Ashrafian et al. propose that the proportion of clinicians receiving the Nobel Prize for discoveries in Physiology and Medicine is decreasing.1 I believe that Alfred Nobel and his advisors could never have envisioned the explosive development of biochemistry, pharmacology, cell biology and genetics that would occur in the 20th century. In 1895, the year that Nobel's will was opened, there was not a single professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Cell Biology or Genetics in the United States or Great Britain. The present categories of prizes are probably immutable. Were they to be altered to reflect current research activity, one could reasonably propose that an additional category of ‘biology’ be added for seminal discoveries in the basic sciences mentioned above.
Competing interests
None declared
Reference
- 1.Ashrafian H, Patel VM, Skapinakis P, Athanasiou T Nobel Prizes in Medicine: are clinicians out of fashion? J R Soc Med 2011;104:387–9 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]