Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

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9 if you count people from the Republic of China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_cou...).

But, since the Nobel was established, China has been invaded by Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain (largely India), France, the United States, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Japan again, and had a civil war which hasn't technically ended (plus the end of the Boxer Rebellion), a revolution, and the worst famine in human history. But probably the worst event for its Nobel chances was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution. The civil wars also brought to power brutal dictatorships, including in the so-called Republic of China.

The US has been invaded zero times and had zero civil wars during that period, and in the US, the Cultural Revolution and dictatorship are just starting. Consequently many people who might have been Chinese, German, Japanese, Russian, etc., during the period in question were instead born in the US. And note that, on the page I linked above, 6 Nobel laureates from the US were actually born in China: Charles K. Kao, Daniel C. Tsui, Edmond H. Fischer, Yang, Tsung-Dao Lee, and Walter H. Brattain (!).

> 9 if you count people...

13 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_Nobel_laureate..., including peace prize laureates Liu Xiaobo (2010) and the 14th Dalai Lama (1989).

> But, since the Nobel was established, China has been invaded...

> The US has been invaded zero times...

The number of external invasions is not a strong indicator of the number of Nobel Prizes, if you compare all countries, beyond just China or the US.

And as you mentioned, the Cultural Revolution greatly reduces the chance of Chinese Nobel, so internal events can take a large role. And Mao led to more deaths—not to mention destruction to science and culture—than external invasions in the last century combined.

> The civil wars also brought to power brutal dictatorships...

The dictatorship arguably hasn't ended, by taking another less brutal form. And to be precise, CCP brought the civil wars and its consequences, not the civil wars brought dictatorships.

Mao killed less than Taiping Rebellion, which had 100M per some study. Mao is probably half of that ,still more than world war 1 and 2 combined.

Yes, but that was 50 years before the Nobel Prizes were established.

I don't think even the Cultural Revolution or anything else Mao did had much of an effect on Nobel prize-worthy research, simply because there wasn't much to disrupt to begin with. In terms of education, the biggest change was in secondary school enrollment, which more than doubled during the Cultural Revolution before dropping back down, which I assume represents people staying students for longer instead of graduating, rather than an expansion of access. University education remained a rarity for long after that, only surpassing 10% enrollment in 2002: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-secondary-enrollm...

I guess we'll see Chinese scientists winning Nobels at a rate commensurate with other big countries in 20–40 years or so.

> I don't think even the Cultural Revolution or anything else Mao did had much of an effect on Nobel prize-worthy research, simply because there wasn't much to disrupt to begin with.

Count points:

- Intellectuals, academics, and teachers were persecuted, attacked, and killed by the youth (the Red Guards), in all schools and institutions in China.

- Search for “scholars killed during the cultural revolution”, or “list of scholars abnormally died in China during the cultural revolution” (or for a short list in Chinese https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/中华人民共和国被迫害人士列表#科学技术人士). This includes the leader of Two Bombs, One Satellite (nuclear weapon, ICBM, artificial satellite) 赵九章. Besides, those returned from overseas were considered traitors or spies, and just within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (top science institution), there are 229 scholars died due to the Cultural Revolution [1]. This destroyed the environment needed to do great science. Imagine if Yang went back to China in the early 1950s.

[1]: https://blog.wenxuecity.com/myblog/74771/201904/2157.html "文革时中科院131位科学家被打倒 229人遭迫害致死"

> I guess we'll see Chinese scientists winning Nobels at a rate commensurate with other big countries in 20–40 years or so.

Such predictions—Chinese scientists will win more science Nobels—has been made long ago. In 1998, “The Chinese-American Nobel Laureate Chen Ning Yang has also predicted that mainland scientists will win a prize within twenty years – even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate.“ [2]

[2]: https://china-us.uoregon.edu/pdf/Minerva-2004.pdf "CHINESE SCIENCE AND THE ‘NOBEL PRIZE COMPLEX’"

But reality shows otherwise, not until scientists and academics are respected in China. During COVID, politics overruled science, resulting in the Zero-COVID policy, which were brought down by widespread protests, not by science (counter evidence to the ineffectiveness of the Zero-COVID policy).

Unless you are implying that you predict a regime change by that time...

Of course the number of scholars killed is large in absolute terms and relative to the size of the Chinese research ecosystem at the time, but it's also small relative to the number of researchers worldwide at the time and to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Chinese scientists researching all kinds of things now, which is the result of explosive growth primarily over the past few decades.

Chen-Ning Yang was technically not wrong with his 1998 prediction, since Tu Youyou got 1/3 of the 2015 Nobel in medicine, but it didn't really make sense for him to link this to continued development, since the delay between discovery and award means that most of the prizes from 1998–2018 were for work that was already done before he made his prediction.

Over the same time frame, tertiary school enrollment went from 6.3% to 53.4%, and my 20–40-year prediction is based on a guess of how long it will take for the work of all those freshly-minted scientists to enter the range of consideration for a Nobel.

Quantity ≠ Quality.

> Chen-Ning Yang was technically not wrong with his 1998 prediction, since Tu Youyou got 1/3 of the 2015 Nobel in medicine, but it didn't really make sense for him to link this to continued development, since the delay between discovery and award means that most of the prizes from 1998–2018 were for work that was already done before he made his prediction.

Agreed. Though to nitpick, the part on “even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate” is technically wrong, if we just count Chinese Nobel scientists developed in Mainland China (only Tu Youyou).

Chen-Ning Yang was bullish on Chinese science, but reality did not deliver.

Shing-Tung Yau is as bullish on Chinese mathematics in the future, but even he admitted that China is still decades behind in mathematical research, due to systematic issue which ‘“places too much emphasis on material rewards” and tends to encourage young researchers to work for titles instead of scientific advancements’. [1]

[1]: https://archive.is/MRDlP "China has problems to solve before its mathematics research can rise above WWII levels, scholar says"

This is a problem with the culture of science.

> China has been invaded by ... Britain (largely India)

That is such an interesting characterization of the territorial disputes between PRC(and/or ROC) and RoI.

This was 40 years before the Republic of India was formed.

Are you unaware of the history leading to and from the Boxer Rebellion?

The parent poster is talking about the Younghusband expedition into Tibet of 1903[1], I don't think it is the boxer rebellion in which British Indian troops had no direct involvement(AFAIK) and also those events happened before 1901 establishment of the Nobel Prize, which is the time period OP cites as the starting time range.

To see the Tibetan military expedition as an invasion of China, means to accept the Qing dynasty and its successor states (ROC,PRC)claim of sovereignty and not suzerainty over Tibet. A claim at the time which was not recognized by other countries specifically Russia, Britain and also Tibet.

The refusal of Tibetan government to accept terms of treaties they were not party to directly (i.e. the ones Qing China signed) was the official reason stated for the invasion by the British.

Either way it is a deeply contentious topic never legally settled in the 1907 agreement and had implications both to that era and modern geopolitics. No one then or now is purely looking at merits of the arguments.

The points will end up into esoteric discussion on whether is kowtowing and kneeling are the same thing, or is acknowledging supremacy is same as sovereignty, or the differences between vassal state or autonomous region or protectorate or suzerain.

Also the views of the countries/entities (or their successors) have also changed including the Tibetan government-in-exile in the last 120 years.

My knowledge of history is at best a passing student at high school level, this kind of discussion requires deep understanding of relationship of states, and of Chinese culture and language during Qing dynasty i.e. professional expertise which I certainly don't have.

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[1] My initial read was they meant either Arunachal Pradesh( South Tibet to the Chinese), Aksai Chin or the MacMohan line etc, but they clarified it wasn't the case.

The Boxer Protocol wasn't signed until September 01901 and involved permanently establishing a dozen foreign military bases inside China, so didn't, from my point of view, end the invasion. But it's true that the actual fighting was almost completely the previous year.

The War of 1812... when the British burned down the White House and the Capitol surely has to count as an "invasion".

That was before Nobel prize was established.

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