There’s more to life than a Nobel Prize

‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘When two armies of equal strength can annihilate each other in an instant,’ wrote… ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘When two armies of equal strength can annihilate each other in an instant,’ wrote Alfred Nobel, ‘then all civilized nations will retreat and disband their troops.’ Nobel wasn’t talking about nuclear weapons, but dynamite. It is perhaps his best-remembered invention out of over 350 ideas he patented through the course of his life. But instead of leading to world peace through mutually assured destruction, dynamite helped create the most coveted award on the planet: the Nobel Prize. ‘ ‘ ‘ In his will, Nobel set guidelines to establish a foundation that would recognize the best achievements of mankind. With 33 million Swedish kroner that he saved, Nobel paid for the prizes on the interest it generated. This year’s awards will be announced this week through Oct. 13, with prizes being given in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics. Winners will take home 10 million kroner (about $1.4 million US) and membership to a very elite intellectual group. ‘ ‘ ‘ Despite the aura of prestige surrounding the awards, there have been some questionable nominees since the first awards were handed out in 1901. Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler have all been considered for the Peace Prize. Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shared the 1994 Peace Prize. The three separately laid claim to such accomplishments as shelling a village of 800 Lebanese civilians, developing a nuclear arsenal and expelling ethnic Arab groups from their homes. ‘ ‘ ‘ Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, won the Peace Prize, alongside Le Duc Tho, in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War. The terms of the deal were broken soon after, however, and Tho turned down his prize, noting that there was still a war in his homeland. Kissinger accepted his award, much to the objection of anti-war leftists who looked down upon his secret bombing of Cambodia and efforts to overthrow the Chilean government. ‘ ‘ ‘ Al Gore won in 2007 for raising public awareness of global warming. Ironically, the Nobel Committee didn’t take into account that Gore’s Nashville mansion consumed roughly twice as much electricity in a single month as an average family did over the course of an entire year. Rigoberta Menchu won the award in 1992 for her work promoting indigenous Guatemalan rights. It turns out her best-known work, the autobiographical ‘I, Rigoberta Menchu,’ was filled with exaggerations; Menchu herself admitted that she made certain changes to her story to get her message across. ‘ ‘ ‘ Some laureates’ work has turned out to be just plain incorrect. The committee got it wrong two years running in 1926 and 1927, when the prizes in medicine went to people who were believed to have discovered that roundworms cause cancer and that malaria can be used as a treatment for syphilitic dementia. More often, the winner’s work will simply be too obscure to appreciate. The year 2006 saw a prize go to John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for ‘their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.’ Far out. ‘ ‘ ‘ Notable Nobel Prize omissions include Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Apparently neither Tesla nor Edison ever received the prize in science because of their rivalry with one another. In Tesla’s case, the prize winnings might have made such a difference that they changed modern technology as we know it. In a 1908 interview with Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony Magazine, Tesla described the project he was working on with initial financing from J.P. Morgan: ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere … [It will] enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing or print can be transferred from one to another place.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ After funds ran out for this project, which sounds suspiciously like today’s Internet, his research tower was demolished and sold for scrap in 1917. ‘ ‘ ‘ So don’t feel sore if those fickle Norwegians pass you over again this year. You won’t know if you’re nominated, and there’s no way to nominate yourself. Sure, the prize money would be great, but you’d also be in the company of some of the 20th century’s most bloodthirsty tyrants. Or maybe, like Tesla, you’re just way too ahead of your own time. As things stand, I’d be pretty happy with one of those fancy Breckenridge Summer Research grants. Nominate Brandon at bkp3@pitt.edu.