Death, is dead." Except that Alfred Nobel was very much alive. He had just read his

own mistaken obituary. And it wasn't exactly flattering. So he decided that day that he

would leave a different legacy. And so, the Nobel Prizes were born.

[music]

So after realizing that pretty much everyone hated him, Alfred Nobel set aside money in

his will to fund the prizes that still bear his name today. But with each year they get

a bit more controversial. Do the Nobel Prizes still make sense in the 21st century?

The Nobel Prizes have been awarded pretty much annually since 1901, according to Alfred's

will, to "men and women who have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind" in the subjects

of chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine, literature and peace. Win one, and you're

known for life as a "laureate", a nod to the Greek custom of placing a crown of laurels

upon a hero's head. Except today, instead of a shrub hat you get a nice pile of money

and a big shiny medal.

But that's pretty much all his will says about it, like "here's some coin, you guys put it

in the bank, take the interest, give it to some talented people each year." That's not

a whole lot to go on. So the Nobel Prize Foundation in Sweden has established a few more rules

that Al didn't lay out specifically in his will. First you have to be nominated by the

experts in your field, and you can't nominate yourself. Second, you have to be alive when

they award it to you, because no one likes those award shows where somebody shows up

to accept it on your behalf, because you're like, too busy or something. And third, the

prize can go to a maximum of three people, and it has to be individuals and not institutions,

although they fudged with that one a little bit. I'm looking at you here, Peace Prize.

There's a few more rules than that but the rest are pretty boring.

For the most part those rules have worked pretty well. Nobel laureates in science are

some of the greatest minds who have ever lived, and they deserve to be recognized. Except

for you, Johannes Fibiger in 1926. You were just flat-out wrong, dude.

So how do you win a Nobel Prize? Well, you do something AWESOME. Like, discover antibiotics,

like Fleming, or quantum physics, like Heisenberg.

And make yourself a white male, age 59, preferably from the United States or Western Europe working

at Harvard, Cambridge, MIT, Caltech, Stanford or Berkeley.

Check out this infographic by Giorgia Lupi, link in the description, it uncovers some

pretty eyebrow-raising consistency in who gets Nobel prizes. Now I'm not saying that

these people don't deserve the Nobel Prize, those universities are some of the best in

the world, and I'm not saying people are getting the Nobel because they are white and male.

but . . .

You only have to look at this year's winners in science to see that there's, well, kind

of a pattern.

Since their inception, only 15 women have won Nobel Prizes in the sciences, with Marie

Curie winning twice, because she's just that bad-ass.

Women are underrepresented among Nobel Laureates in the sciences, plain and simple. Do I even

need to say the name? Do I?! Rosalind Franklin! Of course they got her on a technicality,

she had passed away when Watson, Crick and Wilkins won for the double helix. But what

about Jocelyn Bell Burnell, or Lise Meitner?! We've got some 'splainin to do.

Except for the size of the pile of Swedish Krona that you get, not much has changed about

the awarding of Nobel Prizes since well, ever.

It begs the question. Or questions: Is it time to overhaul the Nobel prizes? Do they

really represent how science is done? What are they for, exactly?

In the early days of the Nobel Prizes they were often given to lone researchers working

on "Big Questions" with little money or equipment at their disposal. Because most science at

the time was done by lone researchers working on "Big Questions" with little money or equipment

at their disposal.

This is also the era that gave birth to the myth of the "lone genius". Science is not

done by people sitting around, going "hmmm", coming up with great ideas, and then just

dusting their hands off and walking away. Science is a deliberate and painstakingly

slow process that's not just about creativity, but about collaboration and combination of

ideas.

Steve Jobs knew that "Creativity was just connecting things." and Thomas Edison knew

that his success was not magical genius but "the product of the severest kind of mental

and physical application."

In 2009 an open letter leading scientists sent a letter to the Nobel Foundation urging

them to get with the times and expand their categories because it turns out that 1901

is not actually that much like today. I mean airplanes, anybody?

Take computers, something that did not even exist in Nobel's time. They're kind of important

to science today. And so much of what we do is part of large multinational projects involving

thousands of individual scientists, like the Human Genome Project. I mean, how do you give

a Nobel Prize for that? Like really, I'd like to know. Because they deserve one.

Nowhere is this controversy more obvious than in the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics. More

than 5,000 authors were listed on the papers announcing the confirmation of the Higgs boson

last year. Yet just two of the perhaps six theorists were given the prize. That is at

least 5,004 people left out in the cold.

I mean, I don't like having to tell the world that Jonas Salk never got the Nobel Prize

because we couldn't find the right category for him? I mean, he only helped you not get

polio.

It's not like we can't add new categories. The Nobel for Economics is not actually a

Nobel prize at all, but is awarded at the same ceremony. Why not Nobels, or almost-Nobels

for math, the environment, or computing?

The myth of the lone genius doesn't aid our pursuit of science, it fools us into thinking

that there's something different about the handful of people who win, like they were

born on Krypton or something. I've had the honor of meeting a half dozen* Nobel prize

winners, and they are stunningly, perhaps alarmingly normal people One of them was actually

really weird and mean, but I won't name names.

There's plenty of OTHER awards for individual subjects , but the Nobels are King. And as

King they should represent the best of the world they reward.

Nobel Prizes are chosen by people, and that means they reflect the community that awards

them. And in the case of women, since they are underrepresented in science in general,

their Nobel snubbings are really a symptom of a greater problem.

To the Nobel Prize folks, you've done great work over the past century, but consider this

your mistaken obituary . . . what legacy do you want to leave behind you?

I want to know what you think: Are the Nobel Prizes still relevant? What do you think the

Nobel Prizes of the future should look like? And should we have a Nobel Prize for YouTube

videos? Maybe I could win one.

If you want to know more about the history of the Nobel prizes, check out Molly Oldfield's

book "The Secret Museum". There's a link in the description below.