The Road to Stockholm: Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists

István Hargittai

Jan. 2002 · Chemical Heritage Foundation

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The Nobel Prizes enjoy enormous prestige throughout the world. Every year, science is propelled into the limelight, and in October, when the prizes are announced, and December, when they are awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm, a chosen few scientists acquire celebrity status and their sciencereceives wide coverage in the news media. First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prize remains the only science prize widely recognized by the general public.What sort of scientists become Nobel laureates? How are they chosen? Are there features common to them, and to their prize-winning research? These sorts of questions have long intrigued Istvan Hargittai and seeking answers, he began interviewing Nobel prize-winning scientists about their careers.Some 70 laureates, and a similar number of other distinguished scientists, have been interviewed, most of them during the late 1990s, and the result is this remarkable book. Written for a general readership, The Road to Stockholm illuminates the nature of scientific discovery, the Nobel Prizeselection process, the factors common to award-winning research, and the effects of the Nobel Prize on science itself. Here are stories of scientists who overcame adversity, eventually to win the Prize; insights into the importance of the laureate's mentor in earlier life, and into the significanceof the location where prize-winning research is carried out; and a variety of responses to the question: what first turned you to science? No less fascinating are the well-publicised examples of deserving (in many eyes) scientists who were not awarded the Nobel Prize, and Professor Hargittai devotesa chapter to them.Here, then, is an absorbing account of science, scientists, and a Prize created a hundred years ago to reward those who, in the words of Alfred Nobel's Will, 'during the previous year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.'