Israelis Win Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry

Current Affairs

Israelis Win Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics

10/9/2013
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This week, three Israeli scientists won the Nobel Prize for their work in the fields of Physics and Chemistry.

Tel Aviv University Professor François Englert was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics with Peter Higgs for discovery of Higgs boson, also described as the "God particle." The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said the prize was “for the discovery of the mechanism that contributes to understanding the origin of the mass of subatomic particles.”

> More On Professor Englert's work and the prize on the Nobel Prize website.

Prof. Arieh Warshel and Prof. Michael Levitt won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with prof. Martin Karplus for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems. Warshel and Levitt both studied in The Weizmann Institute.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that their research "is ground-breaking in that they managed to make Newton's classical physics work side-by-side with the fundamentally different quantum physics." their work helped scientists develop programs that unveil chemical processes such as the purification of exhaust fumes or the photosynthesis in green leaves.

Warshel is a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Prof. Levitt is a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

> More on Levitt and Warshel's work on the Nobel Prize website.
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Photos: Nobel Prize website, Wikimedia Commons and Pnicolet via Wikimedia Commons.