News
Collections in the spotlight: Nobel prize winners
In the series Collections in the Spotlight, we’re discussing the literature on the Nobel Prize in the Library collection, a favourite of WUR Library employee Alex de Kruijff.
Why do you want to take a closer look at the Nobel prize?
I’ve always been interested in Economics and Science, and developments in these fields. The annual prize announcements in October are always exciting and motivate me to learn more about the major scientific discoveries.
What do you notice when you look at the winners from the past years?
On opendatasoft you can find some interesting facts. Universities and institutions in the United States have won the most Nobel Prizes by far. In fact, the top five winners are only institutions in the USA. The University of California and Harvard University have won the most Nobel Prizes in history. There are no Nobel Prize winners affiliated with WUR so far. There are 19 winners from Dutch institutions. You can find these winners in this list of Dutch winners.
The gender gap is very noticeable when looking at the Nobel Prize winners. From 1901 until this year, women have won just 61 of the 989 awards in all Nobel categories, compared to 898 men. Thirty prizes were awarded to organizations. Even though women often contributed to award winning research, the prize usually went to their male fellow researchers. See for more facts on Nobel Prize Laureates on Opendatasoft.
What are interesting books or articles about the Nobel prize?
In the WUR Library collection, you can find interesting publications about the Nobel Prize, and books authored by prize winners. For example, the following five books:
- The posthumous Nobel Prize in chemistry. Volume 1, Correcting the errors and oversights of the Nobel Prize Committee
- The posthumous Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Volume 2, Ladies in waiting for the Nobel Prize
- How to win the Nobel Prize : an unexpected life in science
- Books from Economics winner Ben Bernanke in WUR catalog
- Book from Chemistry winner Paul Crutzen in WUR catalog
In addition to the print and e-books, many articles and publications from Nobel Prize winners are available through open access and our subscribed journals.
Finally, I find it interesting to browse the Encyclopædia Britannica. Here you can find all sorts of information on the Nobel Prize and its winners (articles, videos, photos). To get started, check out the following link. If you're off-campus, first log in to MyLibrary to access the content in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If you could award a Nobel prize, who would it go to and why?
I don't have specific person in mind, but more a type of research that I feel is currently undervalued in the Nobel prize system. Wageningen University & Research conducts a lot of applied research. It'd be good to have a new Nobel prize category that would honour and highlight applied research which often has significant societal impact. This new prize should focus on research on global challenges in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals.