Geniuses, Heroes, and Saints
The Nobel Prize and the Public Image of Science
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- USD 25.99
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- USD 25.99
Publisher Description
A rich account of the world’s leading science prize told through the lives it has changed, the controversies it has generated, and the impact it has made on the public.
In a world where the work of science largely remains inscrutable to the general public, the Nobel Prize confers a degree of intelligibility like no other honor. Our best-known and most prestigious award for individual scientific achievement, the Nobel attaches a brilliant face to a story of profound discovery, making moving headlines. In Geniuses, Heroes, and Saints, Massimiano Bucchi tells an equally compelling story of the Nobel’s transformation of science into an epic pursuit legible both to the field and to the public, bound up with the currents of historical change.
Three main narratives characterize the Nobel. The scientist as genius, portrayed as a creative visionary, an exceptional intellect reflecting a solitary and romantic ideal of great communicative impact. The scientist as national hero acts as a surrogate of competition among nations in a peaceful, rational contest. The scientist as saint shines with moral exceptionality, a figure worthy of celebration and worship, known for virtues such as modesty, humility, and total dedication, body and soul, to the scientific enterprise. Whether the recipient was Albert Einstein or a countryside doctor toiling for years in obscurity, whether the prize was worthily given or awarded to work later disproved, or whether we even remember the honorees today, the Nobel defined the image of science in the twentieth century, Bucchi shows, an image that still lives in all sorts of fascinating ways today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this middling report, Bucchi (Newton's Chicken), a professor of science and technology in society at the University of Trento in Italy, aspires to show how the Nobel Prize has shaped public perception of science, but settles for trivia about winners and the selection process. Delving into the Nobel committee's sometimes fractious closed-door deliberations, he describes how members bickered for years over whether to recognize Fritz Haber, who finally received the chemistry prize in 1918, because while his discovery of how to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia transformed agriculture, it was also used to produce German explosives in WWI. There are some amusing tidbits peppered throughout, as when Bucchi notes that the longest wait for a prize belongs to German physicist Ernst Ruska, who had to bide his time for 53 years before receiving Nobel recognition of his 1933 work on electrons. Unfortunately, Bucchi's half-hearted stabs at social analysis fall apart under scrutiny. For instance, he argues that Nobel winners are venerated like religious icons, but his evidence (Galileo's middle finger has been preserved like a relic and news coverage of Louis Pasteur's death depicted him as a haloed angel) consists of scientists who died before the first prizes were awarded. Heavier on anecdotes than insight, this comes up short.
