3 Physicists Win Nobel Prize

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American Shares Nobel Prize in Physics

American Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago, shares the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics and half of the $1.4 million prize for the discovery of a mechanism called spontaneous broken symmetry.

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Physicists had thought that it would be possible to replace all particles with their antiparticles in an experiment, or to run the experiment in reverse, and have the same result. But it turned out there were subtle differences. The idea of a third family of quarks, which could account for the violation of symmetry, arose with the work of Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo and was cemented by Kobayashi and Maskawa.

Some Italian physicists said yesterday that they were upset about the perceived snub of Cabibbo.

"I'm happy that the Nobel Prize has been awarded in this area of physics," Roberto Petronzio, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, told La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper. "Nevertheless, I can't deny that I'm bitterly disappointed by this particular award: The only contribution that Kobayashi and Maskawa made was to simply expand upon a core idea whose father was the Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo."

Kobayashi and Maskawa, meanwhile, reacted to the award without much excitement.

"I wasn't expecting the prize," Kobayashi said, according to the Associated Press. "I've been only pursuing my interest."

Said Maskawa: "The Nobel Prize is a rather mundane thing."

Staff writers Emily Langer and Zofia Smardz contributed to this report.