Nobel prizes are still failing to celebrate the diversity of science

It is that time of year when congratulations are in order, as some of the best minds in science are awarded a Nobel prize. The latest winners have a few things in common: they undoubtedly have an impressive body of work – and they are all men, they live in high-income countries and none of them is Black.

Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros won the prize for physiology or medicine for their discovery of microRNAs and the role they play in controlling genes, which could help treat cancer. A string of papers led to this discovery, many of which list Rosalind Lee – Ambros’s wife – as an author. The Nobel committee for physiology or medicine was keen to recognise Lee on social media, but didn’t go as far as awarding her a medal. Maybe it thinks that one per household is good enough.

Lee’s omission may seem familiar. In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins took home the same prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA. This was off the back of three papers published in the same issue of Nature. One was co-authored by Wilkins, one by Watson and Crick, and the third by Rosalind Franklin, who captured an image of DNA having two chains. Prior to the image’s publication, it had ended up in the hands of Watson and Crick, and informed their model of DNA as a double helix. Franklin was left off the Nobel trophy.

Perhaps the committee dislikes the name Rosalind. But 972 people have won Nobel prizes since their inception in 1901, and only 64 were women. The hit rate for the physics prize, awarded this year to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for discoveries related to machine learning, is particularly bad – only five women have ever won.

At least women in science have seen some recognition. No Black person has ever won a science Nobel, and there have only been 17 Black winners in total across the peace, literature and economics prizes. Many argue that Charles Drew, an African American man who discovered how to store blood plasma long term, should have won for medicine, while Percy Julian, who figured out how to synthesise medical compounds from plants, was snubbed for chemistry.

Geography also seems to play a key role in deciding winners. More than half the prizes have gone to people in North America, and among the handful of winners from lower income countries, most had moved to North America or Europe by the time they were awarded.

Some may say all of this simply reflects the demographics of science. Fewer than 30 per cent of researchers are women, for example. But failing to give credit where it is due doesn’t help, particularly when the physiology or medicine Nobel committee flagged a paper led by Lee as a key publication behind Ruvkun and Ambros’s success.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the physics and chemistry prizes, does at least recognise that this lack of diversity is a problem. Since 2019, nominators have been asked to be aware of gender, ethnicity and geography when selecting nominees, who cannot put themselves forward. It sounds good on paper, but only six women and no Black people have won in the science categories since.

You may wonder why this matters. Awards are a nice accolade, but shouldn’t drive scientists. Yet being a Nobel laureate opens doors for researchers and puts their work in the public consciousness. For many people, the annual Nobels may be the only time they see a scientist named in news headlines, and the awards play a big role in shaping our perception of science.

Part of the problem is that the structure of the prizes, as dictated by the will of Alfred Nobel, tend to enforce a “great man of history” approach to science that doesn’t reflect the reality of modern research. The rules allow no more than three individuals to share a prize, although this doesn’t explain why Lee was excluded from the Ruvkun-Ambros prizewinning duo. They also cannot be given posthumously, otherwise Franklin – who died from ovarian cancer in 1958 aged 37 – may have been given her dues by now.

Such problems aren’t new, of course, and it seems unlikely that the Nobel committees will deviate from their patron’s wishes, but that isn’t a reason to ignore diversity. The committees must cast a wider net, not only for fairness’ sake, but also if they want the awards to continue to be taken seriously.

Alexandra Thompson is an assistant news editor at New Scientist.

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