Nobel Prize not always Noble Selection
- Nisheal
- Sep 16, 2021
- 4 min read
Nee sheal lima Tiel Nisheal is a Chemist with double Masters from India and Spain in Chemistry and Catalysis. He aspires to do a PhD from IISc from 2022, for which He needs to rank high in GATE. He has worked at JNCASR and TIFR before as a research assistant and fellow in Materials Chemistry, having 6 publications. He was once a soulful music fan but abandoned after seeing a decline in his father's capacity as a science enthusiast for increasing music devotee. He, however, keeps distinct like for folk, retro wave, western classical and psychedelic music. He is an avid reader of textbooks and documentaries.
Three weeks. Then We shall hear the most awaited announcements of the year within the Chemistry community. The 2021 Nobel prize for Chemistry has been awarded to… One, two, or three awardees will share the prize but definitely not more. Last year, two awardees shared the prize, and for the first time in the prize’s history both were women. Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie, remains the only woman scientist to have won two prizes; in physics and chemistry, an achievement in two sciences still unmatched.
There has been only one Indian origin Nobel Chemistry laureate, Venki Ramakrishnan co-shared the Nobel in 2009. Besides Him, every category in the Nobel prizes has had an Indian origin winner in the prizes’ history, sometimes being foreigners as well with strong Indian connections, like Rudyard Kipling.
The contenders are usually well known already for pioneering work done in careers that has won them already many prestigious prizes. The jury deciding the nominees for a year’s prize has to limit the number of awardees who will share this honour received from the King of Sweden and a share of nearly a million dollars. The 2021 prize announcement day is mid first week of October; Wednesday 6 Oct, 11:45 CEST at the earliest.
It appears in question whether anyone can be selected as a winner. And before becoming a winner, at least had to be a leading contender in the already limited to three recipients, a number decided and unchanged since prize conception. Truly, as no selection such as this, can be repeatedly most accurate there have been major controversies on supposed exclusion of important contributors.
Just last year’s announcement generated controversy over the exclusion of male scientists who were not awarded in the discovery which was awarded the 2020 Nobel prize in Chemistry. The two female scientists in Figure 1 made important contributions in CRISPR gene editing technology and major advances in the technology made by male scientists in Figure 2 and Figure 3. Notable mention of Feng Zhang and George Church is also made who are also considered alongside as the inventors of this technology.
Most famous exclusion remains of G N Lewis (Figure 4) who was nominated 41 times but never won the Nobel prize in Chemistry due to perhaps rivalry with a Nobel Chemistry committee member.
Another controversy, as a type, is much more well known. The following note was made by Hermann Kolbe in Journal für praktische Chemie, whose editor He himself was, on Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff, the then 22-year-old’s article “The arrangement of atoms in space” by 56-year-old Kolbe in the decade of 1870.
I have recently published an article in Journal für praktische Chemie (14, 288 ff.) giving as one of the reasons for the contemporary decline of chemical research in Germany the lack of well-rounded as well as thorough chemical education. Many of our chemistry professors labour with this problem to the great disadvantage of our science. As a consequence of this, there is an overgrowth of the weed of the seemingly learned and ingenious but in reality, trivial and stupefying natural philosophy. This natural philosophy, which had been put aside by exact science, is at present being dragged out by pseudoscientists from the junk-room which harbours such failings of the human mind, and is dressed up in modern fashion and rouged freshly like a whore whom one tries to smuggle into good society where she does not belong.
Whoever considers this apprehension to be exaggerated should read, if he can manage it, the recently published pamphlet, "The arrangement of atoms in space", by Messrs. van't Hoff and Herrmann, which teems with fantastic trifles. I would ignore this paper as so many others if it were not for a renowned chemist who protected this nonsense and recommended it warmly as meritorious accomplishment.
A J. H. van't Hoff who is employed at the Veterinary School in Utrecht appears to find exact chemical research not to his taste. He deems it more convenient to mount Pegasus (evidently loaned from the Veterinary School) and to proclaim in his "La chimie dans l'espace" how, to him on the chemical Parnassus which he ascended in his daring flight, the atoms appeared to be arranged in the Universe.
This dismissal by Kolbe of the young van’t Hoff reminds of a bully teacher dismissing the genius of a young scientist. Little did He know that for this very imagination Kolbe’s own organic chemistry was going to revolutionarily change in the following years and van’t Hoff would receive the very first Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1901. Kolbe had long died in 1884.
Finally, a classic modern criticism and dismissal in Chemistry is none other than Pauling-Shechtman controversy. Pauling himself a double Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962) had promptly dismissed Dan Shechtman’s discovery of quasi crystals in the 1980 decade. He simply being a pioneer in His own theory of symmetry then widely accepted was unaware of a prior publication of the same decade which had pointed out the possibility of non-periodicity arising in quasi crystals. He infamously remarked of Shechtman’s work as “there are no quasi crystals, only quasi scientists.” For Shechtman’s having to live in disgrace until Pauling, one the great idols of American science, died, only found it entertaining those subsequent reports by others on quasi crystals turning out to be true eventually put the great Pauling in great error. Dan Shechtman was awarded the 2011 Nobel prize in Chemistry in solo credit for his work on quasi crystals. How graceful this is!
Thus, it is, to conclude, that the Nobel prize is made and awarded by men and women to men and women. There are errors sometimes, limitations mostly, and controversies every decade. Yet this century old million-dollar prize still up beats in the mind of every knowledgeable person on the day of its announcement. Hope this year We find joy more than sadness on who really deserved.
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