Two physicists who developed techniques to study the interplay between light and matter on the smallest and most intimate imaginable scale won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday. They are Serge Haroche, of the Collège de France and the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, and David Wineland, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado.
They will split 8 million Swedish krona, or about $1.2 million, and receive their award in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
Their work, the academy said, enables scientists to directly observe some of the most bizarre effects — like the subatomic analogue of cats who are alive and dead at the same time — predicted by the quantum laws that prevail in the microcosm, and could lead eventually to quantum computers and super accurate clocks.
