The Nobel Prize System and the Astronomical Sciences

Abstract

There is no Nobel Prize in astronomy, and perhaps for this reason, historians of science have rarely examined the astronomical sciences from the perspective of the Nobel Prize system. And yet, since the establishment of this system many astronomers and astrophysicists have been nominated for the physics prize and these nominations provide the historian with valuable sources for understanding the dynamical relationship between astronomy and physics during the twentieth century. Apart from giving a general account of the role of astronomy in a Nobel context, this paper investigates a select number of scientists who contributed to astronomy and its allied sciences and were nominated for a Nobel Prize. The focus is on the period from about 1950 to 1966, but earlier nominations of, for example, M. Saha, H. N. Russell, and A. Eddington are also considered.

The Uncertain Role of Nominations for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry†

“…Table 1 lists several chemists who were nominated frequently but never received a NP as of 1970. One of these is the much‐discussed Lise Meitner [11–13] who was nominated in 24 different years and actually received more nominations in physics (30, receiving four nominations in the 1960s) than in chemistry (14, the last being in 1948). Figure 2 displays the nomination chronological profile of the two chemists who received the greatest number of nominations without receiving the Nobel Prize (Christopher K. Ingold and Walter Reppe) and two chemists who received many nominations (Linus Pauling, 65 in 13 years; R. B. Woodward, 112 in 16 years) and did receive the Nobel Prize, Pauling in 1953 and Woodward in 1965.…”

Reasons in favor of a Hubble-Lemaître-Slipher's (HLS) Law

“…Belenkiy sustains the opinion that, had this been the case, Einstein himself together with Friedmann and Slipher could had been solid candidates for a Nobel Prize in Physics [34]. [37]. And for the expansion rate of the Universe, now called Hubble's constant, he had obtained a value very closed to that of Hubble in the 1929 paper [26] (no wonder.…”

Reasons in Favor of a Hubble-Lemaître-Slipher’s (HLS) Law

“…As is well known, Lemaître had visited Hubble at Mount Wilson and Slipher at the Lowell Observatory, and graciously obtained the corresponding tables from each of them. Actually Lemaître (Hubble too) was indeed nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 for "his 1927 theoretical prediction of the expanding universe which was subsequently confirmed by the work of Hubble and Humason in the U.S.A." [39]. And for the expansion rate of the Universe, now called Hubble's constant, he had obtained a value very close to that of Hubble in the 1929 paper [28] (no wonder, since both used practically the same data tables).…”