Geniuses, Heroes, and Saints: The Nobel Prize and the Public Image of Science

In this middling report, Bucchi (Newton’s Chicken), a professor of science and technology in society at the University of Trento in Italy, aspires to show how the Nobel Prize has shaped public perception of science, but settles for trivia about winners and the selection process. Delving into the Nobel committee’s sometimes fractious closed-door deliberations, he describes how members bickered for years over whether to recognize Fritz Haber, who finally received the chemistry prize in 1918, because while his discovery of how to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia transformed agriculture, it was also used to produce German explosives in WWI. There are some amusing tidbits peppered throughout, as when Bucchi notes that the longest wait for a prize belongs to German physicist Ernst Ruska, who had to bide his time for 53 years before receiving Nobel recognition of his 1933 work on electrons. Unfortunately, Bucchi’s half-hearted stabs at social analysis fall apart under scrutiny. For instance, he argues that Nobel winners are venerated like religious icons, but his evidence (Galileo’s middle finger has been preserved like a relic and news coverage of Louis Pasteur’s death depicted him as a haloed angel) consists of scientists who died before the first prizes were awarded. Heavier on anecdotes than insight, this comes up short. (May)