Nobel Lecture: The dilemma of attribution

I suspected that there were some members of the live audience who were somewhat apprehensive about sitting through the morning's physics lectures. After all, there were three guys there to talk about one minus sign. If it were just two people and a plus sign, +, one could talk about the | and the other about the —. However, to my mind, this year's awards represent or symbolize not just a minus sign but a large body of significant advances in our understanding of fundamental physics and are the work of not just three people but a great many scientists, stretching out over many years and many countries. This is really a prize for that whole community.