December days: Nobel prizes
Dec. 10th, 2014 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livIt's Nobel day! And vatine very aptly asked for
I wanted to say something thinky and analytical about the prizes, but for one thing I'm running a bit behind and haven't much time to fill today's prompt, and for another, I basically just love them in a way that makes it hard to be critical. When I was a kid I loved the idea that you there was a big glittering worldwide prize for science, not just for looking beautiful in movies. And then I moved to Sweden and I love the whole focus of the Nobels in the culture there.
I don't think they were quite set up this way but I think the Nobel prizes are one of the greatest outreach initiatives ever. They get people talking about research and innovations, and the prizewinners are effectively ambassadors for science. The cachet of being able to invite a Nobel prize winner to give a talk means that they get to all kinds of high-profile events and talk about their science to people who might not otherwise go to technical talks at all. As a kid and undergrad I used to go to loads of these 'meet the famous Nobel prize winner' events, and yeah, living in Cambridge and then studying in Oxford helped a lot, there was quite a concentration of them available locally to give such talks. It's a shame in a way that Nobel didn't know biology was going to turn out to be interesting, but most years at least one out of Physiology and Medicine and Chemistry is directly relevant to my field.
At the same time I love the way that the winners are selected for their actual scientific achievements, not for whether they're especially good at public speaking, and some of them are better speakers than others, but that's fine, you get a sense of them as human beings. Some of them are political, some are arrogant, some think of themselves as just somebody working on an interesting project and they can't understand how they suddenly became celebrities. At the same time the Foundation is really really good at producing informative materials about the technical stuff, at various levels of detail; I wish far more technical journalism were more like what they put out.
In Sweden it's even more special, because Nobel week is such a focal point in the calendar. I really enjoyed the run-up to the announcements and everybody talking and speculating about who would get the prize. Working at the Karolinska meant that anybody who thought they were in with a chance of a Nobel would show up and give talks, hoping to impress the committee, which was great for the chance to hear some of the top researchers and feel connected to the international scene, that's something I really miss working at a small university.
I also love the way that, in a country that's really informal and casual most of the time, Nobel prize time is the one exception when everybody gets really into pomp and ceremony. People get excited about the clothes, the details of the food served at the banquet, and of course the talks themselves. I love that mix of glamour with actual, meaningful interesting stuff. I mean, even the Jewish community has a "Nobel shabbat" because it's that much of an event in the national calendar. Some years they manage to persuade Jewish prize winners to join us for that event. And the whole thing where they keep the winners such a deadly secret until the announcement day, and the journalists who write the press releases are kept in complete isolation beforehand so absolutely nobody gets any advance hint of who it will be. And the way they don't warn even the winners ahead of time, so you get all these touching stories about people getting The Phonecall while they're in the bath or something.
The prizes for things other than science, Literature and Peace, I don't care about so much, but it's still a generally cool idea, getting people talking about and excited about doing something meaningful to make the world a better place, not just pointless celebrity culture. Also, I am always highly amused by the fact that the early Zionist thinker Herzl said, a few years before Nobel instituted his prizes using the money that he made by inventing dynamite, that: the man who invents a powerful explosive will do more for world peace than any philanthropist.
I mean, I know the process of awarding prizes is not really well-regulated, and isn't properly international and tends to be biased towards people who are part of the establishment within a very western-centric paradigm. I have a lot of issues with who they decide to credit with discoveries that are always, these days, very much a team effort rather than a single Great Man. I do think it's a shame that the committee tend to play it safe and award the prizes to people who are already extremely famous, rather than following the spirit of Nobel's idea and using the prize to encourage someone early in their career, which would mean taking the risk of getting egg on their faces and backing a discovery that doesn't eventually pan out.
I am not cross about Franklin being 'denied' her Nobel for the structure of DNA, because the injustice happened long before the award of the prize and it's not actually the Nobel committee's fault that she died of cancer. I am a bit cross at giving the Peace prize to Obama, because an African-American being elected president of a white supremacist country is no small achievement, but a president who allows his country to fight illegal wars, imprison people extrajudicially, systematically torture prisoners and execute people with anti-personnel drones is not someone who deserves an award for
But controversy aside, I can't feel very negative towards an institution that makes this kind of thing possible. And I'm still waiting for my PhD supervisor David Lane to be recognized for discovering p53. One of these years!
[December Days masterpost]
vatine very aptly asked for your thoughts on the Nobel prizes. In short I think the whole concept of them is really cool, even if I don't always love the exact decisions made.
I wanted to say something thinky and analytical about the prizes, but for one thing I'm running a bit behind and haven't much time to fill today's prompt, and for another, I basically just love them in a way that makes it hard to be critical. When I was a kid I loved the idea that you there was a big glittering worldwide prize for science, not just for looking beautiful in movies. And then I moved to Sweden and I love the whole focus of the Nobels in the culture there.
I don't think they were quite set up this way but I think the Nobel prizes are one of the greatest outreach initiatives ever. They get people talking about research and innovations, and the prizewinners are effectively ambassadors for science. The cachet of being able to invite a Nobel prize winner to give a talk means that they get to all kinds of high-profile events and talk about their science to people who might not otherwise go to technical talks at all. As a kid and undergrad I used to go to loads of these 'meet the famous Nobel prize winner' events, and yeah, living in Cambridge and then studying in Oxford helped a lot, there was quite a concentration of them available locally to give such talks. It's a shame in a way that Nobel didn't know biology was going to turn out to be interesting, but most years at least one out of Physiology and Medicine and Chemistry is directly relevant to my field.
At the same time I love the way that the winners are selected for their actual scientific achievements, not for whether they're especially good at public speaking, and some of them are better speakers than others, but that's fine, you get a sense of them as human beings. Some of them are political, some are arrogant, some think of themselves as just somebody working on an interesting project and they can't understand how they suddenly became celebrities. At the same time the Foundation is really really good at producing informative materials about the technical stuff, at various levels of detail; I wish far more technical journalism were more like what they put out.
In Sweden it's even more special, because Nobel week is such a focal point in the calendar. I really enjoyed the run-up to the announcements and everybody talking and speculating about who would get the prize. Working at the Karolinska meant that anybody who thought they were in with a chance of a Nobel would show up and give talks, hoping to impress the committee, which was great for the chance to hear some of the top researchers and feel connected to the international scene, that's something I really miss working at a small university.
I also love the way that, in a country that's really informal and casual most of the time, Nobel prize time is the one exception when everybody gets really into pomp and ceremony. People get excited about the clothes, the details of the food served at the banquet, and of course the talks themselves. I love that mix of glamour with actual, meaningful interesting stuff. I mean, even the Jewish community has a "Nobel shabbat" because it's that much of an event in the national calendar. Some years they manage to persuade Jewish prize winners to join us for that event. And the whole thing where they keep the winners such a deadly secret until the announcement day, and the journalists who write the press releases are kept in complete isolation beforehand so absolutely nobody gets any advance hint of who it will be. And the way they don't warn even the winners ahead of time, so you get all these touching stories about people getting The Phonecall while they're in the bath or something.
The prizes for things other than science, Literature and Peace, I don't care about so much, but it's still a generally cool idea, getting people talking about and excited about doing something meaningful to make the world a better place, not just pointless celebrity culture. Also, I am always highly amused by the fact that the early Zionist thinker Herzl said, a few years before Nobel instituted his prizes using the money that he made by inventing dynamite, that: the man who invents a powerful explosive will do more for world peace than any philanthropist.
I mean, I know the process of awarding prizes is not really well-regulated, and isn't properly international and tends to be biased towards people who are part of the establishment within a very western-centric paradigm. I have a lot of issues with who they decide to credit with discoveries that are always, these days, very much a team effort rather than a single Great Man. I do think it's a shame that the committee tend to play it safe and award the prizes to people who are already extremely famous, rather than following the spirit of Nobel's idea and using the prize to encourage someone early in their career, which would mean taking the risk of getting egg on their faces and backing a discovery that doesn't eventually pan out.
I am not cross about Franklin being 'denied' her Nobel for the structure of DNA, because the injustice happened long before the award of the prize and it's not actually the Nobel committee's fault that she died of cancer. I am a bit cross at giving the Peace prize to Obama, because an African-American being elected president of a white supremacist country is no small achievement, but a president who allows his country to fight illegal wars, imprison people extrajudicially, systematically torture prisoners and execute people with anti-personnel drones is not someone who deserves an award for
work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies.
But controversy aside, I can't feel very negative towards an institution that makes this kind of thing possible. And I'm still waiting for my PhD supervisor David Lane to be recognized for discovering p53. One of these years!
ETA: I hadn't seen it at the time of posting, but apart from Malala being awesome, the highlight of this year was May-Britt Moser's amazing neuron dress. Neuron dress! I am in love.
[December Days masterpost]
Assorted Nobel.related wafflings...
Date: 2014-12-10 11:22 pm (UTC)And I spent quite a few years catering a dinner for the SIYSS delegates, in the old Stockholm observatory basement (complete with Celcius' first thermometer, on the wall in one of the vaults).
Re: Assorted Nobel.related wafflings...
Date: 2014-12-10 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-11 12:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-11 08:45 am (UTC)I was once in Sweden at the time of the awards and was rather charmed that the whole thing was televised in real time, with all its longueurs.
Re: Assorted Nobel.related wafflings...
Date: 2014-12-11 09:16 am (UTC)And I did, and since it was quicker to do than to explain...
Re: Assorted Nobel.related wafflings...
Date: 2014-12-11 06:26 pm (UTC)This transliteration brings me a small burst of glee, thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-11 08:10 pm (UTC)Re: Assorted Nobel.related wafflings...
Date: 2014-12-12 12:20 am (UTC)I hope that's still gleeful.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-12 06:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-12 11:12 pm (UTC)Nobel
Date: 2014-12-13 12:15 am (UTC)Look up the history of the group of companies that became ICI. By 1914, Nobel's Explosives Ltd was also a significant supplier of cordite (mainly by secret takeovers of other explosives manufacturers) but the primary wartime producer of high explosives was Brunner Mond (using chemistry developed by Chaim Weizman).
This major technical gap between civil and military explosives was echoed in the Second World War by another ICI subsidiary - Ely Shotgun Cartridges. During the War they made rifle ammunition but stopped military production as soon as possible afterwards.
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