My personal opinion is that there needn’t be a Nobel given for the top discovery; there’s no rule that says every new particle has to have a Nobel prize that comes along with it, and everyone knew that the top would be there. (Not to slight the actual experimental effort, which was tremendous.) If and when the Higgs and supersymmetry are found, these questions will be very sticky.

Regarding Japanese physics, Kobayashi, and Maskawa:

As indicated by Tony’s original comment, my emphasis is not so much on making sure that K-M get the credit they deserve (and certainly they deserve a lot). In the end, they did become institutionalized in the literature, with very high rankings among the SPIRES most cited papers. Prior to about 1977, they were ignored not only in the US, but also in Japan, with almost no citations even in the journal in which they published their paper. (In the book I discuss a number factors that plausibly contributed to the increased attention to their paper, among which certainly is the tau discovery in 76, but also a prominent citation and discussion by Ellis, Gaillard, and Nanopoulos, also in 76.)

Although K-M are often cited, the usual histories leave out the context of their work: the “Nagoya model” developed by Sakata, Maki, Ohnuki, and Nakagawa in papers published in early 60s. Also forgotten is the fact that K-M were reacting to the “X-particle”, a 1971 cosmic ray finding by Japanese experimentalists of a possibly charmed state that they were interpreting as the fourth fundamental “ur-baryon” postulated by the Nagoya model. The usual histories see K-M’s 73 paper as a kind of miraculous anticipation of quarks five and six before quark number four had even been found. Putting their paper in its original context shows that there were specific but forgotten problems they were trying to solve. (Great physicists rather than prophets!)

Regarding the top discovery and the Nobel:

I have hesitated to form any opinion regarding who, if anyone, apart from Kobayashi and Maskawa, should get a Nobel for the top discovery (although such an announcement might give a little (rather badly needed) kick to sales of my book). When I do think about it, Alvin Tollestrup does come to mind — not so much for his direct involvement in the top analysis and write-up itself, but for his role in making the CDF detector a reality. Certainly, as Tommaso Dorigo notes, the role of the Italians, and Giorgio Bellettini in particular, is very important in CDF. So much depends on what kind of contribution we value, though (the obscurity of this issue is what makes me reluctant to form firm opinions on the Nobel questions). My investigations convinced me that a crucial but perhaps unsung hero was Aldo Menzione, a Pisa physicist who adovcated strongly and persistently and with little encouragement for the building of the silicon vertex detector at CDF, based on a kind of fundamental insight into the value of having qualitatively new information about particle processes very close to the beam line. Without that component of the detector, there would have been no result in 94 and a much less impressive result in 95.

Speaking of these two papers — I think this poses another difficulty. In the period 94-95 there were three top results from Fermilab, CDF’s “Evidence for top quark” paper of 94, and the two “Observation of top” papers from CDF and D0 in 95. Although Tony Smith’s proposal is in the spirit of “Nobel prizes all around,” the hallmark he cites is the posting of the 94 CDF paper. This is problematic, though, insofar as many physicists in D0, and some in CDF, regarded the 94 paper as anything but exemplary of experimental physics at its best. In my book I discuss a number of concerns raised about possible biases in that result (based mostly on criticisms from CDF members themselves). I don’t claim that all those criticisms are warranted, but there is a legitimate question as to whether the paper — for all its many remarkable features — should be granted iconic status.

For the 95 results, the story is quite different, but now you do have two results. And you get quite different stories about the relative merits of the two papers from talking to CDF or D0 members respectively.

The experimental confirmation of the top quark is an amazing achievement in experimental physics — and one that can only be regarded as more amazing in light of the complicated “experimental sociology” (maybe “sociology of experiment” would be better?) surrounding it. I suspect that in the end the problem is that the model for scientific credit presupposed by the Nobel mechanism is simply inappropriate for the kind of achievement this is.

Yes, I would include Italian taxpayers and taxpayers from all other governments that participated in Fermilab during the runs leading up to the 1994 announcement FERMILAB-PUB-94/097-E. I hereby apologize for ignoring the other governments in my earlier post.
I don’t see anything wrong with including ALL taxpayers, or why Tommaso would be so scornful of it as to say “Give me a break”.

As to recognition of Giorgio Bellettini individually, I think that he (like many others whose contributions may have been necessary, if not sufficient, for the Fermilab observations) was covered in my earlier comment when I said:
“… the director should accept the award, not only for himself, but also as a representative of everybody who worked at Fermilab, CDF, D0 during the runs leading up to the 1994 announcement FERMILAB-PUB-94/097-E … the Fermilab Public Affairs office could make replicas of the Nobel medallions … for workers at Fermilab, CDF, and D0 (free to them, paid out of the Nobel Prize funds) …”.

Tony Smith
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

PS - Personally, I am very much biased in favor of a Nobel Prize going to Giorgio Bellettini. Many years ago I attended a conference at Fermilab. I did not rent a car, but rode a bus from the hotel to Fermilab. IIRC (regretfully my memory fades with age) I was the only non-Italian on the bus, and Giorgio Belletini was among the Italians on the bus, and I very much enjoyed bus-ride discussions of things from physics to comparing USA and Italian cultures (including discussion of the USA practice of conversion of food-producing farmland to housing subdivisions with flimsy wood-frame construction).

Of course it seems that publication lag was a lot smaller than nowadays, so perhaps the SNO method (publish, then discuss) was the better approach. In some other place Sommerfeld tells that the experimentalist result must be arranged to be published always before the modeller results, but this is during a dispute against Lande for the Paschen-Back results. very muddled with the need of Back (but also of Lande) to claim a “new result” for his habilitation exam.

I was never aware of this organizational process before, and the issues faced with who constitues qualification to back tracking of the archive of arxiv, might qualify, comes to mind as well.

It might be interesting to see the “whole system displayed” as to the responsibility of the science process?

While now, our points as layman, might be seen as very insignificant? Had always been. Ah, it’s nice we can participate in “some kind of” process anyway.:)

“Since machines don’t qualify, the director of Fermilab, as of the year 1994, should get the Nobel prize.”

I agree. They have already given the Nobel Prize to figureheads such as the Director-General of the IAEA http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2005/

As to U.S. taxpayers having the right to have a share in the reward because they funded the research: this argument would also be a good leveller to some of the arrogance in mainstream THEORETICAL physics. Some humility would be inspired if they were reminded that responsibility comes packaged with publishing privileges (arXiv), etc.

I’m uneasy with the idea that big spending Americans can buy Nobel Prizes for dollars. I’m not sure why. For example, if American spending on cancer research led to a breakthrough (say, automated chemical experiments or computer modelling), I’d agree without reserve.

It’s just in physics that it seems a bit unethical money can buy discoveries. Contrast that to the myth of Faraday working an a shoestring even at the height of popularity. However, I think even Faraday was still corrupted by fame.

For all his widely praised ‘humility’ Faraday was a powerful loud showman, who ended up overshadowing others by fame, not necessarily always genius/ability/hard work.

Henry published his discovery of self-induction in the 1832 American Journal of Science. Nobody said ‘wow’! But when in December 1834 Faraday rediscovered it (without citing Henry) and made a big exciting media show of it, people got excited.

A recent example, still very sour, is Einstein’s genius in putting the year 1905 ahead of 1889 when FitzGerald discovered the contraction from an empirical argument based on the Michelson-Morley result. FitzGerald preserves absolute speed of light and has the instrument contract so that you always detect the same relative speed, which is the physics of special relativity.

Once someone is famous for marketing a scientific product (equation or experimental result), they get credited 100% with every pie they had their finger stuck in.

And, don’t forget that the third generation was discovered in 1976 with the discovery of the tau lepton! This has, of course, already been given a Nobel prize. It was after the tau was discovered that people took the KM speculation seriously.