So, the Nobel committee has refused the call to instigate new Nobels for public health and environment. It’s an interesting development, because it shows that the committee are not particularly bothered about making the prizes more populist.
That has to be a good thing, in my opinion. In an age when scientists are under ever more pressure to do research that has headline-grabbing potential, it’s great that the greatest prize goes to those who are almost certainly not household names – and, in most cases, never will be – for research that rarely has immediate resonance with the public. It’s a nightmare for journalists, because we have to make that link between where the breakthrough happens and where it might lead. Perhaps this year, with prizes for research involving optical fibre, digital image capture and ageing, things have been a little easier than usual. But the research that leads to Nobel prizes is still at the cutting edge of science, the bleak frontier where it is incredibly difficult to make world-changing progress (as I've explained here). The amazing thing is, people do make that progress, and they do it because the process of discovery, though unbelievably hard-going, is its own reward.
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