The age of the Nobel Prizes in science

Age of scientific Nobel Prizes, by decades

In my conference closing the 1997-98 term at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, entitled The myth of progress in the evolution of Science, I wrote this:

The Nobel prizes provide an interesting measurement of the evolution of scientific progress during the twentieth century. These prizes award the most important advances in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine. Statistics show a few worrying trends, such as the progressively higher age of the scientists who have received the Nobel Prize: the average age has gone up from 47 in the first decade to 60 in the last. The number of Nobel prizes awarded to people below 40 has gone down from nine in the thirties and fifties to zero in the nineties. Not one person born after 1950 has yet received a Nobel prize.

As over 20 years have gone by since I made these calculations, and as many more Nobel prizes have been awarded, I have updated the figures, to see if the trend I had detected is confirmed or reversed. These are the updated data:

1901-10	1911-20	1921-30	1931-40	1941-50	1951-60
52	47	50	47	54	50
1961-70	1971-80	1981-90	1991-2000	2001-10	2011-19
55	56	59	62	65	69

We see therefore that the trend I had detected, not only remains, but accelerates, to the point that during the current decade the average age of scientists when they receive the Nobel Prize is very close to 70 years. This age has grown continuously from 1950 to the present, while before 1950 it remained approximately equal to 50 years.

There are several possible ways to explain this situation:

• Scientists live longer, so there is time to reward work done by people who, in the first half of the century, would have died before being awarded.
• It takes longer than before for prizes to be awarded since the discovery is made, so scientists get them at more advanced ages. Against this, it can be argued that Nobel Prizes continue to be awarded for work done very shortly before. For instance, in Physics, the discovery of gravitational waves with the LIGO detector was awarded in 2017, a single year after its discovery. In 2010 the discovery of graphene, made six years earlier. The same time elapsed since the detection of Bose-Einstein condensate in alkaline gases and the awarding of the prize in 2001. In 1987, the award went to discoverers of high temperature superconductivity, which took place a year earlier. And in 1986, half the prize went to the inventors, in 1981, of the tunnel effect microscope. In other cases, the lapse between the discovery and the prize has not been long, 20 years at most. For instance, in 2011 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the scientists who 13 years earlier discovered the accelerated expansion of the universe. In 2006, the prize went to the researchers of the cosmic background radiation using the COBE satellite, which operated between 1989 and 1993, 13 years before the award.
• Important discoveries are less frequent than before. It is evident that in the first decades of the twentieth century there were spectacular revolutions in physics, such as Quantum Mechanics, Relativity and radioactivity. Sensational advances occurred almost every year, many of which won the recently instituted Nobel Prizes.

An additional detail: the distribution of the Physics prizes among the four branches of science seems to be changing. Science is not uniform, for there are at least four different branches of research:

1. Theoretical science, which tries to discover fundamental laws in the universe.
2. Experimental science, which makes findings by conducting experiments.
3. Observational science, which observes, instead of experiencing. Astronomy, for instance, mainly uses these methods, since experimentation is rarely possible.
4. Technology, whose objective is to build devices that work. This branch leans more than any towards the practical application of science.

It is true that sometimes it is difficult to classify a scientist in one of theses branches. Newton, for example, is known primarily for his theoretical activity (Newton’s Laws), but he also experimented (especially in optics), and as an inventor of the reflection telescope, he was also a technologist. Often, however, it is possible to classify scientists into one of the four groups.

Thomas Alba Edison

If we classify in this way the Nobel Prizes in Physics, we’ll see that three quarters of those awarded in the first three decades of the 20th century went to experimental physicists, while there was none to reward observation. The other quarter went to theoretical physicists, with just two prizes for technology (Marconi and Braun, and Dalén). On the other hand, in the last four decades, the proportion has changed significantly: experimental prizes have dropped to 40%, while technology has risen to 30%. The remaining 30% is distributed almost equally between theory and observation, the latter more awarded than ever.

To put an end to this post, I’d like to stand up for Thomas Edison, who was not awarded the Nobel Prize, perhaps because he didn’t make a typical scientific career, although he fully deserved it for his over one thousand inventions, some of which still influence our lives. As confirmation, let’s notice that the 2019 Chemistry prize was awarded to the inventors of lithium batteries, and the 2014 physics prize to the inventors of LEDs.

The same post in Spanish
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Manuel Alfonseca