The Road to Stockholm. Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists

Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-19-860785-4
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 388 Seiten, Format (B × H): 129 mm x 198 mm, Gewicht: 416 g

The Nobel Prizes enjoy enormous prestige throughout the world. Every year, science is propelled into the limelight, and in October, when the prizes are announced, and December, when they are awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm, a chosen few scientists acquire celebrity status and their science receives wide coverage in the news media. First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prize remains the only science prize widely recognized by the general public.

What sort of scientists become Nobel laureates? How are they chosen? Are there features common to them, and to their prize-winning research? These sorts of questions have long intrigued István Hargittai and seeking answers, he began interviewing Nobel prize-winning scientists about their careers. Some 70 laureates, and a similar number of other distinguished scientists, have been interviewed, most of them during the late 1990s, and the result is this remarkable book. Written for a general readership, The Road to Stockholm illuminates the nature of scientific discovery, the Nobel Prize selection process, the factors common to award-winning research, and the effects of the Nobel Prize on science itself. Here are stories of scientists who overcame adversity, eventually to win the Prize; insights into the importance of the laureate's mentor in earlier life, and into the significance of the location where prize-winning research is carried out; and a variety of responses to the question: what first turned you to science? No less fascinating are the well-publicised examples of deserving (in many eyes) scientists who were not awarded the Nobel Prize, and Professor Hargittai devotes a chapter to them.

Here, then, is an absorbing account of science, scientists, and a Prize created a hundred years ago to reward those who, in the words of Alfred Nobel's Will, 'during the previous year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hargittai, I.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Human- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politik: Sachbuch, Politikerveröffentlichungen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Populärwissenschaftliche Werke
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Über Autor(innen)

István Hargittai is Professor of Chemistry of the Budapest University of Technology, and Economics and Research Professor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Eötvös University. He has done research in molecular structures, lectured in 30 countries, and authored books on structural chemistry and symmetry-related topics, including Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist (with Magdolna Hargittai), second edition, Plenum; Symmetry: A Unifying Concept, Shelter Publ.; In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery (with Magdolna Hargittai), Kluwer/Plenum; and Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists and Candid Science II: Conversations with Famous Biomedical Scientists, Imperial College Press. He is Editor-in-Chief of Structural Chemistry (Kluwer, New York). In December 2001, Professor Hargittai was invited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm to deliver a lecture on the subject of this book.