Nobel prize

We are now halfway in announcement of Nobel prize winners. Winners of prize in Medicine, Physics and Chemistry are now known. Only Literature, Peace and Economics are left.

There are 3 joint winners in each of the subjects so far. Seven out of nine are Americans. All are male. Lawrence Summers of the Harvard University was hauled over the coals for stating that female brain is not as attuned to science as the male brain. Is preponderance of males among Nobel laureates in medicine, physics and chemistry year after year proving him right? Are unpalatable truths banished from public debate?

It is likely that male domination among winners of Nobel prize in remaining three subjects this year may not be 100%  It is worth watching.

Nobel prize: Western bias?

Year after year, most Nobel awards are won by academics from the U S and Europe. This year, announcement has already been made in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, peace and economics. The ten awardees are British (5), French (1), Finn (1), Japanese (1), Colombian (1) and Dutch (1).

Interestingly, six of these are based in American universities teaching , doing research and of course publishing. There is no doubt that American universities are among the best. These universities can afford costly equipment which is perhaps a necessary wherewithal for high-quality work in science. In the normal course these universities should not have any edge over others in Economics. There is empirical evidence, however, that association with an American university is a necessary condition for bagging the Nobel prize in Economics. This skew is disturbing.

This is not to suggest that there is a deliberate discrimination in these awards. It could be that economists in other countries are not doing enough to catch the attention of the Nobel committee that decides.

Economics Nobel

‘Inequality’ is now the flavor of the season among economists. First, Thomas Piketty’s chef-d’oeuvre ‘Capitalism in the twenty-first century’ took the economic world by storm. The major theme in this book was the finding that return on capital exceeds the overall economic growth rate and therefore, unless remedial measures are taken, inequality between the owners of capital and others will keep escalating. Then came another best-seller unassumingly titled ‘Inequality’ by Sir Anthony Barnes Atkinson who has developed a highly rated but complex index of inequality which goes by the name ‘Atkinson Inequality Index’. And now, the 2015 Nobel prize in Economics has been awarded exclusively to Prof. Angus Deaton (69), a Scottish-born economist with American and English dual citizenship, who is now the Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Princeton University.

Prof. Deaton is known  for his book ‘The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the origins of Inequality’. Empirical evidence presented in this book glaringly shows that many groups of people have missed the development bus that ensures better health and wellbeing arising from growth in GDP.

It is interesting to note that the Nobel laureate acknowledges that his recent research “focuses on the determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world”.

The Nobel Committee has observed, “To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding.

“By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”

Thomas Piketty (44) is probably too young to be considered for the Nobel Prize !

Nobel for Obama

President Obama has reacted with grace to the award of Nobel peace prize for him. "I don't deserve it, but I accept it as a call to action". No one needs to teach Obama what to say. If there ia a prize for articulation, he would win hands down.
Does he really deserve the Nobel so soon and that too before he hopefully starts delivering on his words? Opinions may differ, but there is unanimity on one thing. It is that he owes the prize to George W.Bush. His predecessor has made his job very simple. He has only to undo whatever Mr.Bush did and do whatever the latter had left undone. I wonder if Obama has conveyed his thanks to George W.
The Nobel Committee has acted smartly in incentivising the American president to continue to abstain from bellicosity that the world has come to associate with Uncle Sam.

Nobelist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

A joint winner of this year's Chemistry Nobel prize , Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Venky to his friends and colleagues) has worked on the importance of ribosomes. Apart from this, his journey from theoretical physics to chemistry via biology proves the seamless nature of theoretical sciences. He studied B.Sc. (Physics) in Baroda university in India before doing research in Ohio University.