I don’t think that Donald Knuth deserves a physics prize for inventing TeX, even though TeX was a massive contribution to how we communicate physics.
Knuth should have a special Nobel Prize for Being Donald Motherfuckin’ Knuth.
I’m not sure how that’s the same thing.
Typesetting papers isn’t the same as developing mathematical methods that directly enable new solutions.
Providing the medium through which, to a rough approximation, all physics is discussed is, proportionally, a vastly greater contribution than any technique that only applies to a fraction of problems.
But the more salient point is that the Nobel Prize is an institution that we should, as a culture, care less about. And all the more so now, since they are getting in on the hype about an industry that is fundamentally anti-scientific.
From the linked article:
Restricting the Nobel Prize in physics to only three winners in a given year is only one of its problems, though, and Barry Barish is indicative of another. Barish gave a public talk in which he opened the presentation with a slide featuring both racist and sexist imagery.
This was a presentation about LIGO. How? Just fucking how does your INTRO to a project on GRAVITATIONAL WAVES get to be sexist and racist? Did he just casually throw in a slide saying “btw I just hate insert groups here”??