The politics of excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in science
3 July 2003
Professor Robert Marc Friedman, University of Oslo, Norway
Why do people venerate the Nobel Prizes? As icon, myth, and ritual, the Nobel Prize is well secured. Yet, the realities of nomination, evaluation, and selection remain obscure. Based on extensive research, using the archives of the Nobel Committees for Physics and Chemistry and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, I explore in my recent book the history of why and how individuals used the Nobel Prize to further particular scientific, cultural, and personal agendas. This book breaks the illusion of Nobel Prizes as being an impartial, objective crowning of the "best" in physics and chemistry.
Success or failure in winning a prize has not depended upon timeless, fixed standards of excellence. Rather, the changing priorities and agendas of committee members, as well as their comprehension of scientific accomplishment have been critical. Deliberations frequently became enmeshed in the process by which factions within the Swedish science community attempted to define the scope, methods, and priorities for physics and chemistry. Some committee members tried to be dispassionate; others championed their own agendas, some openly and some cunningly. By examining the process by which choices were made, disputed, and resolved, it becomes possible to replace illusion and myth with understanding. Without such a history, critical debate and reflection on the prize has lacked a fulcrum.
Looking behind-the-scenes in the committees and the Academy enables us not only to understand the working of the Prize, but also to examine the changing value system of science. Alfred Nobel stipulated that his prizes should be awarded to those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind. What did Nobel intend? How did committee members interpret it, how ought we understand it today? My book asks us to reflect upon the meaning of such prizes in a culture characterized by intense competition for resources, indecorous commercialism, and hype. As a new century dawns, and as the scientific community continues to adjust to a post-Cold War era, how should we rethink and reclaim Alfred Nobel's legacy?
Robert Marc Friedman is professor of history of science at University of Oslo. Trained at Johns Hopkins University and until recently associated with the University of California at San Diego, Friedman is an internationally-acclaimed specialist on the relations of modern science with society.