Annals of Ranking: Which decades produced "better" Nobel Prizes in Science?

Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen have the click-bait article of the month in The Atlantic, Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck, with the following summary (abstract?):

Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong?

Here's their methodology:

we ran a survey asking scientists to compare Nobel Prize–winning discoveries in their fields. We then used those rankings to determine how scientists think the quality of Nobel Prize–winning discoveries has changed over the decades.

As a sample survey question, we might ask a physicist which was a more important contribution to scientific understanding: the discovery of the neutron (the particle that makes up roughly half the ordinary matter in the universe) or the discovery of the cosmic-microwave-background radiation (the afterglow of the Big Bang). Think of the survey as a round-robin tournament, competitively matching discoveries against each other, with expert scientists judging which is better.

For the physics prize, we surveyed 93 physicists from the world’s top academic physics departments (according to the Shanghai Rankings of World Universities), and they judged 1,370 pairs of discoveries. [...]

Collison and Nielsen did this decade-wise comparison of Nobel winning discoveries across nine decades spanning the years 1901-1990 [The authors note that "[the prize-winning] work is attributed to the year in which the discovery was made, not when the subsequent prize was awarded"].

Not surprisingly, the two following decades (1911-1930) get the best ratings.

Infosys Prize ...

Congratulations to our colleagues and friends Prof. Navakanta Bhat and Prof. S.K. Satheesh on winning the Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science, and Physical Sciences, respectively. They join Prof. Sriram Ramaswamy (PS, 2011), Prof. Jayant Haritsa (EaCS, 2014), and Prof. V. Kumaran (EaCS, 2016) in the list of prize winners from IISc.

This year's other winners are Prof. Kavita Singh (JNU) in Humanities, Roop Malik (TIFR) in Life Sciences, Prof. Nalini Anantharaman (University of Strassbourg) in Mathematics, Prof. Sendhil Mullainathan (University of Chicago) in Social Sciences.

Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan on Nobels and Nationalism

In The Telegraph today, Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan (who will visit India soon for a vacation and a lecture tour) says a lot of sensible things:

As for India sharing in the glory of his Nobel Prize (and that of Amartya Sen), he wonders why Indians are relatively unexcited about Ashoke Sen, the theoretical physicist known for his work on string theory and who shared in the $22m Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics set up by the Russian Yuri Milner.

In Indians not giving as much importance to Sen as they do to Nobel Prize winners, "there is something a little wrong," he remarks. [...]

A question not to ask Venki is: "How should India win more Nobel Prizes?"

"That's actually completely the wrong question because there are so many discoveries that never get a Nobel Prize. It's not a good reason to go into anything," he responds.

"First of all countries don't win them, it's people who win them," he points out. "If a person from a country wins a Nobel Prize it doesn't necessarily mean that that county is doing well overall. It could be just a fluke. It is more important for a country to just nurture scientists and provide them good environments, a decent living and help them to lead a productive life."

IISc Scientist in Forbes-India's 30-Under-30 List

A recent issue of Forbes-India featured a 30-Under-30 list (which sounds very much like the MIT Tech Review's 35-Under-35 list of innovators). It's great to see Prerna Sharma, a colleague in the Department of Physics (and a TIFR alumna), in the list. Also, Sharma is the lone scientist in the list!

Jayant Haritsa: Why Indian students should be goats, and not sheep

1. This year's Infosys Prize winner from our Institute, Prof. Jayant Haritsa, has a blog post at the Infosys Science Foundation website: Why Indian students should be goats, and not sheep.

2. The Infosys Prize ceremony happened a few days ago, and the videos have been posted on a YouTube channel devoted to the Prize. Jayant's acceptance speech is here, and the other highlight of the event, Prof. Amartya Sen's speech, is here.

   Here's a video profile of Jayant (you can find profiles of the other winners at the Infosys Prize channel). Knowing Jayant's sharp wit, I'm not surprised that he identifies "a very good sense of humour" as the first item when asked about "attributes of a researcher."

Auctioning of Jim Watson's Nobel Medal

There are just too many bizarre twists in this sequence: James Watson auctioned off his 1962 Nobel Medal; the highest bidder, a Russian multi-billionaire, bought it and returned it to Watson. Read more about Watson's peevish motivations here, and about the aftermath of the auction here.

Congratulations to ...

I completely missed the Infosys Prize announcement [reason: travel, with little internet access]. When I eventually caught up with the news, I was absolutely delighted see this year's list featuring Prof. Jayant Haritsa, a friend and colleague (and a friend of this blog!), who won the Engineering Prize.

I was also pleased to find Prof. Shamnad Basheer winning the Humanities Prize. I have never met him, but I have been following his work (on and off) through Spicy IP, a blog / forum / initiative founded by him to discuss issues related to intellectual property laws.

Congratulations to all the Prize winners, and especially to Jayant and Shamnad!

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[Aside: It's great to get back to this blog with such wonderful news!]

When a Nobel Medal Went to Fargo, North Dakota

Astrophysicist and 2011 Nobel winner Brian Schmidt has this totally priceless story:

"When I won this, my grandma, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, wanted to see it. I was coming around so I decided I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays—it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’

I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’

They said, ‘What’s in the box?’

I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.

So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’

I said, ‘gold.’

And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’

‘The King of Sweden.’

‘Why did he give this to you?’

‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’

At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”

ChemViews Interview of Prof. Dan Shechtman

I really do believe that anyone who gets the Nobel Prize deserves it. But that doesn’t mean that whoever deserves a Nobel gets one.

Those are the opening words from Prof. Dan Shechtman in this wonderful interview he gave during last year's Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

The interview covers a wide range of topics, including the pivotal role of electron microscopy in the discovery of quasicrystals, and his own tenacious belief in the essential correctness of his discovery even in the face of strong opposition from stalwarts like Linus Pauling.

Very, very good stuff!

Links

1. Wildlife photographer, author of Secret Lives, and IISc alumna Natasha Mhatre writes about the hard work that went into the wonderful potter wasp pic that won the first prize in the National Wildlife Federation photo contest. Key quote: " I didn't click it, I didn't snap it, no, no, I stalked it and I made it."

2. Mathematical eye-candy: John Baez has an animated picture of the Enneper Surface drawn by Greg Egan.

3. Vi Hart: How I Feel About Logarithms: "I like the number 8. I like the way it smells like 2 and 4 with a hint of 3 in a cubic sort of way ..."

Arunn's Essay on C.N.R. Rao

If you can read Tamil, I strongly recommend my co-blogger Arunn's essay on Prof. Rao and his career.

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Here at IISc, we had a charming little event to felicitate Prof. Rao on the Bharat Ratna award. His arrival was greeted with a standing ovation from all the faculty gathered at the Faculty Hall. Prof. Rao gave a short, sweet and very gracious speech in which recounted some of the key events in his life at our Institute.

Congratulations to Prof. C.N.R. Rao

He joins Bharat Ratnas C.V. Raman (1954), M. Visvesvaraya (1955), and Abdul Kalam (1997) to take the S&T count to four (out of forty three).

Gopal Raj at The Hindu and Pallava Bhagla at NDTV have written credible summaries of the Prof. Rao's career, while The Hindu has the first reactions from India's science biggies.

Prof. Rao is probably getting annoyed by all the news coverage portraying him as the "other" Bharat Ratna. Grating though they may be, the twin spotlight on Prof. Rao and Sachin Tendulkar, and the inevitable parallels between them -- dependable consistency, prolific scores, centuries, child-like enthusiasm coupled with a professional approach, and the sheer length of their career at the highest level -- do have the virtue of getting a lot of people to relate better to Prof. Rao's pursuit of science.

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Update: G.S. Mudur's piece in The Telegraph is also pretty good.

Mid-career Academic : Award :: Pregnant Woman : Nausea

This out of the box analogy appears in a post from J. Devika at Kafila about a new award instituted by the University of Calicut. Here's an extended quote:

... If you are in the business of reading and writing in Kerala then you MUST receive some award by mid-career — it’s a bit like experiencing nausea and tiredness in early pregnancy. You MUST have it, it is the surest sign of being pregnant, and sometimes to enjoy people’s kindness towards a pregnant woman, you need to get vomiting soonest possible. You can’t get into a conversation about pregnancy with other women without being able to recount your experience of being nauseous and tired.

Robert Shiller on sharing this year's Nobel with Eugene Fama

He doesn't really hide much, does he?

Sidebar

See also: How Shiller helped Fama win the Nobel by Barry Ritholtz.

* * *

But the [efficient markets] theory is commonly thought, at least by enthusiasts, to imply much more. Notably, it has been argued that regular movements in the markets reflect a wisdom that transcends the best understanding of even the top professionals, and that it is hopeless for an ordinary mortal, even with a lifetime of work and preparation, to question pricing. Market prices are esteemed as if they were oracles.

This view grew to dominate much professional thinking in economics, and its implications are dangerous.[...]

And ...

Professor Fama avoids theories that describe these risk premia as even possibly reflecting irrational behavior, and I think he’s wrong about that. [...]

I would not ... recommend that monetary or fiscal authorities seek inspiration from his theories on how to stabilize the economy. He doubts the existence of any bubble before this crisis, and his philosophy would have let banks fail at the beginning of it.

Samar Halarnkar Profiles Bhatnagar Prize Winners

Two of his recent Mint columns have been on the research by Prof. Yamuna Krishnan (NCBS) and Prof. Bikramjit Basu (IISc). Do check them out; from what Halarnkar says in the first -- "In the weeks to come, Frontier Mail will tell you what these scientists do and why it is important" -- we will get to read soon about the others as well.

Sidebar

[Aside: Given that CSIR cannot rouse itself to put together a citation to accompany what are arguably the most prestigious awards in India -- see my little rant at the end of this post -- I think Halarnkar is performing a great service through these articles]

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1. Those incredible DNA machines

   Krishnan, who did her doctorate at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge, UK, has shown how DNA can be artificially woven into longer strands, like a weaver’s tapestry, or a child’s matchstick house. “Just in the way we make architectures on the macro scale with matchsticks and fevicol, we can do the same with DNA,” Krishnan tells me over email from Boston, where she has just given two lectures. Much like using fingers to assemble matchsticks, Krishnan uses chemicals called enzymes to manipulate strips, or sequences, of DNA to create nanoscale architecture: new structures smaller than 100 nanometres, invisible to the human eye. These DNA sequences can be copied, cut or pasted to create nanoscale machines of living matter. In contrast with non-biological options, DNA devices are biocompatible (unlikely to trigger the body’s immune system) and biodegradable (they can disintegrate harmlessly once their work).

   This May, in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, Krishnan and her team demonstrated for the first time how two nanomachines constructed from DNA could test acidity in two different places inside a living cell, an advance from running a single DNA nanomachine at a time. Abnormal cellular acidity is a marker for many diseases, and the use of DNA devices promises tools for future probes or disease therapies.

2. The Bone Creator

   At the heart of Basu’s investigations is electricity, more precisely the mastery of extremely mild electric currents, which course through and serve as the language of living cells. The idea that electricity informs cells how to grow is not new. Living things have a constant, though very gentle, flow of electricity. Over decades, scientists have even fiddled with voltages to create frogs with eyes on their back and hearts in the wrong places.

   What Basu does is apply electricity to grow bone, cardiac, nerve and even stem cells (which can grow into other types of cells) atop an artificial substrate, or surface, somewhat like butter on toast—except that this butter must spread itself on the diner’s urging.

   This is not easy. The bioengineer requires a precise knowledge of when and how much electric current to apply to cells growing on foreign foundations. “Cell division should not be affected and the cells should not die,” says Basu. “When two cells talk to each other, the material has to facilitate that crosstalk.”

Links

1. Hugo Horta at University World News: Understanding the pros and cons of academic inbreeding.

2. A Nobel Prize Winner on Why We Need Foundational Research: An interview of James E. Rothman, a Physiology/Medicine Prize winner this year, by New Yorker's Lisa Rosenbaum.

3. Joshua Gans at Digitopoly: Harvard Business School Publishing crosses the ‘evil’ academic line.

4. Sharon Begley (Reuters, March 2012): In cancer science, many "discoveries" don't hold up.

5. Sara Rimer (NYTimes, November 2004): When Plagiarism's Shadow Falls on Admired Scholars.

6. Survey - Science Fraud: The Hard Figures.

Links

1. Max Nisen in Business Insider: How Winning Awards Changes People. A commentary on the working paper entitled Prizes and Productivity: How Winning the Fields Medal Affects Scientific Output by George J. Borjas and Kirk B. Doran.

2. Pam Belluck in Well, a NYTimes blog: For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov. Commentary on this study (paywalled).

3. Drew Desilver at the Fact Tank: Chart of the Week: The world’s most popular web sites. [via Matt Yglesias]

4. Laura Sydell at NPR's All Things Considered: Record Label Picks Copyright Fight — With The Wrong Guy. The "wrong guy" is Harvard's Lawrence Lessig.

5. Gillian Tett in FT: Geeks can be girls.

Republic Day Awards

Happy Republic Day, folks!

It's great to see some familiar names in this year's list of Republic Day Awards, aka the Padma Awards -- Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shri.

Hearty congratulations to Prof. Roddam Narasimha (JNC, Bangalore), Prof. Ajay Sood (a senior colleague at IISc) and Prof. K. Vijay Raghavan (Director of NCBS, Bangalore, and occasional commenter (!) here ;-)!

Colleagues in the News

1. The S.S. Bhatnagar Prizes for this year were announced today, and it's great to see three of my IISc colleagues in the list: Prof. N. Ravishankar (Engineering), Prof. Arindam Ghosh (Physics) and Prof. G. Mugesh (Chemistry).

   Congratulations to the Prize winners!

2. Last year's SSB Prize winners received their award at a CSIR ceremony this morning. That elite crew included a couple of IISc colleagues as well: Prof. U. Ramamurty and Prof. K.N. Balaji.

3. A Forbes (India) article on academics with an interest in entrepreneurship carries a profile of Prof. Rudra Pratap, Chairman of IISc's Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE). [There are profiles of several others too.]

Congratulations ...

... to Prof. K. VijayRaghavan (Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Banaglore) and Prof. M. Vidyasagar (who is currently with the University of Texas - Dallas, after decade-long stints each at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bangalore, and TCS, Hyderabad) who have just been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. [News via Subhra Priyadarshini at Indigenus].

Awesome!