Southern Metropolis Daily, October 5, 2023, A07 edition.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on the 4th that the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to Mongi Bavendi, Louis Bruce and Alexei Yekmov in recognition of their contributions to the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.
Hans Ellergren, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the list of winners and their main achievements in the conference hall of the Royal Academy of Sciences on the same day. He said this year's Chemistry Prize winning research "sowed important seeds" for nanotechnology.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a press release issued on the same day that quantum dots are a class of very small nanoscale particles. It has long been known in theory that size-dependent quantum effects occur in nanoparticles, but in the past, when it was difficult to make nanoparticles, few believed that the theory could be applied in practice. This year's laureates invented and improved the technology for making quantum dots in the eighties and nineties. Today, quantum dots "illuminate" computer monitors and TV screens based on QLED (Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode) technology, and they also add nuances to the light of some LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights, and biochemists and doctors are also using them to map biological tissue.
Schematic diagram of quantum effects.
John Quist, chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, said in the communiqué: "Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. Importantly, they have different colors depending on their size. ”
Quantum dots are bringing many benefits to humanity, the communiqué said. It can also be applied to medical diagnostics, where doctors use them to illuminate molecules that can bind to cancer tumors, allowing surgeons to distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue.
The researchers believe that in the future they could be used in areas such as flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communications.
According to reports, Bavendi was born in France in 1961 and is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States; Bruce was born in the United States in 1943 and is a professor at Columbia University; Born in the Soviet Union in 1945, Yekmov is the former chief scientist of the American company Nanocrystal Technologies.
In a telephone interview on the same day, Bavendi said that he was surprised by the award, "completely unexpected" and honored by it. Asked how he would celebrate, he said he was going to class at 9 o'clock (local U.S. time).
The three winners will share the prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (about 7.2 million yuan). The prize for each Nobel Prize in 2023 increased from SEK 10 million last year to SEK 11 million.
Know more D
Quantum dots are semiconductor particles a few nanometers in size that differ from larger particles due to quantum mechanics and are a central topic in nanotechnology. When quantum dots are illuminated by ultraviolet light, the electrons in the quantum dots can be excited to higher energy states. Sometimes referred to as "artificial atom" or "quantum dot atom", it is a new concept proposed in the 90s of the 20th century.
Biography of the person
Mongi Bavendi
Born in 1961 in Paris, France, the son of a Tunisian mathematician Mohamed Salah Bavendi; He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Illinois in 1988 and is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bavendi is known for its advancements in the chemical production of high-quality quantum dots, and according to the MIT website, the Bavendi Lab focuses on the science and application of nanocrystals, especially semiconductor nanocrystals (also known as quantum dots).
Louis Bruce
Born in 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969. Currently, Bruce is a professor of chemistry at Columbia University, where his research focuses on experimental chemical physics and nanoscience.
Bruce was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He is also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Alexei Yekmov
Born in the USSR in 1945, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University in 1967, received a doctorate from the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1974, and in 1975 he received the USSR State Prize of Science and Engineering for his work on the spin orientation of semiconductor electrons.
Yekmov has lived and worked in the United States since 1999 as a privately owned company scientist, and was chief scientist at Nanocrystals Technology in New York.
"Number" says Nobel Prize
So far, a total of 192 people have won the Chemistry Prize
The Chemistry Prize is one of the fields of research mentioned in his will by Swedish chemist and inventor of nitroglycerin explosives by Alfred Bernhard Nobel in his will.
According to data published on the official website of the Nobel Prize (www.nobelprize.org), between 1901 and 2022, 114 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were awarded, and 189 people won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Including this year's winners, there are 192 in total. Of all the winners, 63 have enjoyed exclusive awards, and 8 women have won so far.
To date, the oldest Nobel laureate in chemistry has been awarded to the American physicist John A. Smith. B. Goodenough. He was 97 years old when he won the chemistry prize in 2019. He is also the oldest laureate of all Nobel Prize categories.
The youngest Nobel laureate in chemistry was French physicist Frédéric Joliot. He was only 35 years old when he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 with his wife Irene Joliot-Curie for the "discovery of stable artificial radioactivity". His wife is also the eldest daughter of the famous physicist and Nobel laureate Marie Curie.
British biochemist Frederick Sanger and American chemist Barry Sharpless have both won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.
Tidbits
Official "Oolong": Mistakenly sent an email to leak the list of winners in advance
Earlier on the 4th, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences seemed to have inadvertently "announced" the names of three scientists who won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
According to Swedish media reports, just over four hours before the release of the results of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences unexpectedly sent an email "oolong incident".
The Nobel laureates in chemistry were first scheduled to be announced at 11:45 a.m. local time (17:45 a.m. Beijing time), but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences sent out an email titled "They have planted important seeds for nanotechnology" at 7:31 local time.
Among them is a press release that states that "the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards the discovery and development of quantum dots and nanoparticles, which are so small that their size determines their properties," says a press release. The emails also included Munji Bavendi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alexei Yekmov of Nanocrystal Technologies, and Louis Bruce of Columbia University as winners.
After the incident, the Nobel Committee provided timely clarifications, and several committee members stressed that no decision had been made on the issue. Heiner Link, an expert on the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, told local media: "We haven't made a decision yet, so issuing a press release is definitely a mistake. ”
Hans Ellergren, current permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, has notified all members of the Academy by email about the erroneous mail.
"It's very unfortunate," he said. We deeply regret what happened. "A press release was issued for reasons that are not clear. We were very active this morning trying to find out exactly what happened, but at the moment we don't know. We deeply regret that this has happened. But the important thing is that this does not affect the presentation of awards. ”
However, from the list released later, the contents of the email address are not different from the actual winners.
Integration: Shi Minglei
Text source: Xinhua News Agency, Nobel Prize official website, China News Network, Beijing News, The Paper
Image source: Nobel Prize official website, Nobel Prize official Twitter, Columbia University website