Why Are Some Societies Known for Nobel Prizes and Others for Emigration?

The young researcher holding a one-way ticket at an airport may be the same person applauded at an award ceremony years later. We encounter the two images in separate news cycles. In the first, we discuss a future being lost. In the second, we celebrate a source of shared pride. Between them lies the part of the story that deserves more attention: the teachers, laboratories, colleagues and opportunities that allowed a possibility to become an achievement.

The comparison in this title needs an immediate qualification. A Nobel Prize is not an intelligence test for a society, and migration is not proof of national defeat. The prizes cover particular fields and operate under particular rules. The Nobel Foundation's statutes limit the division of a prize amount to three people. Scientific work, however, may depend on many more contributors. A small number of celebrated names cannot tell us the worth of an entire population.

Assigning a scientist to a single national account is equally difficult. Birthplace, citizenship, schooling and research affiliation may point to different places. A discovery can have roots in one country's village school and develop through another country's university and an international team. Reducing that history to a passport understates both the contribution of early education and the importance of a working research environment. Knowledge often travels through lives that do not fit our preferred categories.

Aziz Sancar offers a useful example. His Nobel autobiography describes education in Savur, Mardin and Istanbul, followed by his research career in the United States. In 2015, he shared the chemistry prize with Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich for work on DNA repair. The story gives us reason to recognize several kinds of contribution. It also invites a more demanding question than which country should receive the applause: how can comparable opportunities be made available to people whose names nobody knows yet?

I would look for a country's relationship with science before the award arrives. What happens to a project that has not produced the expected result? Can a junior researcher disagree with a senior colleague without jeopardizing a career? Does a laboratory function through dependable arrangements, or through favors that must be requested repeatedly? These questions do not appear in a ceremonial photograph. They concern the years of work that make any such photograph possible.

There are concrete institutional choices available. Funding decisions can use published criteria and provide reasoned responses. Early-career teams can receive support long enough to undertake serious work. Evaluation can recognize reliable methods, shared data and the development of colleagues, alongside publication output. Equipment purchases can include provision for the technical staff who keep instruments usable. A building that looks impressive while its laboratory waits indefinitely for repairs cannot fulfill the promise made on opening day.

Let us celebrate the Nobel announcement. Let us also hear what the applause might otherwise obscure. A society can nurture talent while struggling to provide room for it to develop. Before asking how the world describes us, we should ask which lives our institutions make possible. We do not know who will make the next important discovery. What kind of working desk are we preparing for that person today?

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