astronomer who was once seemingly about to read
the very prologue of the cosmos. For thirty years I had been mesmerized by the
the very prologue of the cosmos. For thirty years I had been mesmerized by the
prize’s golden promise; eventually, I designed a Nobel-worthy experiment, only
to have the medal slip from my grasp. The end of that dream removed a veil that
had been covering my soul as a scientist. I began to see the prize not as a divine
anointing but as a human creation, with some all-too-human frailties. Of course,
for a time, I felt disappointment, anger, and maybe a bit of bitterness—but those
are not the animating spirits of this book.
Losing the Nobel Prize was born from a genuine desire that the Nobel Prize
in Physics achieve the great purpose originally envisioned for it: to be a beacon
of excellence for all physicists. The story of the Nobel Prize, and my own
narrative, are human stories—tales of idols and ideologues, pride and prestige,
cunning and deception, shame and redemption. But most of all, this book is
about the creative motivating passion that impels all scientists to venture into the
abyss, one step at a time.
STOCKHOLM
SEPTEMBER 1864
STOCKHOLM’S SKY WAS sublime. It was late summer, and an inky blue canopy
beckoned him outdoors. Gentle winds caressed the windows of the laboratory,
teasing him like a lover’s whisper: come play with me. But Emil Nobel was
playing. Though Heleneborg, the stone-walled laboratory of Nobel & Sons, had
every bit the appearance of a jail, Emil must have felt free within its confines;
the space emboldened him to try new tricks. Perhaps this time he could dupe
Mother Nature into revealing just one secret more than she’d intended. Emil, the
last and favorite of Immanuel Nobel’s seven children, three of whom had died in
childhood, found his home in the laboratory.
Each successful experiment delighted him: a magic trick, one whose
prestige only he could reveal. Out of sight of his oppressively doting father and
his older brothers, Emil could play. Here he, and perhaps he alone, could save
Nobel & Sons, a family business built on death itself, the once preeminent
manufacturer of highly explosive war supplies.
But Nobel & Sons itself was dying. The Russians had severely cut back
their purchases of Nobel’s boat-busting naval mines, the company’s flagship
product. Ludvig Nobel—the oldest son, to whom Immanuel, the patriarch, had
transferred the operation of the business—tried to pivot. He bet the family
fortune, such as it was, on drilling for oil. In the mid-nineteenth century, oil was
typically harvested from whales and used mainly in lamps; automobiles were
still five decades in the future.
still five decades in the future.
Emil was fascinated by explosives. Though they demanded respect, he
reasoned, what could be simpler than nitroglycerin blasting oil? Some nitric acid
from the stock shelves, a bit of Skånian beef tallow for the glycerin. All he had
to do was to stabilize it and it could be transported—even to America, where a
westward railway expansion was underway. For once, a Nobel invention could
be used for construction. But how to tame it? Perhaps if the volatile oil was
cooled, Emil hypothesized, it could be solidified into a stable mass, like butter.
Why not? After all, the fatty glycerin had once girded the bellies of milk cows.
Then it could be transformed into “Blasting Butter,” friendly-sounding, safe to
handle, yet potent when employed by a properly trained magician. Yes,
Heleneborg was his playground—let his older brothers seek fortune in whale
blubber substitutes elsewhere.
THE PRESSURE WAVE reverberated through the stone-walled laboratory at thirty
times the speed of sound; Emil literally couldn’t hear it coming. He’d stolen the
Sun’s heat and brought it down to Earth. As with Prometheus, it didn’t end well.
THE EXPLOSION TOOK Emil’s life along with the lives of four coworkers. Alfred
was wounded too, though not severely. Neither he nor his father fully recovered
from the devastating trauma. Immanuel suffered a debilitating stroke soon after
Emil’s accident and would be united with his son again in death: dying eight
years to the day after Emil.
Nitroglycerin remains a chimerical compound, extremely sensitive to
sudden jolts and electrical discharge. In fact, physical jolts, such as an impact
with a hammer—or, as likely happened in Emil’s case, being dropped—are a
sure means of detonating it. More insidiously, it becomes less stable as it ages,
making it extremely hazardous to transport. (None of these well-known hazards
deterred the author, at fifteen, from attempting to win the Westinghouse Science
Competition by synthesizing nitroglycerin from household chemicals available
at the local A&P grocery store. Luckily, those attempts fizzled without incident.)
Of all Alfred Nobel’s 355 patents, the most famous, and profitable, was the
combination of nitroglycerin with absorbers and inert stabilizers. This invention
allowed the explosive to be detonated in a controlled fashion, using electric or
pyrotechnic charges (such as the fuses Bugs Bunny’s mortal enemy Elmer J.
Fudd futilely employs). The ideal stabilizer turned out to be a common antacid.