Updated October 5th, 2021 at 18:35 IST
2021 Nobel Prize for Physics: What are the 'Complex Physical Systems' that won?
Two scientists shared the first half of the award for explaining Earth’s climate & how humanity influences it while second half of the prize went to Parisi.
Advertisement
Scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi were awarded with the Nobel Prize for physics, on Tuesday, October 5, for groundbreaking contributions to understanding of complex physical systems. The first two scientists shared the first half of the award for explaining Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it, while the second half of the prize went to Giorgio Parisi for his theories on disordered materials and random processes.
BREAKING NEWS:
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2021
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2021 #NobelPrize in Physics to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.” pic.twitter.com/At6ZeLmwa5
Syukuro Manabe
Born in 1931 in Shingu, Japan, Manabe is a senior Meteorologist at the USA's Princeton University and completed his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Manabe contributed in demonstrating how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. Moreover, in the 1960s, he was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses. As per the Nobel committee, it is Manabe's theories and discoveries that helped in making current climate models that assist in detecting weather patterns.
Syukuro Manabe – awarded the 2021 #NobelPrize in Physics – demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. His work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models. pic.twitter.com/jOZEnOSxGV
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2021
Klaus Hasselmann
Hasselmann is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany's Hamburg and shares the one-half of Nobel prize with Manabe "for the physical modeling of the Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming". Hasselman created a model that links together weather and climate, ten years after Manabe's work on climate. His model explained why climate models can be reliable despite the weather being changeable and chaotic and developed methods to identify the effects of natural phenomena and human activities on climate. It is his methods that have proven that global warming is a result of human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
2021 #NobelPrize laureate Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links together weather and climate. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide. pic.twitter.com/lWcGrm9SDW
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2021
Giorgio Parisi
Parisi enjoys the other half of the prize "for the discovery of the interplay of disorders and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales", as per the Nobel committee. Born in Italy's Rome, he is a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome and his contributions are considered the "most important" to the complex systems theory. His discoveries make many different and apparently entirely random phenomena understandable and their application is not only limited to physics and extends to areas such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.
Giorgio Parisi – awarded this year’s #NobelPrize in Physics – discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. His discoveries are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems. pic.twitter.com/ggdbuauwcY
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2021
Image: Twitter/@NobelPrize
Advertisement
Published October 5th, 2021 at 18:35 IST
Your Voice. Now Direct.
Send us your views, we’ll publish them. This section is moderated.