1997 Nobel Winners Discuss Significance of Award

Steven Chu, a professor of physics at Stanford University, was in bed last Wednesday morning when he learned that he had become a Nobel laureate.

"I thought it might be a hoax because I got the call from a local news station," said Chu in an interview with The Crimson last night.

Chu--who was recruited by the Harvard physics department in 1987, but turned the offer down to work at Stanford--said that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had been unable to contact him that morning because of some confusion over the local area code.

Chu and two of his colleagues, along with recipients of the five other Nobel prizes awarded over the past two weeks, have become inexorably associated with what is perhaps the best-known prize for contributions in science, the arts and humanitarian work.

The receipt of the prize in economics by Harvard's Baker Professor of Administration Robert C. Merton last week focused campuswide attention on the prize.

The flurry of publicity surrounding this year's batch of Nobel prizes reminded the public of the infamous romantic story of Alfred Nobel's attempt to purify his legacy as the inventor of dynamite by establishing awards for contributions in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics, literature and peace.

"To my mind, the significance [of the Nobel prize] is that because of this rather strange person [Alfred Nobel], you have a small country of eight and a half million people reminding the world every fall that the kind of thing recognized by these prizes is important," said Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach in a phone interview from Oregon last night. Herschbach received the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1986.

"In this country, [the prize] tends to be treated as creating a few more very minor celebrities," rather than sending a message about the importance of science, literature and peace, he said.

A great deal of planning goes into ensuring the integrity of the prize and making it an "occasion of note," said Higgins Professor of Physics Sheldon L. Glashow, a 1979 Nobel laureate.

"In almost every case the winners of the Nobel prize in science have been deserving," he said. "It's also true that some scientists have been neglected."

Nominees in each category are selected by various organizations as stipulated in Nobel's will. The prizes for physics and chemistry are administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Respected scientists from various academies and academic institutions around the world are solicited for nominations in February every year. The prize-awarding institutions then research each candidates' work and vote on the recipient.

"There have been some amusing examples" of mistakes on the part of the prize-awarding committees, Glashow said. He cited the 1906 and 1937 Nobel prizes in physics which recognized J.J. Thomson for discovering the electron as a particle, and subsequently his son for discovering it as a wave.

"Of course, neither interpretation was correct," Glashow said.

Glashow also noted that there was some controversy surrounding the work of Dr. Stanley Prusiner of the University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco on prions--a new type of infectious agent consisting of a single protein with no genetic material.

Among the idiosyncrasies of the prize as described in Nobel's will, mathematics and astronomy are not included among the scientific fields honored.

"The prizes tended to stay away from theoretical inventiveness and rewarded experimental inventiveness," said Professor of the History of Science Everret I. Mendelsohn in an interview yesterday.

One reason for the Nobel prize's fame as compared with other scientific prizes is its age, Mendelsohn said. The Nobel prizes have been awarded annually since 1901.

The Nobel prizes in the sciences have traditionally been awarded for research which has been accepted by the scientific community over a number of years. Chu's work on the use of lasers to cool atoms was conducted in 1985.

Because of the generally long lag between scientific achievements and their recognition by the Nobel committees, Chu said that "as [atom cooling] became a common lab tool, there was a chorus of people who were telling me that I should be getting the Nobel prize."

But Chu added that such predictions are not always accurate because many people are overlooked in the awards.

Chu said that he did not alter his research goals in order to get a Nobel prize.

"Some people suggested that I stay fully in atomic physics and not go off into another field, but I did what I thought was scientifically most interesting for me," he said.

Chu predicted that while his research in the coming months "is going to slow down," its direction will not change.

Herschbach and Glashow described similar experiences, saying that after receiving the prize, it became easier to obtain funding for research, but that their research plans did not change.

Herschbach described the varied reactions of his friends and associates when he received the prize.

"I got a nice note and a bottle of champagne from President [Derek C.] Bok. [He said] it was going to raise my salary a little bit," he said. "The general reaction probably is one of surprise. People said, 'Gee whiz, they gave it to that guy?'"

A Long History

Since 1901, science has changed markedly and today the prize is seen by some as a dated artifact of a bygone era of science.

"The Nobel prize was conceived of initially as a way of rewarding scientific inventiveness and through those rewards stimulating inventiveness," Mendelsohn said. "[Today,] it may have taken on something more of the role of providing status."

The position of the Nobel prize as a repository of the pretensions of science has left it open to ridicule in the form of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, held on Oct. 8 in Harvard's Sanders Theatre.

Even so, the institution of the Nobel prize retains significance for science because of the exposure it receives in the general public.

"Ideally, the prize popularizes the important scientific developments of the day. It has a large propaganda value," Glashow said.

Glashow also defended the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, which he participated in, when it came under attack in 1996 for trivializing serious scientific research.

"It increases awareness that science can be fun. Contrary to the stereotype in movies, scientists can enjoy their work, and do, in fact, have a sense of humor. At least most of them," Glashow said in an article that appeared in the journal Nature after the ceremony.

Scientific research is a much larger industry today than it was a century ago, Mendelsohn said. Much of today's leading scientific research is conducted outside of traditional universities.

Mendelsohn pointed to biotechnology and microelectronic engineering firms as new sources of the "stimulus for scientific inventiveness."

This change in the organizational structure of science has made prizes for individuals less relevant as incentives to research, Mendelsohn said. But he said that, for Nobel laureates, the prize is still meaningful.

"The larger picture is it doesn't matter who gets it; its the message that's important," Herschbach said.

The stipulations of Nobel's will which prevent the prize from being divided among more than three people in each category each year force the prize to focus on the achievements of individuals.

Though the nature of science may have changed since the inception of the Nobel prize, the meaning of the prize for the general public has remained the same.

"[The public] sees the winners [as] being rewarded for genius," Mendelsohn said. "In the scientific community, [Nobel laureates] are regarded as peers who were particularly clever." A NOBLE FACULTY The most recent 10 laureates from Harvard University Name  Prize and Year Robert C. Merton  Economic Sciences, 1997 Elias J. Corey  Chemistry, 1990 Ramsey F. Norman  Physics, 1989 Dudley R. Herschbach  Chemistry, 1986 Nicolaas Bloembergen  Physics, 1981 David H. Hubel  Physiology/Medicine, 1981 Baruj Benacerraf  Physiology/Medicine, 1980 Steven Weinberg  Physics, 1979 William N. Lipscomb  Chemistry, 1976 Wassily Leontief  Economic Sciences, 1973 The Official Web site for the Nobel prizes