Sweden: Three scientists who worked separately to explain the nature of matter at extremely low temperatures have won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Russians Vitaly Ginzburg (87) and Alexei Abrikosov (75) and British-born Anthony Leggett (65) worked on theories which led to the development of magnetic imaging scanners. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it was recognising the trio's theories concerning two areas of quantum physics - superconductivity and superfluidity.
Ginzburg was head of the theory group at the PN Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow and Abrikosov now works at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Leggett is at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Like Abrikosov, Leggett now holds US citizenship.
Abrikosov said yesterday that he had begun his work more than half a century ago in the Soviet Union in a scientific world that was almost unrecognisable and virtually without computers. "All three of us have something in common - our discoveries . . . were done many years ago. We are pretty old people," he said from Lemont, Illinois, on learning of the award. "We worked mostly in a world without computers."
A self-deprecating Ginzburg said his share of the $1.3 million prize would be lavished on his great-grandchildren. "For me, of course, it's a huge amount of money, as it is for anyone in Russia who isn't a crook or a business tycoon."
"I'm pleased to be sharing the prize with them," Leggett said of his fellow winners, whom he had met professionally. His own main research on the topic was done in England in the 1970s.
Scientists said the laureates' work on superconductivity still had potentially revolutionary applications.