The Era Of US Hegemony In The Number Of Nobel Laureates Has Come To An End - Alternative View

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The Era Of US Hegemony In The Number Of Nobel Laureates Has Come To An End - Alternative View
The Era Of US Hegemony In The Number Of Nobel Laureates Has Come To An End - Alternative View

Video: The Era Of US Hegemony In The Number Of Nobel Laureates Has Come To An End - Alternative View

Video: The Era Of US Hegemony In The Number Of Nobel Laureates Has Come To An End - Alternative View
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Unfortunately, Russia is not destined to replace the Americans at the top of the scientific Olympus.

If in sports the highest triumph is the victory at the Olympics, then in the scientific world such a peak is the Nobel Prize. Its height is determined not only by an impressive monetary fee of $ 1.18 million, but also by the status of a national hero, who immediately receives the winner. From 1901 to 2017, 892 geniuses received the Nobel Prize. Most of them were Americans - 277 people. That is, virtually every third laureate represented Uncle Sam.

However, the days of American hegemony on the scientific Olympus are coming to an end. This is the conclusion reached by the German physicist Claudius Groß from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. His work has been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The German physicist decided to analyze how the intensity of "production" of Nobel laureates in the most developed countries has changed over more than 100 years.

Intelligence of the country in geniuses

As you know, you can measure the height in parrots. But how to evaluate the country's national intelligence in geniuses? It turned out very simply: Gros decided that it was ridiculous to compare the number of titans of thought in countries with different population sizes. It is clear that America, home to 327 million people, will shower the UK with its 65 million with doctoral caps. Therefore, the German scientist used such an indicator as scientific productivity: it is determined by the ratio of the number of Nobel laureates per 100 million people inhabiting the country in the year of the award. At the same time, Gros took into account only scientific prizes, ignoring the Peace Prize and the Prize for Literature, which are often awarded for opportunistic and political reasons.

Scientific productivity is determined by the ratio of the number of Nobel laureates per 100 million people inhabiting the country in the year of the award
Scientific productivity is determined by the ratio of the number of Nobel laureates per 100 million people inhabiting the country in the year of the award

Scientific productivity is determined by the ratio of the number of Nobel laureates per 100 million people inhabiting the country in the year of the award.

“The Americans did not immediately take the leading position,” explains Claudius Gros. - In the late XIX - early XX century, German scientists ruled the ball. And if we assume the possibility that the Nobel Prize would have been founded 20 years earlier, then the overall performance of Germany looked much better. Then, in 1909, the Germans were surpassed by the French in "Nobel productivity". But then France reduced its turnover and “produced” Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine at a constant rate of 0.2 laureates per year per 100 million population. Great results for most of the 20th century were shown by Great Britain, Her Majesty's subjects reached a record figure of 0.98 laureates per 100 million inhabitants. The Americans, on the other hand, began to dominate science in the 1960s.

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True, they did not manage to break the "per capita" record of the British; the Yankees showed the best result in 1972 - 0.83 per 100 million. But due to the size of the population, the absolute achievements of the United States looked very solid. However, since 1972, the Nobel productivity of the United States began to fall noticeably and by now it has dropped 2.4 times to the level of 0.34. And this despite the fact that America accumulates the best minds of the planet - more than 70 Nobel laureates arrived in America from 30 different countries of the world! The decline in efficiency was masked by population growth - since 1972, the number of US residents has increased from 208 million to 327 million. Therefore, the total number of Nobel laureates remained at a decent level.

Germany will overtake America in 2025

However, the graphs show that British scientists, partly famous for their wacky discoveries, are at the same time performing two and a half times more efficiently than their American counterparts. Gross's simulations show that by 2025 the scientific productivity of the United States will be lower than that of Germany. And after 3 years, the Americans will be overtaken by the French.

What happened to the Americans? Have they become more stupid, following the precepts of the satirist Mikhail Zadornov? Or is the science funding system faltering? Claudius Gross does not give an unambiguous answer, but hypothesizes that the number of American Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine is decreasing as we observe a change in priorities in world science. Areas of knowledge that are not included in the list of Nobel disciplines are becoming incredibly relevant. For example, we are talking about computer science. Let's hope that Russian scientists will also show themselves in these new directions.

Recall that the last time Russian science was noted by Nobel was in 2010, when physicists Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who discovered a new material, graphene, became laureates. True, they made this discovery while working abroad.

Distribution of Nobel laureates by country

1. USA - 277

2. Great Britain - 106

3. Germany - 100

4. France - 52

5 Russia - 38 *

* - This figure includes laureates from the USSR and the Russian Empire.

YAROSLAV KOROBATOV