I helped select the Nobel laureates in physics | Hacker News Reader

I helped select the Nobel laureates in physics

theconversation.com

61 pointsmomirlan21 comments

Very interesting. I didn’t know they notify the winners and make the official announcement right after the winner is selected. But thinking about it it makes perfect sense as it completely eliminates leaks, plus if there ever was one the amount of people who knew is well known.

Yea, and it's a pretty regular occurrence that the recipient in the US doesn't answer the phone call, because it's like 3am and the number is unrecognized.

This has to be one of the most joyful videos ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-WM5kOdaU

By the way that's the Bob Wilson who won the economics nobel with Milgrom, not the Bob Wilson who won the physics nobel with Penzias

Although it sounds like that’s just a ratification of an already selected winner.

I think this is also how it was handled in Big Bang Theory.

> During a second September meeting, this group takes a vote on whether it supports the suggestion from the committee.

What happens if they do not support it?

The Committee’s proposal is discussed in a larger body, the Physics Class of the Academy, who may suggest a modification or forward a different proposal to the Academy. Finally, additional proposals may be raised at the final Academy meeting. It is in principle possible to suggest that no Prize be given the current year, but that is a seldom used choice.

(https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/physics/)

Unpopular opinion: Perhaps more nuanced expedients than a winner-take-all, pecking-order-setting reputation prize should be used to incentivize advancement in the sciences? I realize Alfred Nobel most likely never set out to be the be-all end-all kingmaker of the sciences, but it seems that scientists themselves, like every other band of humans, have demanded a king to worship. The Nobel committee simply fills the social purpose of providing one.

David Oshinsky at the WSJ made a similar argument a few days ago. In part:

The science juries have always favored the individual over the group. It goes back to Nobel’s preference for one winner per category, which made good sense when most scientists toiled alone and the best of them—a Louis Pasteur or a Joseph Lister—might single-handedly pull off a miracle. Times have changed, yet the rules, amended slightly to include three yearly recipients, still project a “winner-take-all” attitude in an increasingly collaborative scientific world.

Complicating this problem is the committee’s preference for “original discoveries” over “practical applications.” In doing so, it has denied the prize in physiology or medicine to some of the most fabled researchers of the past century, including Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine. With his file now open for inspection, we can see that Salk was nominated and rejected for the prize on several occasions, the main obstacle being one juror’s repeated charge that his work relied too heavily on the building blocks of others—in short, it provided “nothing new.” ....

<https://www.wsj.com/science/the-nobel-prizes-need-a-makeover...>

Archive/Paywall: <https://archive.ph/tuPr4>

May be of possible interest.

One thing that's always important to consider is that the relevance of anything is not fixed. The Nobel Prize is not seen as a grand achievement because it's the Nobel Prize, but because the scientific community, and society to a lesser degree, implicitly deems it such. When awards change, so does their relevance.

So rather than changing the Nobel Prize, it seems more logical to create a new prize. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard. I'm sure somebody like Bill Gates would just love to have his name attached to the 'Gates Prize for Collaborative Science' and he has the pockets to comfortably prefund it for a century.

I think the prestige of getting the same prize as once awarded to Einstein, Curie and other of the 20th century great scientists is what makes the Nobel prize so hard to beat. Even if Gates created a prize with 10 times the prize money, the press would report about the Nobel prize just the same. But I still think he should go ahead and do it, there are many fields that deserve a prize of this magnitude to be regularily awarded.

That’s interesting. A $1bn prize awarded to teams could turn some heads.

Parent said 10x of the nobel, so it's more like $10M.

In addition to what the other poster said, the actual monetary prize comes out of the inheritance of one the wealthiest persons of the day. The prizes that are fully under control of some scientist's organizations that could change their rules IIRC don't have nearly the same prize amount. Not sure how much the scientists care though.

It doesn't seem like most Nobel laureates do their work with the sole intent of winning. I think it serves more as one of the highest forms of recognition, not necessarily a place to stand on a podium.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the Nobel. Ivy League tenure committees are much closer to kingmakers; the Nobel is more backward looking.

Was the purpose not to whitewash and atone for how Nobel made his fortune as an arms supplier for war?

Towards a world war, to sooth the bad conciousness of the dynamite inventor?

You don't win a Nobel for a single contribution per se, you win for a lifetime of contributions that changes the trahectories of many other lives (research directions, consumer applications, etc.). So it's hard to game the metric here since the award is basically "did you do something huge and hugely beneficial for everyone".

Are the science Nobel equivalents for Maths, CS, etc under very different rules from the Nobel?

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