OLD WORLD VS. NEW WORLD: EVOLUTION OF NOBEL PRIZE SHARES

INFOR, Feb 2005 by Jank, Wolfgang, Golden, Bruce L, Zantek, Paul F

ABSTRACT

We study current and past trends in the geographic distribution of Nobel Prize awards. A polynomial-smoothing-spline analysis reveals trends that correlate with major events of the 20th century. The results demonstrate the rise of North America and the fall of Europe since the 1930's. There is an indication that North America's share of Nobel Prizes will continue to increase in the near future whereas Europe's will continue to decline. Differences among European countries are discussed.

Keywords: Nobel Prizes; smoothing splines; curve-fitting

1. INTRODUCTION

The Nobel Prize is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the benefit of humankind. The prize recognizes major achievements in chemistry, economics, literature, peace, physics, and physiology or medicine. The prize is an international recognition, as the founder of the prize, the late Alfred Nobel of Sweden, stipulated that "in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not." Nobel Prizes have been awarded in nearly every year since 1901.

Crawford (1998) notes that during most of their existence "Nobel Prizes have been regarded as the supreme reward for scientific achievement." Modis (1988) points out that countries and institutions pride themselves on the number of Nobel Laureates they can count, and some countries and individuals fiercely compete for the Nobel Prize. For instance, the goal of the Japanese government's Science and Technology Basic Plan adopted in the year 2000 is to strengthen investment in basic research so that Japan will win at least 30 Nobel Prizes in the next 50 years (European Commission (2003)).

The United States currently leads the world in number of Nobel Prizes received. As of 2004, Americans have received 283 (or 36.8%) of the 770 prizes that have been awarded. A logistic growth model estimated by Modis (1988), however, forecasts that the number of prizes awarded to Americans will decline from 4.9 per year in the 1980's to 2.9 per year in the year 2000 and just 0.2 per year in the year 2050. In addition, the model forecasts that the total number of prizes to be received by Americans throughout all of time is 283. Golden and Zantek (2004) use more complete data (1901-2002) to show that this model systematically forecasts too few prize awards to Americans.

A generalized-logistic-substitution analysis, also conducted by Modis (1988), concludes that America's annual share of Nobel Prizes reached its maximum of 50% in the 1970's and will decrease monotonically in subsequent years. For instance, by the year 2000, the U.S. annual share is forecasted to be approximately 41%. In reality, America's share has increased, essentially continuously, over the past 100 years and exceeded 50% in each year during the period 2000 to 2004. Clearly, recent history illustrates that Modis's study forecasts too small of a share for the U.S.

The U.S. has not always received such large annual shares. In the early twentieth century, most of the prizes were awarded to Western Europeans. In this article, we study recent and past trends in the geographic distribution of Nobel Prizes. Our retrospective analysis reveals trends and changes in dynamics that correlate with major events of the twentieth century, such as World Wars I and II.

2. NOBEL SELECTION PROCESS

The process of selecting Nobel Prize recipients is international in scope. The European Commission (2003) Third European Report on Science and Technology Indicators points out that the institutions responsible for evaluating and selecting Nobel Prize winners are entirely independent of the Swedish and Norwegian governments as well as the Nobel Foundation. This same report also suggests that the autonomy of the prize-awarding institutions "is of crucial importance to the objectivity of their prize decisions, and hence also to the prestige of the Nobel Prize." Each year, thousands of individuals from around the globe are invited to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize. The merits of the nominees are evaluated by Nobel Committees with the assistance of international experts. As such, the nomination and evaluation of candidates are international assessments. After the Nobel Committees select the prize recipients, their recommendations are presented to the prize-awarding institutions for a final vote.

3. NOBEL PRIZE SHARES

We use the Nobel Foundation website (www.nobel.se) to obtain the nation of citizenship of each of the 758 individuals who received a Nobel Prize during the period 1901-2003. We compare the success of the five groups of nations listed in Table 1. Of these five groups, three are comprised of strong economies separated by geographic location (North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific); the remaining two groups consist of economies in transition and developing economies, respectively.

Investigating trends in the distribution of Nobel Prizes is complicated by the fact that the annual number of prizes awarded varies over time. For instance, only six prizes were awarded in 1901 whereas 11 prizes were awarded in 2003. To facilitate comparison across time periods, we measure each group's success by its share of prize awards (defined as the percentage of the Nobel Prizes that the group received) as opposed to the number of prizes it received.