Some Nobel winners are great intellects, others are lucky. There’s more to science than these prizes
Every October sees the award of the “scientific Oscars”: Nobel prizes. The science prizes established in Alfred Nobel’s will are for physics, chemistry and “physiology or medicine”. This year the three scientific Nobels went to a total of eight scientists – rewarded for sustained efforts to tackle fundamental challenges. There will be special acclaim for the Hungarian medical researcher, Katalin Karikó, who persevered, despite much discouragement from her university, on the groundwork that led to several Covid vaccines.
These three subjects are interpreted broadly, and their purview has shifted over time. But the prizes nonetheless still exclude huge tracts of science. Famously, mathematics has never been included. The environmental sciences – oceans and ecology – aren’t covered, nor are computing, robotics and artificial intelligence. These exclusions distort the public perception of what sciences are important.
Outsiders might guess that in science, the choice of winners in each field should be as clearcut as in sporting contests, unlike the obviously more subjective prizes for literature and peace. But that’s not the reality. In some years the awards trigger controversy and resentment. Since Nobel scientists generally aren’t well-known personalities, and their achievements are often arcane, debate on their worthiness takes place within the specialist community, and only rarely percolates widely. What the public sees is simply the grandeur of the award announcements each year.
Also, the process of awarding the prizes has limitations that clash with the realities of scientific research. It’s easy to agree on what scientific advances are important, but it’s not so easy to apportion credit. An artist’s creations are ephemeral, but generally “individual”. If they hadn’t created a particular artwork, nobody else would have done so. But in many cases in science, if one researcher didn’t make a specific advance, then sooner or later (and usually sooner) another researcher would have.
Moreover, no scientist’s achievements are really solo, any more than a goalscorer’s triumph in football is independent of the other players on the field (and the manager off the field too). The Nobel committee’s refusal to make an award to more than three people has led to manifest injustices, and given a misleading impression of how science actually advances, through the cooperation of a large group.
For example, the 2011 physics prize went to astronomers who had found that the expansion of our universe was not slowing down – as would be expected because of the gravitational pull that galaxies exert on each other – but was instead accelerating. This implied that there was some mysterious force “pushing” the galaxies apart that overwhelmed gravity on the cosmic scale – some “dark energy” latent in empty space. This discovery was made independently by two teams, each with about 20 members. Yet the Nobel went to just three people, two from one team and one from the other, despite the fact others on each team had records fully as distinguished as the awardees.
Even if a discovery isn’t explicitly a team effort, several people may have separately researched the same topic. For instance, a particle now called the Higgs boson was postulated in the 1960s: six people were generally cited as having played key roles in predicting its existence. Of these six, the one with the strongest and most sustained lifetime achievement, Tom Kibble, did not receive a share of the Nobel when the particle was discovered 50 years later – nor did the 1,000‐strong team at the Cern lab in Geneva who conducted the vast experiment that actually made the discovery.
The public perceives Nobel winners as “towering intellects”. Some are, but others, even among those who have made undeniably epochal and “prizeworthy” advances, would not be so rated by their peers. Indeed, some of the most important discoveries have been serendipitous: for instance, neutron stars, and the cosmic microwave background – the so-called “afterglow of creation”. Louis Pasteur averred that “fortune favours the prepared mind”; these scientists may claim for themselves greater luck – but not greater talent – than the average professor.
The flaws and gaps in the Nobels have been partially remedied by philanthropists who have established new prizes. Among them, for instance, are the Breakthrough prizes set up by billionaire Yuri Milner (which have been awarded to large groups, such as the team at Cern who discovered the Higgs particle); and the million‐dollar Berggruen prize for philosophy. Overall, other major awards now offer a better balance across the “map of learning”. Some are now promoted with a razzmatazz that matches the Nobels, and with even bigger jackpots
It’s arguable, of course, that we should welcome the existence of mega‐ awards that elevate a few intellectuals to a transient celebrity status. There are few other routes today for serious scientific thinkers to gain such public platforms. But there is a downside. Because of their special prominence and prestige, Nobel winners’ opinions are sought by the press, and accorded disproportionate respect. Even the best scientists (and artists) generally have narrow expertise. Some of the greatest among them become an embarrassment if given a too-wide public remit.
So perhaps we should query the societal benefits of singling out, via somewhat flawed and arbitrary processes and criteria, awardees who need neither a morale boost nor the money – and for work that was generally done many years earlier. Indeed, in a recent opinion poll conducted by Nature magazine it was no surprise that most respondents favoured changes in the Nobels – or even their abolition.
We need more and better ways of encouraging discovery and innovation. One possible route is “challenge prizes”, which don’t reward past success but incentivise future efforts to tackle an important problem. There have been prizes for sub‐orbital space flight, driverless cars, robots that operate in hazardous environments and so forth. As compared with usual forms of funding, these prizes encourage maverick thinking, and they can also enhance public interest. Let’s hope that some philanthropists will establish these, at least as a supplement to traditional prizes.
Martin Rees is the astronomer royal and a former president of the Royal Society