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I've always thought Nobel prizes are awarded based on the winners' works in that particular year so this came as huge surprise. Too late for Hawking indeed, he

I've always thought Nobel prizes are awarded based on the winners' works in that particular year so this came as huge surprise. Too late for Hawking indeed, he could've very well been one of the winners today.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
There's a huge backlog of people who deserve Nobel prizes. The committee is also conservative, and doesn't want to give out a prize for something that turns out to be wrong. Both factors mean that it takes years from discovery to the awarding of a Nobel prize.
- throwaway890369 6y ago
  It's one thing to allow enough time to pass before a given theory/experiment can be considered as "accepted" by science, and therefore eligible to the award. However, the Nobel committee's rules can be considered archaic to a fault: 3 winners at most, all winners must be living at the time of the award. If you want an egregious example of exclusion, look at the 2013 Nobel prize for the discovery of the Higgs boson. The prize was given to Higgs and Englert [0], but by any measure it should have been awarded to the five living scientists who made the discovery [1]. Was there really any reason to exclude Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble, who were all alive at the time of the award, other than a strict adherence to the "rule of three"? [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131008193310/http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/press.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131008193310/http://www.nobelp... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...
  - fsnowdin 6y ago
    Even increasing it to 5 people wouldn't solve the problem. The Nobel prize could be awarded at the institution level rather than invidually but I'm sure there'll be objections to that as well.
auntienomen 6y ago
The opposite, really. Nobel prizes are given out for major works which are now well-accepted. This can take decades, so typically the Nobel is given to now-old scientists as recognition for work done when they were young.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

There's a huge backlog of people who deserve Nobel prizes. The committee is also conservative, and doesn't want to give out a prize for something that turns out to be wrong. Both factors mean that it takes years from discovery to the awarding of a Nobel prize.

throwaway890369 6y ago
It's one thing to allow enough time to pass before a given theory/experiment can be considered as "accepted" by science, and therefore eligible to the award. However, the Nobel committee's rules can be considered archaic to a fault: 3 winners at most, all winners must be living at the time of the award. If you want an egregious example of exclusion, look at the 2013 Nobel prize for the discovery of the Higgs boson. The prize was given to Higgs and Englert [0], but by any measure it should have been awarded to the five living scientists who made the discovery [1]. Was there really any reason to exclude Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble, who were all alive at the time of the award, other than a strict adherence to the "rule of three"? [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131008193310/http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/press.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131008193310/http://www.nobelp... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...
- fsnowdin 6y ago
  Even increasing it to 5 people wouldn't solve the problem. The Nobel prize could be awarded at the institution level rather than invidually but I'm sure there'll be objections to that as well.

auntienomen 6y ago

The opposite, really. Nobel prizes are given out for major works which are now well-accepted. This can take decades, so typically the Nobel is given to now-old scientists as recognition for work done when they were young.