THE creation of the peculiar quantum state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC) has won two Americans and a German the 2001 Nobel Prize in
Physics. The chemistry prize goes to three scientists for finding ways to
separate useful chemicals from their harmful mirror images.
This year鈥檚 physics prize was awarded for work done in 1995, when scientists
produced a quantum state of matter predicted more than 70 years earlier by
Albert Einstein and the Calcutta-born physicist Satyendra Bose. In a
Bose-Einstein condensate, a clump of atoms shares the same quantum wave
function, just like the photons in a laser beam. Eric Cornell of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology and Carl Wieman at Colorado University,
both in Boulder, finally managed to create a condensate by cooling rubidium
atoms to just 20 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, by using lasers to
remove the more energetic atoms.
Eventually the atoms had so little energy that they all became trapped in the
same low-energy state. 鈥淚 could hardly believe we actually had it, under just
the conditions that had been predicted,鈥� says Cornell. 鈥淚t was like a dream come
迟谤耻别.鈥�
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At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wolfgang Ketterle independently
repeated the feat using sodium atoms. The three will share the 拢690,000
prize money.
Practical applications for BECs are starting to appear. In the past year,
researchers have formed a beam of atoms from a BEC that can etch precise
patterns on surfaces. Atoms from BECs could also act as components in quantum
computers.
The chemistry prize was awarded for pioneering work on ways to separate
mirror-image forms of chemical compounds. Many chemicals exist as 鈥渃hiral
pairs鈥濃�攖wo distinct forms that have the same chemical structure but are
mirror images of each other, like left and right hands. Many drugs are chiral
compounds of which only one form is active.
Separating the correct form of a drug can make the difference between life
and death. It was only one form of the drug thalidomide, for example, which
caused distressing birth defects in the 1960s.
Half the chemistry prize money of 拢690,000 goes to Barry Sharpless, at
the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Sharpless developed
catalysts that orchestrate oxidation reactions to make only one chiral form of a
molecule. The other half of the prize money is shared by Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya
University and William Knowles, a retired chemist now living in St Louis,
Missouri. They developed catalysts that add hydrogen to molecules
asymmetrically. Knowles鈥檚 achievements include a process for producing L-dopa, a
drug for treating Parkinson鈥檚 disease.
鈥淚鈥檓 absolutely and utterly delighted for them,鈥� says Steve Ley, president of
the Royal Society of Chemistry. 鈥淭heir impact on the pharmaceuticals industry
has been truly enormous.鈥�