The 2014 Nobel science prizes: Blue's brothers

Nobel's prize was eternal fame THE Nobel prizes were originally intended to reward people or organisations who, as the founder's will put it, "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". Often, in the field of physics, that benefit is a measure of understanding of the very small or the very distant: a light shone into the vast darkness of ignorance about how the universe works. This year, by contrast, the physics prize has been awarded for an actual light that has already conferred great be...