Double the research, funds to have a moonshot at a Nobel

THE allure of a silvery ball hanging in the night-sky whetted man’s appetite to land on the moon. Hence the term moonshot to signify a highly risky but earth-shattering venture.

It was a moonshot when man aspired to rocket an object into orbit around the earth until Russia launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957, beating Americans who had long assumed their country’s technological supremacy over the then Soviet Union.

It was a moonshot when man romanticised about orbiting in space. Again, this was achieved when Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut, made a 108-minute orbital flight in 1961.

Seeing a Russian up in space was too much to bear for former United States president John F. Kennedy. He vowed that before the end of that decade, an American would be the first man on the moon. True enough, in 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and uttered his famous dictum: one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Now man’s moonshot is colonising Mars. In his recent article in this newspaper, David Christy, NST production editor, asked the moonshot question: Will Malaysia ever get to ‘Mars’? And beyond?

Moonshot programmes will do wonders to our psyche, especially when achieved. It will give us a feeling of “we can do this and more”. And, it will be an assertion of our cultural artefact of “Malaysia Boleh”.

Malaysia has had its fill of moonshots. We wanted to conquer Mt Everest. We did when Magendran and N. Mohanadas reached its summit in 1997. We wanted to put a Malaysian in space. Datuk Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, an orthopaedic surgeon, did us that favour on Oct 10, 2007.

Another moonshot to gun for is a Malaysian receiving the Nobel Prize by the end of this decade. We have come close before. Dr Wu Lien-teh was the first Malaysian, or rather Malayan, to be nominated for the prize in 1935.

In 2013, the Nobel Peace Prize went to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Mohd Nasarudin Mohd Yusof, a Malaysian, was part of the team that worked on the project that helped earn the OPCW the coveted award.

This nearness to a Malaysian becoming a Nobel laureate is like the story of Tantalus and the fruit. In Greek mythology, Tantalus,

a Greek king, sought to sacrifice his own son at a feast with the gods.

For that, the god Zeus punished Tantalus to forever go thirsty and hungry in hell despite being stood in a pool of water and almost within reach of a fruit tree. But every time Tantalus reached out for the fruit the tree receded from him.

How can we make this Nobelprize project a reality? We have some world-renowned scientists in our universities. They can be tapped as mentors of budding and prospective Nobel Prize winners.

First-rate mentors attract talented researchers. The transfer of knowledge from the mentor is crucial. That Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle are emblematic of the quintessential role of mentorship in a pupil’s success.

The Nobel prizes in science of the past also illustrate this point. In a recent issue of The Economist, it reckons that among the recent Nobel laureates, about 20 per cent had a PhD supervisor who was a Nobelist.

Collaboration with international scientists is also important. The cross-fertilisation of ideas will enable our researchers to pursue ground-breaking findings worthy of a Nobel Prize.

To be worthy of a Nobel Prize, we need researchers who are well-equipped to undertake trailblazing research. Alas! Malaysia only spends slightly more than one per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for research and development. The US, that has produced the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners, spends roughly three per cent of its GDP on research and development.

So, if we want to produce a Nobelist, we would need to double our spending to some RM45 billion. That is doable if this prize is really desired.