Are Nobel Prizes Too Highbrow?

Perhaps the introduction of new categories would enhance visibility.

Quick, name one of the twelve people or organizations who were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2024, in one of the six categories of achievement.

Can’t do it, can you?

Two highbrow newspaper publishers, to which I subscribe, have sent me breathless email alerts during the last couple of months announcing these winners, of whom nobody has heard, for their successes in fields of study which are rarely acknowledged by everyday people, for accomplishing feats which no one understands.

I gotta’ tell you, New York Times and Washington Post, that is no way to attract website clicks or social media buzz.

For the record, the six categories in which Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually since 1901 are: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences (the last of which has only been awarded since 1969). The Nobel Prize was established by Alfred Nobel’s will, upon his death in 1896; Nobel was a well-known chemist, engineer and inventor, who possessed 355 patents, but is best-known as the inventor of dynamite (no, not the catchphrase of the character, J.J., on the old Good Times sitcom - that was “dy-no-mite!”).

Administration of the Nobel Prize program is managed by the Nobel Foundation. This year’s winners included: John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton, David Baker, Demis Hassabis, John M. Jumper (now, that name sounds like a goof, doesn’t it? Good one, Nobel Foundation - you punked us), Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun, Han Kang, Nidon Hidankyo, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson; one woman and one organization amongst these winners, for those of you keeping score at home - the rest are men.

In scanning the list of Nobel Prize awardees, commonly known as laureates, because, you know, it’s more highbrow than awardees, or winners or champions, beginning with the 2024 winners, and working my way backwards, I had to step all the way back to 2016 to locate a name I could actually recognize. And, I’m a guy who reads newspapers (although I have already admitted that I routinely ignore breathless email alerts from highbrow newspaper publishers), and who consumes news and cultural content, and who considers himself reasonably conversant with current news, events and trends (although I wish I could avoid the incessant chatter regarding the current U.S. presidential election campaign; it’s quite painful to endure).

But, Rule of Three conducts this research and provides this comprehensive analysis to you each and every week so you don’t have to; that is our gift to you.

In any event, whose name do you think was the first one I recognized? I’ll give you a hint: it was in the literature category. Yep, Bob Dylan. Wait, what? Isn’t Bob Dylan a folksinger who emerged in the early 1960’s? Apparently, the Nobel Prize for literature reflects a relatively expansive definition of literature.

To be sure, traversing back in time, there are a number of notable names, which you and I would recognize, including: Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Elie Weisel, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Saul Bellow, Milton Friedman, Henry Kissinger, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, Dag Hammarskjold, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Pearl S. Buck, Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, Woodrow Wilson, Rudyard Kipling and Theodore Roosevelt, but, in the categories of Physics, Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine I must confess that the only names I can even pretend to recognize are: Pierre and Marie Curie, Guglielmo Marconi (he provided a home for the likes of Casey Kasem, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, by inventing the radio), Albert Einstein, Erwin Shrodinger (you know, “Schrodinger’s cat”), Enrico Fermi and Linus Pauling. Sorry, laureates, your contributions to society likely are quite noteworthy, and the result of much painstaking effort, but, alas, don’t resonate with most of us.

Rule of Three offers a solution for the Nobel Foundation to its obscurity issue: Consider adding new categories to your lineup, with broader appeal. Our suggestions include:

• Sports - of the top twenty-five most watched television shows during 2023, only 2 were not sports programs - clearly, tremendous mass appeal here. Potential laureates might include: Caitlin Clark from the WNBA, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani or Scottie Sheffler, whose year on the golf course has been outstanding. And, no, Pete Rose will not be eligible for a Nobel Prize - we respect MLB’s ban.

• Movies - yes, the pandemic took a bite out of movie theater audiences, and a couple of strikes have also caused disruption recently, but, with the growth of streaming services, movie stars have continued to command attention; and, movie stars seem to thrive on attention. The Nobel Foundation would be well-served to launch a movies category - such a move would itself attract attention. Frontrunners for the inaugural prize could include: Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Joaquin Phoenix. Or, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, anointing any one of whom would strike a blow for diversifying its lineup of overwhelmingly male award winners. . .sorry. . .laureates.

• Tech Billionaires - this category would likely bring with it controversy, because, although technology is ubiquitous, and has become an essential element of our lives, users seem to find the billionaire founders of these technology companies personally distasteful. But, as the old saying goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” And, the likes of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can be counted on to generate plenty of publicity, good and bad.

Crowning winners in these new categories might motivate me, and other subscribers to highbrow newspaper publishers to crack open those breathless email alerts, improving their website traffic metrics and generating significant social media buzz.

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