by Sophia Rosas
On October 5th, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was split between three participants. Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, each of the three winners have all accomplished incredible discoveries of knowledge whose foundations will be used in the future. As a thanks to these three scientists, they divided the shares of the $10 million prize. The hard-working winners of this prestigious honor are as follows.
Syukuro Manabe
“for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems”
Syukuro Manabe was born in the year 1931 in Shingu, Japan. Being the first person to endeavor the intricacies of radiation and balance the “vertical transport of air masses,” all the way back in the 1960’s, he also showed how higher levels of carbon dioxide lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth, thus predicting global warming nearly 30 years prior to the issue being taken seriously by the public.
Klaus Hasselmann
“for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate,
quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”
Similar to Manabe, Hasselman has also devoted a chunk of his life to climate studies. The 89 year old German physicist created models that depicted the links between weather and climate, two different aspects of our environment that can overlap. His creations and ideas have been used as evidence that carbon dioxide emissions formed by human activities are in fact increasing the temperature in the atmosphere.
Giorgio Parisi
“for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations
in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”
While the previous two winners each received ¼ of the financial prize, Parisi earned himself an entire half. His discoveries of patterns in disordered complex materials are some of the most essential findings to the contributions of complex physical systems. He has made it possible to understand key elements of not only physics phenomena, but mathematical, neurological, and biological phenomena as well.
Congratulations to each of the dedicated and hardworking Nobel Prize recipients. To read more about them please visit their personal websites.