Just 3 Nobel Prizes cover all of science – how research is done today poses a challenge for these prestigious awards
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Friday, September 29, 2023
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Today, and for the past 15 years, I’m a full-time historian of chemistry.
Key Points:
- Today, and for the past 15 years, I’m a full-time historian of chemistry.
- Every October, when the announcements are made of that year’s Nobel laureates, I examine the results as a chemist.
- And all too often, I share the same response as many of my fellow chemists: “Who are they?
- I am not suggesting that these Nobel laureates are undeserving – quite the opposite.
- What does this trend reveal about the Nobel Foundation and its award strategies in response to the growth of science?
A gradual evolution in the Nobel Prizes
- Several years ago, chemist-historian-applied mathematician Guillermo Restrepo and I collaborated to study the relationship of scientific discipline to the Nobel Prize.
- Each year, the Nobel Committee for chemistry studies the nominations and proposes the recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry to its parent organization, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which ultimately selects the Nobel laureates in chemistry (and physics).
- We found a strong correlation between the disciplines of the members of the committee and the disciplines of the awardees themselves.
- Restrepo and I concluded: As go the expertise, interests and the disciplines of the committee members, so go the disciplines honored by the Nobel Prizes in chemistry.
Not letting labels be limiting
- And so, chemists do mind that the Nobel Prize in chemistry has morphed into the Nobel Prize in chemistry and the life sciences.
- Since the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901, the community of scientists and the number of scientific disciplines have grown tremendously.
- Even chemistry as a discipline has grown dramatically, pushing outward its own scholarly boundaries, and chemistry’s achievements continue to be astounding.
- And there just are not enough Nobel Prizes to go around to all the deserving.