Talk:Nobel Prize

The author does not know what he/she is talking about. Among the article's many false claims is that "prior to Linda Buck and Richard Axel jointly winning the 2004 Prize in Physiology, Columbia praised its number of Nobel Prizes. After the Prize announcement, Columbia began to tout its number of Nobel Laureates (since Buck and Axel shared the Prize, it made for two laureates, instead of one prize)." Columbia has counted laureats, not prizes, since before I started paying attention to such things -- which was more than 20 years before Axel and Buck won the Nobel. The author seems to think that this was the first time two Columbians shared a prize, but that's not true; Dickinson Richards and Andre Cournand shared the Medicine prize in 1956, while Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger shared the Physics prize in 1988. Aaghe Bohr and James Rainwater shared the Physics prize in 1975. There may be other instances, too.

I have to take issue with the claim that listing Linda Buck is "questionable". Linda Buck worked full-time at Columbia for eleven years -- first as a postdoc (1980-1984) and then as a research scientist (1984-1991). What's more, she won her Nobel for work she performed in Columbia labs during that time. (Her curriculum vitae is at http://joklit.narod.ru/buck-cv.html.) Counting her is not "questionable" at all.

I also disagree with the claim that listing Orhan Pamuk was likewise "questionable". Pamuk was a full-time visiting scholar at Columbia from 1985-1988. (See http://www.orhanpamuk.net/biography.aspx.) It's true that, during this time, he wrote a novel in Butler Library. That does not negate the fact that he was here, with an official appointment, for three years. Moreover, when his Nobel was announced he had just returned as a visiting professor and fellow of the Committee on Social Thought. He was living in a Columbia building on 116th Street. The press conference he gave after the announcement was held in Low Library. (See http://www.life.com/image/72153238.) But even if those connections were not enough to justify Columbia's claim, the fact remains that he has since become a full professor. He's on the faculty now. He holds an endowed chair. He teaches at least two classes per year. How is calling him a Columbian "questionable"?

The author argues that Columbia should only claim the laureates who taught here at the time of their award, since that is how the Nobel foundation and Harvard count. But neither the foundation nor Harvard claims that this is somehow the "official" method. The foundation's list expressly says that it lists only "the university the Nobel Laureates were affiliated with at the time of the Nobel Prize announcement" (see http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/universities.html), not that the listed universities are the only ones affiliated with each laureate. Besides, many universities count alumni, former faculty and future faculty. The article suggests that only Columbia and Princeton do this, but so do Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Cornell and many others.

Then there is the claim that "by the 'official' Nobel count, Columbia may claim a modest 17 prizes." I've already explained why the author's chosen method is not "official". But even if Columbia could only claim 17 winners, that total would not be modest; it would put us in a three-way tie (with Caltech and MIT) for third place, just one laureate behind second-place Stanford (and well behind first-place Harvard, which is listed with 36). Columbia's 17 would place it ahead of Cambridge, Chicago, Princeton, Rockefeller, UC-Berkeley and other major contenders. The only way that can be called modest is if we define modest to be anything less than first place.

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What's the consensus on including 2010 Peace Prize winner and former Columbia visiting scholar Liu Xiaobo? Pacman 20:42, 8 October 2010 (EDT)