Why Nobel Prizes are such a big thing

 

  "There are higher-value awards for scientists - but none give the winner as much fame as a Nobel Prize. Why is that? And why will Stephen Hawking never get it? 

Anyone who receives a Nobel Prize is immediately in the newspaper, comes on television, is invited everywhere and asked for their opinion on everything possible - including things about which he or she has no more idea than most of us. As a Nobel Prize winner, you are a star and, if you want, you can be in the limelight. And then you never have to worry about your professional future again. There is no university that does not want a Nobel Prize winner among its professors. 

 The money seems almost irrelevant. That’s not a bad thing either. Anyone who receives a Nobel Prize alone - and does not have to share it with up to two others - currently earns more than 800,000 euros, plus a gold plaque with a current material value of around 4,700 euros. And in some countries, including Germany, the lucky winners don't even have to pay taxes on them. 

The prize money comes from the fortune of the Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel. At the end of the 19th century, he had earned very well, not least from the novel explosives he helped develop, such as dynamite. With one exception, however, they were not suitable for war purposes but rather for applications such as mining. It is therefore not entirely clear whether the Nobel Prize is really due to a guilty conscience on the part of its founder and not rather to the effort to be fondly remembered by posterity. In any case, twelve months before his death in December 1896, Alfred Nobel had decreed that the interest on his bequeathed fortune should be divided into five parts every year and thus be awarded for achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and efforts for peace in the world. 

It was not until 1968 that the Swedish State Bank donated a sixth prize for economics. It is actually called the “Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize” and is awarded using the same procedure as the five real Nobel Prizes: previous winners and selected experts propose achievements for the award by February 1st of each year. Swedish experts, for example the Swedish Academy of Sciences in the case of physics and chemistry, then select the winners. 

Alfred Nobel himself determined it that way. He consciously had an award in mind that researchers of all nationalities and origins can receive. That was something incredibly new in his lifetime, because at that time people in the nation states were still keen to increase the fame of scientists in their own country. This early internationality is probably one reason why the Nobel Prizes quickly became hugely popular - and are so important to this day. 

Those who are honored with this have stood out in a fair comparison among specialist colleagues around the world. 

Today, many science, literature and peace awards are international and they also honor achievements in areas that Nobel did not consider in his will at the time. The most respected and highly endowed of them are then gladly placed on the same level as the Nobel Prize. 

The most famous is undoubtedly the “Nobel Prize” for mathematics - the Fields Medal, which is awarded every four years. 

And the Swedish Academy of Sciences has been awarding the Crafoord Prize especially for subjects not eligible for Nobel Prize since 1982, with which geologists, for example, can also achieve Nobel-like honors. Important theoretical knowledge, which nonetheless cannot - or not yet - be observed in nature, is also disadvantaged by the Nobel's Foundation. The physicist Peter Higgs therefore only received his award when the corresponding particle was finally found. And the famous gravitational theorist Stephen Hawking would never be a Nobel Prize winner for precisely this reason. The radiation from black holes named after him is far too weak to be measurable. 

Alfred Nobel's ideas of an award-winning achievement, which are more than a hundred years old, and the reality of modern science now differ a little on other points too. Nevertheless, the Nobel Committee will be careful not to fundamentally change the criteria - because that could damage the increased reputation of the award and the enormous public impact associated with it. In one thing, however, Nobel's last will has been consistently disregarded for a long time: he had literally wished that his prizes would go to those “who have brought the greatest benefit to mankind in the past year.” But science usually doesn't show any benefit that quickly - neither in literature and peace efforts usually take so short time. In addition, it is very often the case with scientists that they do not research for any measurable benefit, and something similar can certainly be said of the poets. Therefore, the Nobel Committee has always nobly disregarded this section of the will." 

So why don't we here in Lithuania have a Nobel Prize? Because we didn’t find anything that set us apart from professionals around the world.