If you’re a bit nerdy like me, you’ve probably wondered at some point ‘What would I need to do to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry, physics, literature, etc…’. Well, first you need to have accomplished something pretty awesome in your specific field. Think Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin, Werner Heisenberg deducting the basic principles of quantum mechanics, or Fritz Haber creating a process to produce ammonia on an industrial scale. Secondly, it really helps if you’re a white male, in his 50s, from the US or Western Europe, and working at Harvard, MIT or Cambridge.
If that sounds a little exclusive, that’s because it is. This is not to say that any of those men did not deserve their award, but the magnitude of Nobel Laureates that fit within those criteria is nonetheless eyebrow-raising. Throughout history, Nobel Prize receivers have overwhelmingly been white men, especially in the sciences, where only 26 women have won the awards, out of the 645 recipients. In this year’s awards, only the literature and peace prizes were awarded to men not from the US or UK. Not a single woman received an award. It’s hard not to imagine that there must have been dozens of women who have been overlooked over the 123 years of prizes (because they have).
Only 47 Asian people have won a Nobel Prize in one of chemistry, physics or medicine. Additionally, only 8 Africans and 5 Latin Americans have won Nobel Prizes in these disciplines. There has never been a black winner. To quote The Conversation, “Nobel Prizes have a diversity problem even worse than the scientific fields they honor”. It seems questionable if Nobel Prizes even truly reflect how science is performed in the modern age.
The Nobel Prize was conceived at a time when the myth of the lone genius dominated (think Einstein in his Swiss patent office, or Henry Cavendish, a cripplingly shy man who calculated the mass of the planet). But this is simply not how scientists operate today. Two of the most ridiculous rules for awarding a Nobel Prize are that no more than 3 people can receive the prize for one achievement, and the recipients must be alive. Due to these conditions, Rosalind Franklin did not receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the structure of DNA! There will probably never be a bigger injustice in the Nobel Prizes than Franklin’s.
None of this is to say that the idea of a Nobel Prize is meaningless. There should obviously be a system of recognition for those who have made such incredible breakthroughs, but it’s embarrassingly obvious that the criteria for them are geared towards Western white men. Currently, the premise of the Nobel Prize simply indicates that we are in dire need of a greater push for gender and race inclusivity not just in STEM, but academia in general.
“Rosalind Franklin” by MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.