Physics Nobelists Work in U.S.

Three scientists working in the United States won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their discoveries of how sub-atomic particles can behave like a fluid.

Robert C. Laughlin of the United States, Horst L. Stoermer of Germany and Daniel C. Tsui, a native of China who is now an American citizen, will share the $978,000 prize.

They discovered that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of particles, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Laughlin works at Stanford University, Stoermer currently is at Columbia University in New York and Tsui teaches at Princeton University.

The award recognizes work that Tsui and Stoermer did together in the 1980s, which was elaborated on by Laughlin.

According to the citation, the three discovered a new form of "quantum fluid," which are fluids such as liquid helium that have certain properties in common such as superfluidity.

What makes these fluids important for researchers is that "events in a drop of quantum fluid can afford more profound insights into the general inner structure and dynamics of matter," the academy said.

It is "yet another breakthrough in our understanding of quantum physics and to the development of new theoretical concepts of significance in many branches of modern physics."

Last year's physics laureates, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of France and William Phillips and Steven Chu of the United States, were honored for developing ways of trapping atoms of gas and cooling them to within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero.

The work led to developing extraordinarily accurate atomic clocks. Previous atomic clocks weren't exactly sloppy, being accurate to about one second in 32 million years - but the improvements made possible a clock that loses just one second every 3 billion years.

It also led to the creation of an entirely new form of matter, achieving what Albert Einstein had postulated was possible some 70 years earlier.

On Monday, the medicine prize was given to three Americans - Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad - for their work on discovering properties of nitric oxide, a common air pollutant but also a life-saver because of its capacity to dilate blood vessels.

The literature prize was awarded last Thursday to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago.

The Nobel prize in chemistry will be awarded later Tuesday morning.

The economics prize winner is to be named on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday.

All the prizes are announced in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, who established the prizes in his will.

By JIM HEINTZ