Talk:Nobel laureates by country
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I added this page because, for a Spanish exam coming up, we have to name three laureates from a Spanish-speaking country. I also put this page into Spanish.
List is messed up. Lots of names listed twice, under native country, AND later residence. GangofOne 21:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
From the introduction:
Note: "country" refers to country of residence at the time of receiving the prize, not necessarily the country of birth; unless otherwise known by birth place (e.g. German scientist, Swiss physicist). In cases where the laureate was naturalized and received the prize in the country of naturalization, the birth country is represented in italics.
This seems very subjective. Who's to say whether a laureate is known by their birth place or not? Could we not use the country of origin as defined at nobelprize.org? Several people are listed by both country of birth and residence, so there would still be duplications in the list, but at least there would be consistency. Dillon256 15:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
In the absence of objections I'll make some changes according to the following policies:
- Relying on the official website as a source for nationalities.
- Listing laureates under more than one country if the official website does so.
- For laureates whose birth country differs from their country of residence, putting a * next to their name when they appear in the list for their birth country, and putting their birth country in italics next to their name. Dillon256 15:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
If the criterion for listing a laureate under a particular country is the laureate's nationality as stated in the official website, then Sir Arthur Lewis should be listed under the United Kingdom, with his country of birth, Saint Lucia, following in italics.
How about moving this to Nobel Laureates by country? The phrase is more idiomatic, and the lower case is strongly supported by Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Septentrionalis 20:38, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
William Henry Bragg seems to be missing from this list. He is William L Bragg's father. The former was born in the UK, the latter in Australia. They both worked in both the UK and Australia. I'm not sure where you would want to put WHB. Ordinary Person
[edit] "Judaism"
Isn't it a bit ridiculous to list Jewish Nobel Laureates? "Judaism" is not a country. By that logic "Islam", "Christianity", "Buddism", "Hinduism" and "Atheism" (oh, how about "Voodoo"?) would be sections too. That would just be stuid, wouldn't it? The "Judaism" section also seems to have some racial overtones as well, suggesting that Jewishness is an inherited trait (we all know how that logic turned out). While I won't take the unilateral action of deleting it myself, it seems pretty idiotic to have it there.
Agreed. Jewish Laureates is already a separate list. Besides, Israel is a listed as a nation. Judaism doesn't fit in this list.
[edit] Measure Nobel Prize Fractions to Avoid Misleading Picture
Unfortunately, none of Wikipedia's Nobel laureate lists is taking into account that not all Nobel laureates are of equal importance. Some obviously had much more impact than others. One of them even achieved superstardom and became "man of the century", while most of them remain largely unknown. Here we cannot judge who deserved it etc. But we ought to report how the Nobel committee expresses its own view of the value of individual contributions by awarding fractional prizes. The official Nobel web site explicitly says for each laureate X how much of a Nobel Prize X really got, for example, "1/4 of the prize" or "1/2 of the prize" or "1/3 of the prize" etc. If X got less than 1.0 Nobel Prizes X is still a Nobel laureate, of course, but it's also clear that X could have done better. Everybody in the field, and especially the laureates themselves, are fully aware of the significance of these fractional prizes. Suppose the physics prize goes to 3 researchers, one of them gets 1/2, the others 1/4 each - it's absolutely clear whose contribution was larger in the eyes of the committee.
I think all Wikipedia Nobel Prize lists must be augmented by this crucial information. This will also put in perspective the recent inflation of Nobel laureates in the sciences, which is easy to explain: most of the recent laureates had to share the prize while most of the early laureates got a full prize. The sum of the Nobel Prizes per year is constant; you may divide it among many laureates, but then the laureates necessarily become less outstanding on average.
The list of laureates by country must take this into account as well. For example, Glauber (US), Hall (US) and Hänsch (Germany) shared the physics prize of 2005. But we cannot simply add 2.00 points to the US count and 1.0 to the German count. Instead we have to add 0.75 to the US count and 0.25 to the German count (Hänsch and Hall each got only 0.25 of the prize, Glauber got 0.5). Similarly, Einstein's entry in the Nobel WWW site mentions both Germany and Switzerland. But we may not simply add 1.0 points to Germany and 1.0 points to Switzerland. Instead we have to add 0.5 points to each nation. Otherwise we'd violate the Nobel Prize conservation law: the sum of the prizes per year is constant, only the number of laureates may vary. Science History 15:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
- You could make a list to supplement the one currently on the page to show fractional prizes but you cannot compute fractional prizes and multiple birth/citizenship countries in the same list. That would require a third list. Rmhermen 14:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
