NS now has 1/4th of a Nobel Prize in Physics

Jason Thibeault

Willard Boyle, originally of Amherst, Nova Scotia and having retired back to Nova Scotia in 1979, has gotten one-quarter of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009. Charles Kao of Britain wins half of the $1.4 million award for his work in fibre optics and light transmission, without which the internet backbone would be nowhere near as high bandwidth as it is today. Boyle shares the other half of the prize with American George Smith for their work on the imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor.

Too bad the prize in physics wasn’t for having built a functional replicator, or we could replicate the prize three times and have a whole one to our credit. Not that I’m sure they’ll particularly need the money any more — Boyle is 84 years old now, having retired the same year I was born. I suppose he could use it to buy a robot butler. Or maybe a sweet car with LEDs running along the bottom and a cherry bomb muffler so he could go cruising around the university campus making the 20-year-olds jealous.

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NS now has 1/4th of a Nobel Prize in Physics

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