What We Prize
By Robert T. Pennock
Recognitions of scientific achievement express basic research values.
This Article From Issue
March-April 2026
Volume 114, Number 2
Page 90
No one wins a Nobel Prize in science. This claim may seem to be a strange one to make, considering how the media covers the announcements in Sweden throughout the autumn of each year, culminating in the formal presentations on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The Nobel Foundation coordinates the prizes, arranges the ceremony, and manages the endowment that Nobel funded, but it does not pick who will get them. Writing on the centenary of the Nobel Foundation in 2000, Erling Norrby, then the Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, emphasized that the awarding institutions—the Nobel Committees at the Academy (for the prizes in physics and chemistry, and now also economics) and the Karolinska Institute (for the prize in physiology or medicine)—carry “the sole responsibility for selecting prize recipients.” He made special note of the term recipients, emphasizing: “not winners—one doesn’t win a Nobel Prize.”
QUICK TAKE
- Some prominent scientists have rejected awards and accolades as counter to the point of doing science, and some have questioned whether these prizes promote elitism.
- The values expressed by scientific recognitions can help to determine their underlying purpose, which is to hold up individuals as exemplars of good research.
- Recipients of scientific recognitions best use these accolades when they advance the values of science and raise up and assist the next generation of scientists.
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