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What are the big takeaways from the 2023 Nobel Prizes in science? There are some clear lessons relevant to higher education. While the world looks forward to Asia’s rise to the heights of global science, the 2023 Nobel Prize shows no sign of this diversification.
Eight of the nine award recipients are affiliated with Western universities, including six in the United States. The ninth person is Alexey Ekimov, co-recipient of the Chemistry Prize and principal investigator at a private company in New York. As usual, the winners were educated in a variety of Western countries, but it appears to have been a bumper year for Eastern Europe, with two in Hungary and one in the former Soviet Union.
The majority have spent their careers at institutions in a variety of countries, including Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. This shows once again that science, despite being biased toward a typical subset of wealthy Western countries, is still cosmopolitan and cosmopolitan.
And unusually (and perhaps unsurprisingly), one of this year’s laureates, Catalin Carrico, has had a career marked by clear influences of sexism and fringe involvement in her pursuit of Nobel Prize-worthy research. Shows the challenges to address ideas.
Science remains partially international
Although most of the 2023 Nobelists reside in the United States, their scientific and academic careers are markedly international, as has been the trend in recent years. They were born in her five different countries. He was born three times in the United States, two in France, two in Hungary, one in Tunisia, and one in the former Soviet Union. This group earned him bachelor’s degrees in four countries and Ph.D.s in five countries.
As expected, this distinguished group has had a very fluid career, holding academic and scientific positions in at least 10 countries.
France accepted 4 out of 9 people into academic institutions throughout their educational and professional careers, and Germany accepted 5 out of 9 people into academic or corporate positions at universities, research institutes and biotechnology companies. However, the United States remains the country where eight of the nine recipients currently belong and whose career trajectories are most distinctive.
continued domination of the West, especially the United States;
All but two of the 2023 Nobel Prize winners work in the United States, including one jointly affiliated with the United States and Hungary (since 2021), but only three are U.S.-born; Only four people have obtained doctoral degrees.
The non-Western world seems to be missing from the careers of most of this year’s Novelists, with no mention of affiliations, postdocs, visiting professorships, or relationships with other institutions, except for a visiting professorship in South Korea. .
The Class of 2023 has a variety of affiliations and experience across continental Europe, with three current affiliations including Germany, Sweden and Hungary, with many gaining experience elsewhere in Europe, and France and Germany are popular destinations. Perhaps surprisingly, the UK does not exist at all.
America’s dominance in the Nobel Prize world is not new, although it has been especially evident this year. This is not surprising. The United States accounts for 28% of global R&D spending. China ranks second with 22%, but is not included in this year’s Nobel Prize.
Salaries for top research professors at highly ranked research institutions in the United States are among the highest in the world, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. And top universities in the United States can provide both the resources and autonomy needed for top-notch research of this kind.
It is questionable whether American science and universities can maintain their dominance. Internal pressures on academic activity in the United States, combined with impressive developments in research capacity in other regions, could lead to a more equal global scientific community in the future.
For now, however, the United States and Western countries remain at the top of world science, as evidenced by the number of Nobel laureates and Nobel laureates.
The strange case of Catalin Carrico
Dr. Catalin Carrico, co-recipient of the Prize in Physiology and Medicine, has received many comments in the media. She was born and educated in Hungary, but has spent most of her career in the United States. However, she has also held other appointments at various institutions in three countries, most recently as senior vice president at the German biotechnology company BioNTech.
The debate stems from her time at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 2001, where she held positions ranging from assistant professor of science to principal investigator to adjunct associate professor.
During that period, she was demoted from a tenure-track position in 1995, rejected the possibility of returning to tenure-track, and ultimately retired in 2013.
Meanwhile, her close collaborator and fellow recipient, Dr. Drew Wiseman, whom she met in 1997, is still at the University of Pennsylvania as a professor of medicine and co-chair of the Immunology Core at the Penn State Center for AIDS Research. He also serves as the director. He is the director of vaccine research in the infectious diseases division.
Carrico tackles risky and unconventional scientific topics, and until recently, when she and her colleague Wiseman have won multiple awards, regular funding agencies and senior academics have rejected her research. Some people point out that they could not see any future potential. The fact that she received her PhD at the University of Szeged in Hungary, rather than at a prestigious university in a major country, may not have helped.
Some have pointed out that this was a clear case of sexism, since her work was not recognized by the University of Pennsylvania, which shamelessly claimed her for the Nobel Prize. Social media.
The fact that her career was so different from that of most Nobel laureates makes it difficult for the scientific community to at least consider how it values innovative but exploratory scientific ideas. This suggests that funding and support should be secured for basic research. And, of course, the gender bias that remains prevalent in academia and other fields must be eliminated.
Basic science is not just traditional academic science.
All of this year’s recipients have spent some time in non-academic settings. Of the three Chemistry Prize winners, two are conducting research at Bell Labs but are currently affiliated with academic institutions, and the third, Alexei Ekimov, is affiliated with his Nanocrystals Technology. All activities are conducted within the United States. Carrico moved to BioNTech in Germany to continue his research without the support of academia.
Many of the award winners are from research institutions that receive state funding or are independently supported as non-profit organizations, such as Germany’s Max Born Institute, Max Planck Institute, and Research Institute for Labor Economics. I’ve been spending time there. Molecular Fingerprint Research Center and Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Dutch Foundation for Basic Materials Research. Vavilov State Optical Research Institute in the former Soviet Union. Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. and the National Institutes of Health in the United States.
Materials for the best science
Of course, Nobel Prizes are often awarded for scientific achievements achieved decades ago, but various prize committees emphasize the contemporary relevance of the research conducted. The Nobel Prize aims to connect basic research with applied and practical results, ideas and innovations that can take decades to percolate and bear fruit. But it reminds us that basic research is the foundation of science and is fundamental to both understanding and practical results.
Moreover, the Nobel Prize shows that the institutional environment is fundamentally important. The focus is on funding that is awarded on a meritocracy (hopefully imaginatively) basis. However, the Calico case highlights the reality of discrimination within institutionalized research systems and how unsupported scientists are able to conduct this level of research, as Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Prize-winning research highlights. It shows another path to pursue.
Universities and other scientific institutions that respect academic freedom, encourage independent research and collaboration, secure adequate funding, and have autonomy in academic governance will strive for the best science and scholarship. It’s a necessary base.
And if academia is not a home for this kind of research, researchers may gravitate to those who provide a home outside of universities.
Philip G. Altbach is Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston University, USA. Tessa DeLaquil is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Graduate School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark.
