Nobel Physics and Chemistry Prizes

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Friedman All of us tend to regard the Nobel prize as an indicator of ultimate excellence in science. Some preconditions to begin making sense of the prize decisions first became available after 1976 when Nobel proceedings over 50 years old became accessible. Under his previous grants, Dr. Friedman began exploring the history of the physics and chemistry prizes. Under this grant, Dr. Friedman is bringing into focus issues related to values and disciplinary cultures within the Swedish Academy's procedures as well as examining uses of the prize in transmitting values through attempts at forging identity, collective memory, and tradition. Disciplinary boundaries, goals, standards, and values do not occur naturally; these are negotiated, adapted, and often contested. Nobel prizes became enmeshed in disciplinary politics. In de-mystifying the Nobel prize -- its awarding and its various use -- Dr. Friedman seeks to illuminate how values have been negotiated in 20th century science especially with respect to concepts of reward and excellence; who is celebrated and for what types of achievements? This study will show how and why individuals attempted, with varying degrees of success, to fashion and appropriate the institution of the Nobel prize for furthering disciplinary and cultural agendas in Sweden and abroad: a history of the politics of excellence. How might reward and excellence be understood when the politics of assigning credit and renown are made visible? How might Nobel's wish to celebrate those who have conferred "benefit on mankind" be regarded today when the original moral referent of knowledge for its own sake is compromised by a culture of competition and market-place values?