By SudOuest.fr with AFP
Since the Nobel Prize was created in 1901, the United States has won the most awards. This year, eight of the thirteen winners are of American origin. How to explain it?
Eight of the 13 2021 Nobel laureates are of American descent, indicative of the historic dominance of the United States in these awards, which can be explained by the strength of their universities and their ability to attract talent from around the world. whole.
Since the first Nobel Prize-giving ceremony in 1901, the United States has won 400 medals, far ahead of the United Kingdom with 138 awards and Germany with 111 prizes (these figures include winners linked to several countries) .
“I am really grateful for the opportunities that have been offered to me in this country”, rejoiced during a press conference Ardem Patapoutian, crowned Nobel Prize winner in medicine 2021 with David Julius, for their discoveries on how the nervous system transmits temperature and touch.
Mr. Patapoutian, an American of Lebanese-Armenian origin, attributed his victory to the public university of California, where he studied and where Mr. Julius, also an American, also teaches. In all, the team and professors of this university have won 70 Nobel Prizes, almost as many as France’s total prize list (71 awards).
Competitive universities
American universities consistently lead the international rankings, with a mix of ultra-select private institutions benefiting from large donations, and prestigious public universities.
Syukuro Manabe, a co-Nobel laureate in physics, who left Japan in the 1950s and carried out his groundbreaking work on global warming at Princeton University, told reporters that in the United States he was able to push his research wherever his curiosity led him, a determining factor for his success.
Leaving Scotland for America in the 1990s, David MacMillan, winner of the Nobel in chemistry, is also a teacher at Princeton, from where the Nobel Peace Laureate, the Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, graduated. .
The American-Canadian David Card, the American-Israeli Joshua Angrist (both at Princeton) and the American-Dutch Guido Imbens (Stanford) were awarded the Nobel in economics on Monday.
Research funding
At the heart of these American victories are funding for basic research, i.e. experimental work aimed at improving scientific theories, according to David Baltimore, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1975.
It is an “important indicator” because, unlike applied scientific research, the return on investment can take years, even decades, and is often unpredictable.
The focus on basic research in the United States dates back to the post-WWII era with the creation of the American National Science Foundation in 1950, which still coordinates federal funds for universities today. Philanthropy and private donations also play an increasingly important role in this funding.
If China is gradually catching up with the United States in terms of overall research funding (496 billion against 569 billion adjusted for purchasing power parity in 2017), academic freedom and the ability to attract the most talented minds remain a challenge for the Chinese power, details HN Cheng, president of the American Chemical Society.
Youth Eldorado
The United States also benefits from its status as the world’s largest economy. “For example, a scientist will find more work opportunities, not only in academia but also in industry, government laboratories or others,” continues HN Cheng.
American universities often reward the most promising young researchers by offering them their own laboratory, also recalls Marc Kastner, professor emeritus of physics at MIT. “In Europe and Japan, there are large teams led by a very experienced teacher and it is only when this person retires that a young person can emerge and at that time, they no longer necessarily have to. their brightest ideas, ”he notes.
French Harvard neurobiologist Catherine Dulac, who won the Breakthrough Prize in 2021, an American scientific prize endowed with three million dollars, for her research on parental instinct, preferred not to return to France when she was in her twenties. for this very reason, she said last year.
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