The day when the first of 2012 Nobel Prizes was announced, a short article containing the recipe for winning one of those appeared on the BBC website. Let’s see what we’ve got this year.
- Physics
- Serge Haroche, 68, French
- David J. Wineland, 68, American
- Robert J. Lefkowitz, 69, American
- Brian Kobilka, 56, American
- Sir John B. Gurdon, 79, British
- Shinya Yamanaka, 50, Japanese
- Mo Yan, 57, Chinese
- Alvin E. Roth, 60, American
- Lloyd Shapley, 89, American
If there are deviations from the winning formula, they are neither significant nor surprising. (For example, the formula does not reflect the fact that the prize winners are getting older.) Excluding the EU, we have the average age of 66. Five out of nine winners are Americans. Wineland and Shapley went to Harvard, Lefkowitz and Roth to Columbia, Gurdon to Oxford. Two economists and one physicist sport facial hair. I’ve counted at least five pairs of glasses. And no women.
Too many factors to consider, I say. Last year, Benjamin Jones and Bruce Weinberg published a paper in PNAS where they concentrate just on the age dynamics of Nobel laureates (prizes given between 1901 and 2008 in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine). It has rather fascinating figures in it.
In chemistry, great achievement by age 40 converges toward 0% by 2000, but it accounted for 66% of cases in 1900.
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