US scientists will again sweep the majority of Nobel prizes at this week’s award announcements in Sweden, analysts have predicted. However, they have also said this dominance might soon come to end.
David Pendlebury, a citation analyst who has correctly predicted 10 Nobel winners since 2002, believes that the countries of the east, particularly China, will soon start to rule the awards for science’s greatest prize.
“In the first half of the 20th century, the UK, Germany, and France dominated the sciences. The US emerged as the world leader after World War II. Now, I believe we will begin to see as many Nobel Prize winners from Asia as we do from the US and Europe.” Pendlebury, who works for Thomson Reuters, was speaking on the eve of the announcement of this year’s awards.
The prize for medicine will be revealed today; physics tomorrow and chemistry on Wednesday. The peace prize will be announced on Friday; economics next Monday; and literature later this month. A maximum of three individuals will be allowed to share a Nobel, with each prize being worth about ￡1 million (US$1.5 million).
During the past 10 years, 31 out of the 76 individuals who won science Nobels were US-based, while 16 out of the 21 economics winners were from the US. By contrast, the UK — a nation with a fair Nobel reputation — won eight physiology prizes, one for physics and one for economics. However, these overall figures are open to wide interpretation. Many winners hold joint nationalities and are often claimed by both their country of origin and their country of affiliation.
Nevertheless, the figures do give a general indication of the gulf that separates the US from the rest of the world, one that is likely to continue this year, Pendlebury said. He has tipped a number of US teams as possible winners, including Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, both based in Boston, for their work on tissue engineering; Sajeev John (Toronto, Canada) and Eli Yablonovitch (Berkeley, California) for work on photonics; and Allen Bard (Austin, Texas) for his work on scanning electrochemical microscopy.
However, Pendlebury cautioned against betting on his predictions.
“If you only consider the top 0.1 percent of the most cited scientists in the world, that includes more than 1,000 researchers,” Pendlebury said. “You can narrow it down, but it gets harder and harder to differentiate their contributions. In the end, it rests with the individual preferences of Nobel committee members. Nobels are currently dominated by US scientists. However, US investment in the physical sciences is no longer as robust as its investment in biological and medical sciences, so I think in the next decade or so we will begin to see as many more Nobel Prize winners from Asia.”
As to his own hopes for this week’s prizes, Pendlebury admitted to a couple of favorites. One is Sir Alec Jeffreys, the Leicester University biochemist who, in 1984, developed the techniques of DNA fingerprinting and profiling that have transformed forensic science.
“Nobels are usually given for theoretical work. However, prizes have been given for applied work, such as fiber optics, and I would really like to see Jeffreys rewarded for a discovery that has had an enormous impact on society,” Pendlebury said.
Pendlebury also champions the cause of Jacques Miller, the 80-year-old French-Australian researcher who revealed the key role of the thymus in controlling the body’s immune system, a discovery of immense medical importance.
“It was a critical discovery, though Miller made it 50 years ago. He is still doing research and it would [be] great if he could get a Nobel,” Pendlebury said.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS