The Overlooked

Greats fail to win Nobels

"The world is full of people who should get the Nobel Prize but haven't got it and won't get it." That statement was made in 1963 by a man well qualified to comment on the awarding of the world's most prestigious scientific prizes: Swedish Chemist Arne Tiselius, a Nobel laureate and former president of the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation. Tiselius' view, widely supported in the scientific community, has now been expanded and documented by a U.S. researcher. In an American Scientist article timed to precede the announcement next month of the annual Nobel awards, Columbia University Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman warns that the guiding policies of the Stockholm selection committees "threaten to undermine the great prestige and legitimacy" of the prizes.

The slighting of scientific greats by Nobel judges has been an issue practically since 1901, the first year the awards were made. In 1905, Zuckerman notes, a Nobel committee ruled against Russian Chemist Dimitri Mendeleev, nominated for his formulation of the periodic law and the table of elements. The committee reasoned that Mendeleev's 1869 work had already been widely accepted as a basic part of chemical knowledge. Thus, because the will of Dynamite Inventor Alfred Nobel limited Nobel Prizes to "recent" discoveries, Mendeleev did not qualify. A Nobel historian later called the Mendeleev decision a regrettable error. More recently, Rockefeller Institute Biochemist O.T. Avery, who demonstrated in 1944 that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the carrier of heredity, was first denied a prize because of skepticism about his claims. His death permanently excluded him from the Nobel roster; the award cannot be granted posthumously. Later, Nobel officials announced their regret at having rejected Avery.

To Zuckerman, the Avery and Mendeleev cases are only two of many examples of committee actions that will lead to more and more "first-class scientists who are destined not to win a Nobel Prize." In part, she notes, these omissions are inevitable, because the number of scientists worldwide has grown some 30 times, while the number of science-prize recipients each year (seldom more than six) has remained more or less constant.

Another limit is imposed by the Nobel committees' own rules, which since 1901 have provided for annual Nobel science prizes in only three fields--physics, chemistry and physiology-medicine; in 1969 a fourth prize was added in economics. In addition, there are prizes for literary accomplishment and for contributions to world peace. Writes Zuckerman: "The prizes cannot go, however great the importance of their contributions, to mathematicians, earth and marine scientists, astronomers, and many kinds of geologists and behavioral scientists." She notes that the rules have been bent a bit--for Radio Astronomers Martin Ryle and Anthony Hewish in 1974, and for Ethologists Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch in 1973. But still unlikely to be considered for the Nobel Prize are pioneers in exciting new fields like plate tectonics, a unified geological theory that explains continental drift, earthquakes, ocean trenches and mountain formation.

Zuckerman also dissents from the Nobel emphasis on empirical discoveries as opposed to theoretical contributions. Says she: "Darwin's principles of evolution would probably not have qualified." Indeed, Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize citation made only a cautious reference to his theory of relativity, first published 16 years before he became a Nobel laureate in 1921, while emphasizing the empirical consequences of his work on the photoelectric effect--the basis for "electric eyes," television cameras and motion picture sound equipment.

Many of Zuckerman's criticisms have been considered in the past by members of various Nobel committees; in fact, the present article developed from interviews with laureates and Nobel officials that she conducted for her 1977 study of the Nobels, Scientific Elite. As Zuckerman acknowledges, Nobel judges generally argue that the roster of prizewinners is not intended as an all-inclusive list of the best scientific work. But Zuckerman fears that unless eligibility becomes wider, the premier reputation of the Nobels is bound to decline. However the Nobel Foundation eventually responds to her criticisms and those of others, the increasing numbers of first-rate scientists in all disciplines make it likely that the Nobel Prizes will continue to commemorate excellence, as Zuckerman notes, "not throughout the domain of science and not for all contributions of the first importance within the fields singled out for attention, but only in a few symbolic cases." qed

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