2023 was a good year for physicists winning or sharing a Nobel Prize. Besides the three physics prize winners, one of the chemistry prize winners and the peace prize winner were people with a physics background. Not only that but the previous year's prize for economics was shared by a physics graduate, and it's not difficult historically to find a slew of people with a physics background winning non-physics Nobel Prizes throughout the decades since the awards were inaugurated. Names such as Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Ernest Rutherford, Joseph Rotblat and Philip Dybvig come to mind as examples of physics graduates and polymaths, who variously won awards in literature, chemistry, peace and economics.

The Nobel Prizes are the legacy of Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel who requested, in his will, that people who had greatly benefited humankind be rewarded for their achievements. The first awards were conferred in 1901, with the economics prize added in the late 1960s.

To win a Nobel Prize in any field requires an uncommon degree of greatness in an individual or collaboration. However, most people reading these words will know of colleagues, students and acquaintances from the everyday world of physics who have also excelled in unrelated areas. At the risk of characterising science alumni and graduates as being akin to Liam Neeson’s character in the movie Taken, physicists are certainly endowed with a “very particular set of skills”: skills involving problem-solving, critical thinking, mathematics and a ubiquitously systematic approach to any situation, which can be put to good use across a raft of professions. So it's unsurprising really that physicists and physics enthusiasts can also become successful chemists, economists, writers and advocates for peace and human rights. 

Of course, some might argue that chemistry, physics and indeed economics require similar skill sets. And yet all of these disciplines are very broad and technically demanding in their own right. Why wouldn't someone whose work simultaneously requires explaining incredibly abstract concepts on one hand and logical reasoning on the other also be adept with literary skills or even taking a courageous stand in defence of humanitarian principles? As an aside, a surprising number of standup comedians are physics graduates, perhaps utilising some of those aforementioned skills to bolster their onstage presence. There is no Nobel prize for laughter, but there probably should be!

Unfortunately, when one examines the history and statistics of the Nobel Prize, the distinct lack of diversity in science winners becomes apparent. It doesn't take a Nobel laureate to spot that this particular catalogue of luminaries barely reflects the continuum of cultural identities that have enriched the scientific community for many decades - and only five out of 224 Nobel Prizes for physics have been awarded to women. The first, Marie Curie (who also later won the chemistry prize), in 1903 was followed a 'mere' sixty years later by Maria Goeppert-Mayer, and the most recent in 2023 was Anne L’Huillier.  

To explain these disparities is quite beyond the scope of this post although, particularly regarding the lack of prize-winning female physicists, the so-called “Matilda Effect” would seem to be an obvious starting point, whereby women's achievements in science are often overlooked in favour of male colleagues due to implicit bias. Even if one were to examine this undoubted problem through a purely historical (though no less excusable) lens, how long would it take before these inequalities are obliterated?

Perhaps the best takeaway from all of the above should be that, rather than running the risk of accentuating our differences, through shining metaphorical spotlights on individuals, physics (and science in general), no less than the humanities, should be celebrated as a means of bringing together people of all genders and cultures, promoting the true value of empirically sourced knowledge, whilst making collaboration across societal and geopolitical boundaries a force for good in an increasingly irrational world...

...which seems as good a reason as any to celebrate our small roles in the IB mission as we "[develop] inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect".

References:

• All Nobel Prizes. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Tue. 19 Dec 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes>
• Rossiter, Margaret W. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 325–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/285482. Accessed 19 Dec. 2023.
• About the IB. <https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib>
• Fireworks: Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
• Nobel Prize: By Photograph: JonathunderMedal: Erik Lindberg (1873-1966) - Derivative of File:NobelPrize.JPG, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58432969
• Anne L'Huillier: By Bengt Oberger - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21984688