They have been awarded for contributions to understanding complex systems
Scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi were today honored with the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their innovative contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.” Among those contributions are the development of mathematical models to understand climate change.
Half the prize will go to two climate scientists like Manabe, 80, a meteorologist at Princeton, and Hasselmann, 79, from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, “for physically modeling the Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and certainty in predicting global warming, “said the jury.
The other half was attributed to Parisi, 73, a professor at the University of La Sapienza in Rome, and recognized for his work in statistical mechanics. In his case, the jury has awarded him for “the discovery of the interaction of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from the atomic to the planetary scale.”
‘The discoveries that are being recognized this year show that our knowledge of the climate rests on a solid scientific basis, based on a rigorous analysis of observations. All of this year’s awardees have helped us gain a deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems, ”said Thors Hans Hansson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
They take over from Penrose, Genzel and Ghez
Manabe, Hasselmann and Parisi take over from Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, the three scientists who won the award last year. Roger Penrose received it “for discovering that the formation of black holes is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.” Meanwhile, Genzel and Ghez shared the other half “for discovering a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”
This is the second Nobel Prize in 2021 to be announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, after the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday and which continues tomorrow with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. On Thursday the Peace and, finally, Economy is announced, which will be announced on Monday next week.
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