The contribution made by Dr't Hooft and Dr Veltman is, as is often the way with the physics prize, mind-bogglingly complex.

ECONOMIST: The 1999 Nobel prizes

"This is de facto legalisation using an administrative procedure, " Christian Hooft, vice-president of the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches, told La Nacion newspaper.

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Though they did not, themselves, perform the synthesis, Dr't Hooft and Dr Veltman tidied up its mathematics to such a degree that useful predictions about the properties of unknown sub-atomic particles became possible.

ECONOMIST: The 1999 Nobel prizes