Nobel Prize Awards for Shrinking Knowledge

2023 Nobel Prize awards go to those that shrink human knowledge.

Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for producing laser pulses lasting mere attoseconds.

One attosecond is one-quintillionth of a second, or 0.000000000000000001 seconds. More attoseconds pass in the span of one second than there are seconds that have passed since the birth of the universe.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman share the Physiology or Medicine Nobel Prize for development of mRNA  to provide instructions to cells to make proteins (10 nanometers). A typical atom is 0.1 to 0.5 nm in diameter. DNA molecules are about 2.5 nanometers wide. A typical virus is about 100 nm wide. The work led to the development of Covid-19 vaccines (75 – 89 nM) administered to billions around the world.

Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 for the discovery and development of quantum dots (1.5 – 10 nm). These tiny nanonanoparticles are essential for a wide range of applications including LED displays, solar cells, and biomedical imaging.

Expanding human knowledge of our attosecond and nanoscale world enables more innovation as well as more complexity to manage.