How to win the Nobel Prize – archive, 1972
“How to win the Nobel Prize” (BBC1) is a grand title and if the documentary does not quite live up to that, well, what could? However, if you are an impatient scientist then pin back your ears. For there are unwritten rules.
Rule 1. Make a discovery. It is not, however, enough to discover a star, the subconscious or the sweet mystery of life.
Rule 2. The discovery must be in the fields of physics, physiology, chemistry, or medicine, because Nobel’s will says so.
Rule 3. Don’t nominate yourself or let your wife nominate you. In this respect prospective prize-winners differ diametrically from prospective politicians, who vote for themselves and presumably expect their wives to. I have never understood how they have the face to do it.
Rule 4. Publish.
Rule 5. Do it yourself. Team work may get you to the moon, but not to Stockholm.
Rule 6. Stay alive. This is a good idea in any television case, but particularly so in the matter of honours. Peyton Rous waited 50 years to be honoured for his work on cancer. The Nobel Committee, having burnt its fingers over an earlier award did not touch cancer for half a century.
Rule 7. Be basic. Or be pure, sweet scientist, and let goodwill be applied.
Rule 8. Work in a major institution, Matthew’s law applying here that to him that hath shall be given. Or cleverness is catching.
There were two other rules, which I have forgotten. Thus qualifying for Shockley’s prize. William Shockley won a Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor and has now moved, surprisingly, into genetics. He holds, I understand, that stupidity is hereditary and that the genetically unfit should be bought out. For every point your intelligence quotient falls below 100, Shockley believes you should be paid $1,000 to be sterilised. I see him as a Nobel in reverse, a Lebon rewarding stupidity.