Nobel Prize committee under scanner
A leading graphene researcher accuses the committee of shallow work after pointing out various errors in their physics Nobel Prize explanation, some of which has already been corrected online by the committee.
"The Nobel Prize committee did not do its homework," said Walt de Heer of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Dr Walt de Heer, who has accused the Nobel committee of being shallow in deciding this year’s award, is a leading graphene researcher who has successfully analyzed the electronic effects on graphene. He has many graphene patents under his name.
The Nobel committee also accepts some of its mistakes and have already corrected them. The committee chairman Ingemar Lundström says, "Some of the things we also think are mistakes."
But this year’s physics Nobel Prize winner Andre Geim considers this whole episode as Walt Heer's effort to stay in the limelight. "If he complains about Stockholm, some people might start thinking that he contributed something important," says Geim.
But, the data downloaded from the 17 November issue of the Nature confirms many of Walt Heer's accusations.
There are some errors in the document like a mismatch in the figure description and its explanation. These kinds of shabby work question the gravity of the institution and the award. Dr. Heer said that “The motive is simply to have the record straight on a document this important, its standards have to be higher than for any other prize and they're not."
This is not the first time a Nobel Prize decision has been questioned. But, this time the question is on the new Nobel Prize committee's preparedness to publish such a grave document.
But, some of the scientists like Klaus von Klitzing of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, and the Nobel Prize winner in 1985 supports the committee and believes that, "members of the Nobel Prize Committee had a good overview about the scientific situation.”
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of Manchester University, UK are the winners of this year's Nobel Prize for Physics. They have won this prestigious award for their work on graphene, a two-dimensional carbon structure that has huge potential in the field of electronics.