How Indians will harvest science Nobel prizes in the coming years

Only a few from India such as CV Raman and Venkatesh Ramakrishnan have been awarded the Nobel Prize for physical sciences. For long, India did not have a highly developed science system to truly merit a greater claim to the prizes. But with economic progress the science system has improved in the country.

India is now at a point when cutting edge research is happening routinely in its labs and research institutes. Indians, however, had not mastered the game of citation, peer recommendation and nomination that defines the pathway to getting a Nobel prize. But that may well have changed.

To illustrate a case in point: The Royal Society in the UK is a large club of top scientists in which Indians had a limited representation. The society has approximately 1,600 fellows and foreign members, including around 80 Nobel laureates. Each year up to 52 fellows and up to 10 foreign members are elected from a group of around 700 candidates proposed by the existing fellowship.

Over the last 20 years, only some 20 Indians were elected to the society. But this year, alone, four Indian scientists have been elected — an unprecedented feat. They are Akshay Venkatesh and Manjul Bhargava in mathematics, and Gagandeep Kang and Anant Parekh for health science.

Speaking to The Federal, Kang said that in the fields she works in, namely clinical and translational research in communicable diseases, India has a long way to go. “In some fields, research in India is world-class,” she added.

How to get the prize

Contrary to popular perception a Nobel prize is given not for a lifetime achievement in science but rather for an important advance that is considered to “somehow open a new door or awaken our eyes” and thanks to that discovery, the discipline would be viewed in a different way.” Also to be seriously considered as a Nobel achievement the discovery must produce “a substantial impact” for the field and give a new paradigm in that field. It is believed that no one so far nominated for the first time has ever won.

Conditions to win a Nobel prize:
– Seeking to advance human knowledge or create a solution to a world problem.
– Be good with the public, most scientists are known in their peer networks but there is a necessity for the public at large to know about your research and the impact that it has or could have on their lives.

The award process for a Nobel prize goes through distinct stages. Nominations are made by former winners, politicians and powerful folk. The Norwegian committee creates a shortlist of five to 20 people. No one in the committee is from politics since the perception is that their judgment can be swayed otherwise. Nominees are scrutinised by experts and permanent members of the committees. Consensus is preferred although by October, if things come to it, the nominee who gets the maximum votes gets the award.

The process of nomination and selection for physics and chemistry starts with the Nobel committee sending out confidential forms to persons who are competent and qualified to nominate. The qualified nominators have the right to submit proposals.

By statute, the right is enjoyed by Swedish and foreign members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; members of the Nobel Committee for physics; Nobel laureates in physics; tenured professors in the physical sciences at the universities and institutes of technology of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, and Karolinska Institute, Stockholm; holders of corresponding chairs in at least six universities or university colleges (normally, hundreds of universities) selected by the Academy of Sciences with a view to ensuring the appropriate distribution over the different countries and their seats of learning; other scientists from whom the Academy may see fit to invite proposals.

Decisions as to the selection of the scientific scholars referred to in the above shall be taken each year before the end of the month of September. The Nobel Committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for the selection of candidates for the Physics Prize from the names submitted for consideration by qualified nominators, who have been invited through formal letters.

The statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for 50 years. The restriction concerns the nominees and nominators, as well as investigations and opinions related to the award of a prize.

From the archives we know how CV Raman won the Nobel prize in 1930. Twelve people nominated him: 1929 by Charles Fabry; 1929 by Niels Bohr; 1930 by Jean Perrin; 1930 by Orest Khvolson; 1930 by Eugène Bloch; 1930 by Niels Bohr; 1930 by Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie; 1930 by Maurice de Broglie; 1930 by Richard Pfeiffer; 1930 by Ernest Lord Rutherford; 1930 by Johannes Stark; and 1930 by Charles Wilson.

Later, Raman went on to nominate the following as well for the award:
Physics 1934 for Otto Stern
Physics 1938 for Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence
Physics 1939 for Ernest Lawrence
Physics 1957 for Subramanyan Chandrasekhar
Chemistry 1964 for Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran

It may well be that Indians have enough presence in the global science arena to trigger a cascade of nominations for a fellow Indian.