Prize sensitive: Is it time for a change in how the Nobels are awarded?

Could new areas of focus help drive change in our world? What would it take to do things differently, and arguably (think of the Peace Prize) do them better?

This year, AI made its way into the Nobels.

(Adobe Stock)

The prize in physics was awarded to computer scientists John Hopfield, 91, and Geoffrey Hinton, 76, for their early role in the advancement of artificial intelligence. The chemistry Nobel was shared by computational biologist David Baker and AI experts Demis Hassabis (co-founder of Google DeepMind) and John Jumper (director at DeepMind) for their work on protein design and predicting protein structure using AI.

The awards, announced in October and set to be handed over on December 10, have upset purists more dramatically than any prize since rapper Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer for Music (in 2018). Back then, classical musicians around the world said they were prompted to look around and ask: Really, was there no one here you thought worthy?

This is perhaps understandable, given how incredibly precious these prizes are.

There are, after all, 10 times more billionaires alive today than there are living Nobel laureates (though that is admittedly also a reflection of our fraying economic systems).

But is it perhaps time for a significant shift?

Alfred Nobel instituted the awards because he wanted to be remembered as more than the “merchant of death” who invented dynamite. He wanted to leave behind an endowment that would push humanity to be better, do better, and celebrate the greatest minds of each generation.

He laid out five categories: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace (the Economics Prize is handed out by a separate but affiliated panel and was not part of the original set).

All these decades since they were first handed out in 1901, change has already crept in.

The Nobel has become something of a lifetime achievement award, rather than a recognition of something discovered, solved or invented in the preceding year as Alfred Nobel intended.

In the sciences, the prize is typically awarded 20 years after the initial discovery. In economics, that gap is closer to 30 years. The literature prize is a lifetime achievement award for a full body of work.

What would it mean for the committee to change more deliberately, to acknowledge leaps in vital new areas?

The United Nations, a “glass half full” in many respects, has nonetheless shown how the simple framing of aspirations can galvanise action. Its 17 SDGs or Sustainable Development Goals are now among the key parameters used by governments, philanthropists, activists and researchers, to track progress on the most urgent problems facing us today.

If an Economics prize could be added in 1968, why not new Nobels for climate science and sustainability too?

Award to the wise

Admittedly, a fine balance would be vital. The reason the Nobels hold the prestige they do is that there are so few, granted with such rigour.

The purse itself isn’t very large, at about $1 million (awarded in Swedish kronor, so that the dollar value varies a bit). Wimbledon winners take home nearly three times as much.

But there is no drama and no lobbying attached to the Nobel committee’s deliberations. Not even the names on the shortlist are ever revealed. And so, a dignified, graceful fame attaches to the winners.

These are not actors or singers or sportspeople; they are not hustlers or celebrities. They are bona fide geniuses who worked quietly, invisibly, for decades, to solve a specific, pivotal problem facing humanity.

The Nobel, then, is a solemn “thank you” on behalf of the world.

The impact could be immeasurable, if this kind of prestige attached to solving the problems that now top the list of most pressing issues of our time.

Honour code

It is perhaps time for other shifts too.

Since they were first handed out, perhaps inevitably, two key criticisms have been levelled at the awards: that certain deserving people are consistently overlooked; and that the ambit of the winners’ list is too narrow, leaving out too many who made a considerable contribution.

It is true that only the Peace Prize can be given to an organisation. Prizes in other categories must be shared by a maximum of three people. In a world of increasingly interdisciplinary, collaborative research, a change here is overdue.

Returning to the first criticism: Mahatma Gandhi never won the Peace Prize, but Barack Obama did, in 2009, less than nine months into his first term. He was, in fact, the third sitting US President to win (the others being Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919).

Thinking about who should and shouldn’t win the Peace Prize can lead down interesting rabbit holes. No one would disagree, for instance, that one of our grandest challenges as a species is eliminating extreme poverty. Surely anyone making great strides here should qualify?

Well, according to a 2022 World Bank report, 770 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty over decades, in a sustained and “historically unprecedented” effort in China.

If the thought of awarding a peace prize to that effort makes one uncomfortable, it’s a reminder that any prize of such magnitude is a complex, tangled endeavour.

Why, for instance, is much of the world more comfortable with Bob Dylan winning the Nobel for Literature (in 2016) than with Lamar’s Pulitzer?

There’s a lot to think about. An acknowledgement of that, from the group of Scandinavians tasked with awarding the world’s best minds, would be a good start.