Nobel prizes for computational science [The Last Word]

By the time you read this column, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will have announced the recipients of this year´s Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry . The chances are good that computational science contributed to some of the prize-winning work. What tours de force of computational science deserve future Nobels? At the top of my list in medicine is the Human Genome Project. However, given Alfred Nobel´s stipulation that no more than three people share a prize, the vast project could miss out. Particle physics discoveries typically involve Herculean feats of number crunching. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory´s (SNO) confirmation in 2001 that neutrinos oscillate in flavor merits a physics prize, a share of which would presumably go to SNO´s director, Art McDonald. In chemistry, I favor honoring Harvard´s Martin Karplus for pioneering the use of molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the behavior of proteins and other biomolecules. By the time you read this column, you´ll know if any of my predictions came true.