America's Nobel Sweep

Ever since the ancient Greeks, scientists have been seeking to identify and understand the basic building blocks and structure of matter. Last week Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences honored three Americans whose discoveries have advanced this understanding. It awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics to Burton Richter of Stanford University and Samuel C.C. Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their investigations of subatomic particles, and gave the chemistry prize to William Lipscomb of Harvard University for his work in explaining the structure of the chemicals called boranes. Together with the previous awards of the medicine prize to Baruch Blumberg of Philadelphia's Institute for Cancer Research and Carleton Gajdusek of the National Institutes of Health, and the economics prize to Economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago (TIME, Oct. 25), last week's winners gave the U.S. a clean sweep of the 1976 Nobel science awards.

For Richter, 45, and Ting, 40, who will share the $162,140 physics award, recognition came much sooner than to most Nobel laureates, who often wait a decade or longer before the importance of their work is acknowledged by the Royal Academy. The two physicists won their prize for discoveries reported two years ago. In November 1974 Ting, who had been working at New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory, visited Richter at Stanford and told him he had just discovered a new member of the "subatomic zoo," the ever growing list of tiny particles identified in experiments with giant atom-smashing machines. Ting was startled to get instant confirmation of his finding; Richter had independently discovered the same particle in his own laboratory.

Charmed Particle. The bit of matter, called the J particle by Ting and the psi particle by Richter, gave solid experimental support to the evolving theory that the basic building blocks of matter are a family of particles called quarks. It provided strong evidence for the existence of the fourth quark, one that has the property that scientists whimsically call "charm." Since the simultaneous findings by Richter and Ting, at least seven more members of the J, or psi, particle family have been discovered, further strengthening the quark theory.

A quiet, intense man who commutes between M.I.T. and the giant particle accelerator at the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is now conducting experiments, Ting was not surprised at the news of his award. The discovery of the J particle, he says frankly, was "revolutionary." Brooklyn-born Richter. who plays squash to keep his weight under control, took his sudden fame philosophically. Says he of his discovery: "I see no immediate practical application of this discovery except in improving the understanding of the universe." But he also remembers that Lord Rutherford, the great British physicist who first described the structure of the atom, doubted that his findings would prove practical, too.

Triple Crown. Lipscomb, 56. learned of his award when his students burst into his cluttered office to congratulate him. He was inspired to do the work that led to his Nobel, he recalls, when as a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, he heard his professor, Linus Pauling--who has since won the Nobel chemistry and peace prizes--explain how boron compounds were bound together chemically. Intrigued by what seemed an incomplete explanation, he used Pauling's own techniques to study the compounds further. He discovered that boranes, the complex chemicals that combine boron and hydrogen molecules, were, bonded differently from other chemicals. That discovery led to his finding that borane molecules were polyhedral, or many sided, and to a new understanding of how a host of new chemical compounds could be constructed.

Lipscomb's work could have an impact on medicine; experiments are under way in the use of boranes in cancer therapy, and Lipscomb is now using his techniques to determine how digestive enzymes work. Lipscomb is as many faceted as his molecules; he is a tennis buff, plays the clarinet in local chamber orchestras, and is a genuine Kentucky colonel. His own concern about his Nobel: "I'm afraid everyone will think I'm finished, but I still have so much more to do."

Other American scientists also have much to do if they want the U.S. to continue to dominate the international science Olympics; 26 of the 56 physics Nobel laureates in the past 20 years have been Americans, and the U.S. has twice before captured the triple crown by winning the Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry and medicine. But their competitors may start catching up. M.I.T. President Jerome Wiesner, for one, says that European and Japanese science is "on the upswing, and we should expect to see the balance change in their direction." At the same time, he feels, U.S. science is being hampered by budget squeezes, causing U.S. scientists to waste their intellectual resources looking for handouts. Says he: "The whole climate is unhealthy. When you are in a car you can tell if it is accelerating or decelerating. We in the science car know that, even though it is still running pretty well, it is decelerating."

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