...Admit it.
Plenty of us have pictured how we would respond to THAT phone call from
Stockholm, telling us that we’d been awarded a Nobel Prize. But it’s good to
know that many of the science Nobel Laureates admit to having had that same
daydream too! Peter Agre, who shared the 2003 Chemistry Prize with Roderick
MacKinnon, was very honest when speaking to a group of Russian students:
Each of
the Nobel Prizes can be shared between up to three individuals each year, but
even then, the actual number of Nobel Laureates in the sciences is tiny. In
total, 565 people have been awarded
one of the Science Prizes (Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry) since
1901, and that includes the eight newest Laureates announced last week. Higgs, Levitt and Schekman and their
fellow awardees, find themselves in a very privileged position! But did they ever
really think that they would be
awarded a Nobel Prize?
Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the Medicine or
Physiology prize with Jack Szostak and her colleague Carol Greider in 2009, never
expected the odds to fall in her favour:
Did these
highly-respected researchers always dream of becoming
scientists? And what were their early influences? Oliver Smithies, who shared
the 2007 Medicine or Physiology prize with Mario Capecchi and Sir Martin Evans,
describes what he wanted to be when he grew up – how would you answer that
question?
And Peter
Doherty, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Rolf M.
Zinkernagel, realised that he was good at science in school, but may have ended
up on a completely different road:
It’s
clear from answers like this that the one thing that these scientists have in
common is their love for their work. But, were they always destined for
scientific greatness? Many “Science Laureates” hail from scientific families –
Bruce Beutler, the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine spoke fondly
to an American student about the role that science played in his childhood:
These
clips form part of the Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative (NPII),
which aims to inspire and communicate with scientists, at all stages of their
career. The initiative, led by Nobel
Media, brings a Laureate to a series of universities, where they give a
lecture and take part in series of Q&A sessions with young scientists. This
new website hopes to extend the reach of the initiative, by sharing of the
content from these events with a global
audience of scientists. The collection of short clips and lecture videos
allows the Laureates to share their insights on everything from their
childhood, through to communicating research, career options, and maintaining a
good work-life balance.
You can also follow
the initiative on Twitter @NobelPrizeii
or Facebook #NPII
