Does the Nobel prize still matter?
Outmoded, capricious and burdened with obligations – so why does everybody want one?
A desire for validation also lies behind some of the grumbles, now almost routine in chemistry, that the Nobel has been awarded yet again outside the discipline, most often to molecular biology (although 2011 laureate Dan Shechtman, discoverer of quasicrystals, is considered by some too much a ‘materials scientist’). The usual response, and I think a correct one, is that these choices show just how broad chemistry is.