<p>As announced today, three American physicists shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics. And all three are Harvard alumni. They are:
Saul Permutter '81
Adam Reiss, PhD '96
Brain Schmidt, PhD '93</p>
<p>Both Schmidt and Reiss studied under Prof. Robert Kirshner when in graduate school at Harvard.</p>
<p>Sometime yesterday afternoon, the penny dropped for me, and I realized that Saul Perlmutter was the guy who was a close friend of one of my cousins through high school and most of college. He had a big, obvious crush on her; she liked him a lot, but never quite enough that way. </p>
<p>The funny thing is, at the time she used to say, “If anyone I know is going to get a Nobel Prize, it will be Saul. He really is smarter than everyone else.”</p>
<p>They have remained friends over the years. It turns out that my sister met him a bunch of times when my cousin was living in the Bay Area and used to invite my sister and Perlmutter and his wife to the same parties. (Actually, my sister also met him a bunch of times when everyone was in high school.) My cousin hasn’t been able to talk with him since the announcement, but she has talked to his parents who are, of course, thrilled.</p>
<p>My daughter was a Physics concentrator at Harvard, so she knew of Prof. Bob Kirshner. One of her friends did his undergrad research in Kirshner’s lab.</p>