Guaporense
Ad Honorem
- Mar 2011
- 5,050
- Brazil
As this year Nobel prizes have been awarded last week. I have been noticing that I don't think there is anything more biased in the world than prizes given to works of art, such as the Grammy, Oscar, etc. As they completely ignore most of the world's production and focus only on local stuff.
The nobel prize is supposedly global but in fact it's more of the same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita
As you can see the large country who won most Nobel prizes per capita is Sweden, the country of the prize. Most Nobel prizes went to countries around Sweden or colonized by the peoples of those countries (US, Canada and Australia are mainly of Germanic stock and most winners in those countries were of northern European origins).
One could argue that in terms of scientific production northern Europe and it's colonies are far superior to the rest of the world but over 1/3 of the Nobel prizes are peace and literature prizes which are more subjective. And Japan has obviously much more scientific production than Sweden even though Japan won 24 prizes compared to Sweden's 30.
Brazil, for instance, a country of 200 million people, one of the largest economies in the world (ranked around 8th-6th place consistently over the past 40 years) has never produced a winner of the coveted prize. And there is plenty of academia in Brazil and plenty of great writers as well. But apparently Brazil is too insular to win the prize: insular as defined as isolated from the Northern European cultural world.
The nobel prize is supposedly global but in fact it's more of the same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita
As you can see the large country who won most Nobel prizes per capita is Sweden, the country of the prize. Most Nobel prizes went to countries around Sweden or colonized by the peoples of those countries (US, Canada and Australia are mainly of Germanic stock and most winners in those countries were of northern European origins).
One could argue that in terms of scientific production northern Europe and it's colonies are far superior to the rest of the world but over 1/3 of the Nobel prizes are peace and literature prizes which are more subjective. And Japan has obviously much more scientific production than Sweden even though Japan won 24 prizes compared to Sweden's 30.
Brazil, for instance, a country of 200 million people, one of the largest economies in the world (ranked around 8th-6th place consistently over the past 40 years) has never produced a winner of the coveted prize. And there is plenty of academia in Brazil and plenty of great writers as well. But apparently Brazil is too insular to win the prize: insular as defined as isolated from the Northern European cultural world.
