Scientists may feel underpaid and overworked, but they certainly aren’t underappreciated. By the latest count, there are more than 30,000 scientific prizes in the world, and the list continues to grow. What in the name of Alfred Nobel is going on? Are scientists really so hungry for recognition? And with all of the winners out there, have prizes started to lose their luster?
To learn more about scientific prizes and their recipients, I spoke with several recent laureates, including two winners of the Nobel Prize and one winner of the Ig Nobel prize, awarded to recognize research that “cannot or should not be replicated.” I also spoke with a longtime observer -- and granter -- of scientific prizes. The consensus: Awards have value far beyond money and medals (or in the case of the Ig Nobel, far beyond a plaque and a free dinner).
Nobel laureates
F. Sherwood Rowland, a research professor of chemistry and earth-system science at the University of California at Irvine, won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for alerting the world to the ozone-destroying potential of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s). To hear him tell it, the Nobel was a big deal. Sort of. “It’s basically something that appears after your name,” he says. “It gives you a boost of confidence that somebody is really listening -- but you kind of knew that anyway.”
While the Nobel attracts all of the attention, there’s another prize buried deep on his curriculum vitae that Mr. Rowland calls “extremely important” to his career. In the early 1970’s, he won the Jones Prize from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an institution he had never even heard of. The cash value of the award was about $1-million short of what he got with the Nobel, but it gave him something he desperately needed: credibility.
At the time, Mr. Rowland’s research faced many skeptics and a few outright enemies. (“An article in Aerosol Age said I was probably a KGB agent,” he says.) The Jones prize, he says, gave him confidence to continue his research and keep up the fight.
Ahmed Zewail, a professor of chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology and winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry, shows a bit more enthusiasm about the Big Prize. (Mr. Zewail developed femptosecond spectroscopy, a method for observing chemical reactions at an atomic level.)
“It shows that your peers are judging you positively and that you made a significant contribution,” he says. “It’s not the money or the huge celebration. It’s the recognition.” Among other things, the Nobel gave him a stage for spreading his enthusiasm about science, he says. “I like to meet young people and get them excited, and I’ll always have an audience because of the Nobel.”
Like Mr. Rowland, Mr. Zewail says he owes much of his success to a few pre-Nobel awards. Two prizes in particular, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, gave him financing and encouragement at a crucial point in his career. “Prizes like these kindle something,” he says. “They let you know you are on the right track.
First a Dreyfus award, then the Nobel: The progression sounds good to Kristi Kiick, an assistant professor of materials science at the University of Delaware. In August 2001 -- on her first day as a faculty member, to be exact -- she learned she had won a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award. The prize brought her $40,000 to apply to her research as well as an invaluable sense of accomplishment. “It was the first time I ever put out my ideas to a funding agency,” she says. “It’s gratifying to know that somebody thinks my ideas are worthwhile.”
An Ig Nobel honor
There are many coveted, prestigious awards in the world of science. And then there’s the Ig Nobel Prize. Some winners have tried to distance themselves from the honor, but Lawrence W. Sherman, a professor of psychology at Miami University in Ohio, embraces it.
Mr. Sherman won the 2001 prize in psychology for a 1975 paper titled, “An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children.” (As with the Nobel, it often takes many years for seminal works to receive Ig Nobel recognition.) Other 2001 winners included the inventor of Under-Ease, airtight underwear equipped with odor-absorbing charcoal filters, and the medical researcher who published the article “Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts” in the journal Trauma. Almost all of the 2001 winners, including Mr. Sherman, made the no-expenses-paid trip to Harvard University in October to accept the award.
Mr. Sherman says his research into the psychology of humor left him well-equipped to appreciate the spirit of Ig Nobel. But the prize also had tangible benefits, he says. It gave him a chance to rub shoulders with real Nobel winners (who presented the awards) and present his research to a knowledgeable, appreciative audience. It also brought him a bit of fame. He was featured on National Public Radio and shared the front page of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland with Osama bin Laden and Barry Bonds. “It made people all over Ohio aware of me,” he says. “But as I told the committee, I’m glad this happened toward the end of my career, and not the beginning.”
Eyes on the prize
Scientific prizes are still to be prized for the credibility, confidence, and exposure they bring. Of course, there’s no way to court the biggest and best awards; the Nobel committee doesn’t send out application forms. But scientists who are willing to take the initiative are often richly rewarded, says Larry Tise, president of the International Congress of Distinguished Awards, a Philadelphia-based organization that tracks and ranks prizes, scientific and otherwise.
Ms. Kiick, for one, didn’t wait for prizes to come her way. She submitted her application for the Dreyfus award before she had even finished her doctoral thesis. “I think a lot of new assistant professors wait until they get on campus to find out about awards,” she says. She thinks planning ahead paid off.
Ambitious young scientists can also try applying for major-league fellowships from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mr. Tise says. More-established scientists can actively pursue awards from peer associations such as the American Physical Society or the American Society for Microbiology. Many of these awards are self-nominated. If not, it’s often possible to persuade others to make a nomination, he says.
A former executive director of the Franklin Institute, Mr. Tise has sat on many committees that evaluated prize applications. His advice to would-be winners: Keep it simple. “Scientists often want to add papers and articles ad infinitum” to their applications, he says. “It’s a big turn-off in the eyes of the review panel. List your five most important papers, not 20 pages of endless citations.”
And if you’re a young scientist with your eyes on a big prize, you’d better be patient. “Ages 45 to 60 are the prime time for major awards,” Mr. Tise says. “There’s a strong bias against younger scientists. Here’s what gets said: He’s going to be around a long time. He’ll get his chances. But here’s old Joe -- it’s his last chance.”
If all of the prizes disappeared tomorrow, scientists would still run their experiments and still make discoveries. But some of the creative spark would be lost, Mr. Tise says. After all, prizes ultimately go to ideas, not to people. Scientific awards help spread those ideas and ignite imaginations, he says. As Mr. Zewail puts it, “prizes really help us wonder in new areas of research.”
In the end, 30,000 prizes may not be overkill after all. If anything, it may be a little on the skimpy side. Many more foundations, corporations, and individuals are eager to add to the list. And that’s good for scientists everywhere, even the runners-up.
Chris Woolston is a freelance science and medical writer living in Billings, Mont.