Prizes and Awards in Science before Nobel (original) (raw)
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The British Journal for the History of Science
This paper examines the early years of decision making in the award of the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry, and shows how the prize became a tool in the boundary work which upheld the social demarcations between scientists and inventors, as well as promoting a particular normative view of individual scientific achievement. The Nobel committees were charged with rewarding scientific achievements that benefited humankind: their interpretation of that criterion, however, turned in the first instance on their assessment of the groundbreaking nature of the ‘science’, with the applied or practical ‘benefits’ of that discovery being treated as very much secondary factors in the award. Through an interrogation of the reports sent by the committees to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, this paper shows how committee members depended on a notion of ‘post-dated utilitarianism’ in reconciling potential tension between rewarding basic and applied science, and explores the ways in which ...
FULL ARTICLE, FULL ACCESS: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963662518766476 The history of the Nobel Prize, since its establishment, interlaces with the history of the public image of science. The aim of this article is to illustrate cinematic scientists, portrayed precisely in their moment of maximum glory. The films and television shows upon which the study is based compose a corpus of 189 media texts. The article identifies three main areas that concern the relation between the Nobel Prize and its audiovisual representations: biopics of real Nobel laureates, the presence of real or fictional Nobel laureates in the film or the show plot, and films and TV series that depict the Nobel ceremony. The article then focuses on four texts that deserve a detailed examination: La fin du monde, The Prize, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory. The conclusion compares the representation of the Nobel scientist with general changes in the image of the scientist conveyed by cinema and television.
Names as Rewards The Ambiguous Role of Eponyms in the History of Science
Nuncius, 2019
Contemporary scientific terminology is populated by thousands of eponyms, technical terms derived from the names of discoverers and inventors. Since the ultimate goals of scientific language are precision and objectivity, the ever increasing use of eponyms is puzzling. Eponyms betray the inherent contradiction between the supposed neutrality and anonymity of scientific discourse and individual vindication. The systematic use of eponyms has resulted in one of the most effective reward systems in Western science. Moreover, it is interesting to note that eponyms do not represent a recent form of recognition ; their genealogy can be traced back to classical antiquity, in particular to the Hellenistic era and as a feature of the scientific lexicon they have undergone surprisingly little change over more than two millennia. In my essay I explore the genealogy of scientific eponyms and their cultural background and I shall focus my attention on classical and early modern science. During classical antiquity the use of eponyms served an important dual purpose, on the one hand paying tribute to those individuals who, by dint of their discoveries and written works, gained eminence in a specific field of enquiry, and on the other hand helping to map the historical geography of a discipline and thus establish its boundaries as well as its future prospects. During the Renaissance , with the rediscovery of the classics and the reaffirmation of the cultural value of science and technology, the coining of eponyms gained unprecedented momentum and proliferated in most disciplines.
Scientific Celebrity: The Paradoxical Case of Emil du Bois-Reymond
Once lauded as “the foremost naturalist of Europe,” “the last of the encyclopedists,” and “one of the greatest scientists Germany ever produced,” the neurophysiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) has suffered a terrible decline in celebrity. Unlike Charles Darwin and Claude Bernard, who endure as heroes in England and France, du Bois-Reymond is generally forgotten in Germany—no streets bear his name, no stamps portray his image, no celebrations are held in his honor, and no collections of his essays remain in print. I want to use du Bois-Reymond’s curious example to address two historical questions: first, how did German scientists become famous in the nineteenth-century? And second, how have their reputations been maintained today? My contention is that du Bois-Reymond fell victim to his very success.
Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, 2008
Various investigators have proposed that "scientific geniuses" are polymaths. To test this hypothesis, auto biographies, biographies, and obituary notices of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, m em bers of the Royal Society, and the U.S. National Academ y of S ciences were read and adult arts and crafts avocations tabulated. Data were com pared with a 1936 avocation survey of Sigma Xi m em bers and a 1982 survey of arts avocations among the U.S. public. Nobel laureates were significantly more likely to engage in arts and crafts avocations than Royal Society and National Academ y of Sciences members, who were in turn significantly more likely than Sigma Xi members and the U.S. public. Scientists and their biographers often com m ented on the utility of their avocations as stimuli for their science. The utility of arts and crafts training for scientists may have important public policy and educational implications in light of the marginalization of these subjects in m ost curricula.
The Nobel Prize: History and Canonicity
The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 2000
Through the decades the Nobel Prize in literature has been criticized negatively as being at best a popularity contest and at worst a political event run by second-rate provincials who know too little about literature beyond their own borders, and in addition are almost exclusively white and male. Yet when one of our own--a U.S. author--wins, as for example Toni Morrison for 1993, many critics in this country may grumble, but most are willing to gather to congratulate the winner and, more often than not, agree that the candidate, though of course chosen from a field of equally excellent candidates in this country and others, is reasonably deserving. Are the Nobels in literature fair--that is, are winners chosen justly to represent the best of world literature? Part of the answer to this question lies in determining what is the literary canon. One can argue that the history of the Nobels in literature is in fact a history of how the literary canon has been--and will be--determined. In recent years in the awarding of the prize in literature, it is quite clear that there has developed a greater effort not only to include nonwhite and female authors, but also to redefine the meaning of good--canonical--literature in accordance with literary values displayed by nonwhite and female authors when their writings differ from those of the traditional canon. This paper examines these issues first by looking at a description of the literary prize, then at the history of the political and aesthetic judgements made in awarding the prize, and finally at contemporary fairness and canonicity.