Winning a Nobel Prize is not like winning the lottery. Rather it is the result of long-term preparation and training. Particularly in the categories of physiology or medicine, chemistry, physics, and economics, this path often goes through universities and research labs in the United States. But science at this level also involves an enormous amount of collaboration among scientists around the world.
As part of its annual coverage of immigrant Nobel Prize winners, George Mason University’s Institute for Immigration Research is doing something different this year. In advance of the announcement of the 2021 Nobel Laureates, we will identify and highlight some of the top contenders in each category and discuss the role that international collaboration has played in their scientific careers.
To identify likely winners, we turn to the work done by Clarivate, an international analytics firm that closely monitors citation records for scientific and academic research, to identify “Citation Laureates," individuals who are widely cited and acknowledged in the academic literature. Fifty-four past Citation Laureates have eventually been awarded a Nobel Prize.
For the Nobel Peace Prize and the Prize in Literature, where contenders are not assessed based on their research citation records, we are trying something else. We will look at where the “smart money” is headed. Yes, people do bet on the Nobel Prize and we will review the odds for the top contenders and deploy interactive polls and related social media posts to generate dialogue within and beyond Mason about which notable figures may win these two prizes.
Check in with us on Twitter (@IIRGMU) or Facebook in the coming weeks to cast your vote for who you think may be the next generation of Laureates, while also learning about the stories of some of the leading candidates and the international nature of their contributions to science, the arts, and world peace.