The Nobel Prize for physics was announced the other day. I was shocked when I heard who the winners were. Was it because I didn’t think Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez didn’t deserve the award? Not at all, my issue is with the timing of the announcement.
Penrose, Genzel, and Ghez were recognized for their work on Black Holes. Certainly, they could have (and should have) recognized these three a few years ago when Stephen Hawking was still alive. Hawking surely would have shared in the prize. Black Holes were his thing, he got Issac Newton’s old job at Cambridge University because of his insight into those pesky entities that popped out of Albert Einstein’s equations.
The Nobel Prize can not be awarded posthumously, so Hawking, who died in 2018, was not honored. I find that very curious. I decided to write a short post about it because I have a pretty good idea why the Nobel Committee waited until after Hawking’s death to give out Nobel Prizes for research on Black Holes.
Scientists do not like publicity seekers. And if you want to know the truth, those scientists who write books for a general audience, or take the time to educate the public on television, are not always viewed with high esteem. I have lots of stories to back up my claims.
Carl Sagan, the astronomer, was denied tenure at Harvard University due to his high profile. Sagan, as some of you might remember, made numerous appearances on The Tonight Show way back when Johnny Carson was the host. He was also the host of Cosmos, a popular science show on PBS.
Few people would argue that popularizers of science are a bad thing. This country needs more scientists to stand up and engage the public. The problem is that when people do that, it creates issues with their colleagues. I was always taught that a good scientist, a real scientist, puts their head down and gets to work. Fame is (and could be nothing more) than a distraction.
Stephen Jay Gould, the famous evolutionary biologist who wrote hundreds of essays for a general audience, was nearly denied tenure at Harvard. The simple fact is, the other professors in his department felt he should be spending more time doing basic research and less time on television.
One of those professors was E.O. Wilson, one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived. I mention Wilson because he recently called Richard Dawkins, another top scientist, a “journalist” because Dawkins spends so much time engaging the public in an attempt to educate the masses on scientific matters. Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene,” is one of the most important ever written. Many academics feel that Dawkins’ time would be better spent writing technical articles on the nature of those selfish genes than debating religious leaders on evolution.
One last story has to do with a couple drunks I used to work with. One guy, an archaeologist who was constantly drinking, nearly got into a fistfight with another archaeologist, one who was only drunk half the time, over stories about digs that kept showing up in the newspaper. The half-drunk guy lived for publicity, the drunk guy lived to drink. And yes, it was a combustible combination.
I think it is safe to say that Stephen Hawking, a man whom Homer Simpson referred to as “that wheelchair guy,” was the most famous scientist alive. When you consider that Penrose collaborated with Hawking, and that most of the seminal papers were published in the 1960s, it is fairly safe to say that the committee delayed the award on purpose. You might ask: Is it really possible that they would wait out Hawking until he died to award the research on Black Holes? Are human beings really that petty and cruel? Are those questions rhetorical or are the answers obvious?
I will stop here. I have lots of work to do, my office is right down the road and there are lots of folders on my desk. The only way I will ever get it all done is to put my head down and get to work.
