October 7, 2003
Illinois, and esp the University of Illinois, is really cleaning up in this year's Nobel Sweepstakes. So far three of the winners are Illinois researchers - two from U of I and one at Argonne Labs. Paul Lauterbur won a prize for his work on MRI, and Anthony Leggett and Alexei Abrikosov - along with Russian Scientist Vitaly Ginzburg - won for their work on superconductivity and superfluidity. And then there's always JM Coetzee, who's at least camped out here in Chicago.
It's cool to think of Illinois as a haven for hard scientific research. I guess Chicago has a pretty impressive research history, but two Nobels in one year is going to do wonders for the U of I's reputation.
Abriksov is being claimed by U of Chicago. They help manage Argonne, so they add him to their overwhelming list of Nobel Laureates.
Oh - I had assumed Abrikosov was the Russian and had it backwards. Fixed now - did you know Abrikosov means "apricot" in Russian?
Why on earth would you assume a guy named "Alexei Abrikosov" would be Russian? I thought it sounded Irish
"Al Apricot". That goes up there with Giuseppe Verdi - "Joe Green".
Well actually though Vitaly Ginzburg is a very typicaly Russian name too, Jewish of course. I'm kind of familiar with Russian names because I used to translate birth certificates from Russian to English for the Social Scurity Administration... and I definitely encountered more Ginzburgs there than Abrikisovs.
Shut out in Chemistry today. Couple of upstart East-Coasters. The nerve.
And Economics! The U of Chicago Memorial Nobel Prize in Economics is going to economists at NYU and UCSD.
Post a comment