America: 5. Rest of World: 0.
The New York Times reports that Roger D. Kornberg (from the Stanford University School of Medicine) ‘won’ the Nobel Prize for chemistry earlier today. Kornberg is the fifth American who receives a Nobel Prize this year. That’s five out of five. Curiously enough, his father won the Nobel Prize as well half a century ago.
He received the Nobel Prize for
his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.
The work is important for medicine, because disturbances in that process are involved in illnesses like cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation. And learning more about the process is key to using stem cells to treat disease.
Also:
Kornberg’s award, following the Nobels for medicine and physics earlier this week, completes the first American sweep of the Nobel science prizes since 1983.
In Europe some people are worried about the level of the highest education / level of science as such. Yes, broadly we – Europeans – are better educated, but if one wants to be really highly educated, if one wants to persuit a career in science, belonging to the best of the best, one should move to America.
This is something I think about as well. It is a topic worth thinking about. The problem, of course, is that European countries are much smaller than the US and thus less potential geniuses. This means that EU countries have to work very closely together and bring the best of the best from all over Europe together at one (or a couple) of centers to continue learning, publishing and developing.
11 Responses to “America: 5. Rest of World: 0.”
Michael, I’m sure you’ve been tracking these results better than I–is this year part of a trend or is it just random variation?
Michael – if you don’t think it should be thought of as a contest, then why are you keeping score?
The Irony is striking when you consider how elected officials in USA have rejected so much science.
Michael I don’t disagree with your general point, but I should point out that Nobels are notoriously backwards looking and sort of random in what they acknowledge (for instance Einstein won for the photoelectric effect, not for special or general relativity which is far more important. Also ironically the photoelectric effect is because of quantum physics principles which Einstein detested.) The medical prize for something in ’98 is really unusual, most of the time it’s at least 20 years before things get recognized. At the rate the US is going, wait 20-30 years and see what the Nobels reflect.
As I think you noticed, but I am being fairly ironical about it all. In fact I first wrote “that’s five out of five” (I’m trying to keep score). All of that is, of course, an ironic joke. Considering your question, I think you picked it up
That being said though: it can be used as a means to determine whether or not certain countries produce highly valuable and lots of scientific (and other) works / developments / inventions / techniques etc.
So; if people from one country are honored with the Nobel Prize and Europe, for instance, is not, it must make us think. Not because we ‘lose’, but because it might mean that we are scientifically left behind (which we are by the way).
JJC: as is noted in the article I link to, this is for the first time since 1983 I believe that the US is sweeping it, so to speak, but the US is, indeed, scientifically more developed than we are in Europe. The time has passed that Europe was the center of science. America has become it.
That should make all of us European worry.
Corus –
sounds like you might be interested in this, if you haven’t heard of it already.
A change in intellectual property law might have more impact than subsidizing a small number of centers more.
To date:
The San Francisco Bay Area to be specific.
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
Stanford University
Other:
University of Massachusetts
NASA Goddard Space Center, Maryland
I got interested in this and just calculated the rough ratios between USA, Europe, and Asia for the Nobel Prize in physics for the last 10 years. There are two important stats.
1) 60.3% for USA; 35.8% for Europe; and 3.33% for Asia.
The numbers don’t quite add up, I know. Rounding mostly. So roughly 3/5 for the US and 1/3 for Europe and a Japanese scientist making up the rest.
Another interesting stat that does go very much to your point, Michael, however, is:
2) In only one year in the last 10 for physics has there been no winner who was American. In other words, the award is frequently given to teams and the teams are often international. There was only one year in which none of the winners were American. You will be happy to hear that that year was 1999 when it was two Dutch scientists.
Mikkel,
It’s not that the awards look backwards, it’s that by the nature of the awards most discoveries that receive it will have been made years before. What they use as their basis is the impact that the discovery has on their field and/or the world at large. By that criteria most of the time it won’t be obvious that a discovery was worthy of the award until years later because it will take that long for its impact to be irrefutable.
Don’t worry Michael-most of the awards are being given out for scientific advances from the ’90′s. We have a president who now believes in teaching Intelligent Design, and a growing segment of the population that questions Darwin’s theory of evolution. We also have many who deny the existence of global warming, or that humans have a connection to it. So, our scientific stature may be slipping.