Sciencemadness Discussion Board

How difficult is it to win a Nobel Prize?

13enigma - 21-12-2017 at 00:56

What kind of inventions or experiments in any science will get one a Nobel prize?

wg48 - 21-12-2017 at 01:29

Quote: Originally posted by 13enigma  
What kind of inventions or experiments in any science will get one a Nobel prize?


Published novel and successful ones.

j_sum1 - 21-12-2017 at 01:44

Really difficult.
You must undertake novel research that has either dramatic applications or significantly changes the way that we understand the world.
Your work must achieve significant acclaim in the scientific community.
Your work must attract the eyes and be highly regarded by the nobel committee.
This acknowledgement of your work must happen while you are still alive -- NPs are not given posthumously.
You must be working individually or in a team no greater than three. NPs are given to individuals and not to scientific teams. This requirement is getting harder and harder to meet since most cutting-edge stuff nowadays is the result of huge collaborative efforts.
You must get a lucky roll of the dice. Only one is given per year in each field. It depends on what else is in the running. There are notable cases of people missing out on NP recognotion even though their work excelled those who got awarded.

Fun facts:
Lisa Meitener missed out on a Nobel even though those she was working with did receive one. A case of sexual discrimination. However, she did get element 109 named after her.
The guy who pioneered the frontal lobotomy as a psychiatric procedure received a Nobel prize for his work -- such was the acclaim over the effectioveness of the procedure -- overlooking the very significant (and downright evil) downside of the practice. Since then it has been common practice to wait a few years or decades to see the implications and applications of scientific work before awarding a prize. This increases the liklihood of dying before getting a prize.

Bert - 21-12-2017 at 16:45

Only the white mice who control our scientists know the algorithm, they wrote it.

Oh, and her. She knows too. By absorbing the murine nerve growth factor through her eyes for many years, she saw their secrets.

Deluxbert - 14-1-2018 at 12:17

I had the chance to talk to a recent nobel prize winner in chemistry (2017)because he was from our uni and man its was hard to fully understand it.

The cryo electron microscopy is really really complicated.
He talked about the whole process (took multiple years for even a bare protoype)

So my guess would be. Invent a machine or something that helps us understand something in a way we couldnt before and refine it so much it basically makes nearly all other imaging techs obsolete. (3D imaging of biomolecules is a big deal)

NEMO-Chemistry - 15-1-2018 at 05:09

Try to solve a problem of importance, or advance mans understanding of something fundamental. The last thing that will ever win a prize, is something designed to win the prize. Find something that interests you, work on it, go beyond what anyone else has ever done with it before, then maybe you will be nominated.

Nobel prize is not like a beauty contest, in a beauty contest you got a reasonable idea where you fit on the scale. Cure cancer and its likely to get you a prize, but seriously doing science for the sake of wining something......You have kind of failed already.

HeYBrO - 16-1-2018 at 03:34

I might be able to give you understanding on the first part of your post. If you have any experience in academia, when doing new work you'd know how difficult it is just to get a paper out (or even a reaction to work)- if it puts into perspective, I have been working on a project in a lab for 2 months now, and I have discovered a lot; namely that almost nothing works according to plan! Especially when working on new compounds with no characterisation data available, so all purification comes from experience/ data on things that are vaguely similar and hoping for the best. Same goes for reaction design. In my opinion, it takes a lot work to get a publication with chemistry that is new (but not necessarily useful), it takes skill to produce chemistry that is new and useful, and it takes genius and luck to come up with Nobel prize material (and whatever lies in-between!).

j_sum1 - 22-1-2018 at 18:22

25 honorary doctorates will get you there.