In the parent case he's talking about 'academic' families, instead of biological families (academic meaning that the 'parent' is the academic advisor of the 'child'). Of course, having several members of the same family all receive Nobel prizes is quite exceptional (and I believe unique to the Curie family).
I really like the German word for PhD advisor, Doktorvater (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktorvater), which reflects this "family" aspect so well. I wonder if other languages have similar nice terms for this concept. BTW, Wikipedia says Doktormutter is also sometimes used.
Sorry, didn't know about that. And yes, the Currie family is exceptional but according the the Wikipedia link there are several husband/wife or father/son combos that received the same prize.
Wow, that list was much larger than I expected, it seems that P(nobel | nobel in family) is orders of magnitude larger than P(nobel). It would be interesting to do a similar analysis for other prizes, e.g. Fields Medal, to see if a similar effect of motivation in the family exists in other domains.
Agreed. I am surprised we don't see this more actually. A good PhD advisor can make a world of difference if s/he is working with a good student. Also, you maintain that connection throughout your career and tend to work together (even if informally). Seems like Rabi knew what he was doing.
This is the kind of technology that's hard to distinguish from magic, even after they explain how it works. For instance, many science museums have an apparatus with parallel mirrors, where you stand in the middle and see your reflections vanish into the distance. Haroche's group built something similar, but clear enough for you to see images of yourself on the far side of the Earth. That's a small detail, too minor to make the press release.
Serge Haroche's advisor was Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, also a Nobel Prize winner.