English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

In 1996, a committee of British experts rejected the application for funding submitted by Prof. Harold Kroto for his research. Two hours later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences issued its own verdict, awarding the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Robert Curl Jr, Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto ‘for their discovery of fullerenes’. The British committee hurriedly reconvened and reversed its decision, this time granting the funding to Kroto. The British chemist, in fact, had now entered the narrow circle of so-called ‘visible scientists’, that elite of researchers on whom awards like the Nobel Prize confer almost unassailable prestige and a reputation able to open every door. This and related dynamics were described by the founder of the sociology of science, Robert K. Merton, as the ‘Matthew effect’, from the passage in Matthew’s Gospel which states, ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’ (Matthew 25:29). Those in positions of visibility and prestige will have privileged access to further resources and positions of visibility, and so on. As a Nobel Prize winner for physics put it, ‘The world is peculiar in this matter of how it gives credit. It tends to give the credit to [already] famous people’ (Merton, 1973: 443). Or in the words of Swedish pop band Abba, ‘The winner takes it all’. Although Merton originally referred mainly to dynamics within the scientific community, several studies have later shown that this effect not only extends to scientists’ visibility in society at large but also amplifies and connects with general media and public discourse dynamics. Thus, the high reputation of certain scientists (as certified by the Nobel Prize and other particularly prestigious forms of recognition) is transformed into a visibility which exceeds the esteem of peers, turning them into all-round celebrities, not dissimilar to sports or media personalities (Bucchi, 2015; Fahy, 2015; Fahy and Lewenstein, 2014; Goodell, 1977; Zuckerman, 1996 [1977]). Studying the visibility of Nobel laureates in the sciences is an extraordinary gateway for understanding the transformations in the public image of science – and of scientists – throughout the 20th century and also understanding how the Prize itself contributed to shape such image. The Nobel Prize announcements are in fact one of the occasions when science makes global headline news in the media; the halo and reputation of the prize reaching even those audiences which are quite distant and not much interested in science; in fiction – from Hollywood movies to the Simpsons – ‘Nobel’ has become a metonym for brilliant minds, genius and successful science. According to the most recent data of the Science in Society Monitor, a yearly survey of Italian citizens’ perception of and attitudes to science, for example, 85% of Italians actually know what the Nobel Prize is.1 764948 PUS0010.1177/0963662518764948Public Understanding of ScienceEditorial editorial2018

‘The winner takes it all?’ Nobel laureates and the public image of science