1,000 Names Fill the Paper, But Only 3 Stand on the Podium: The Dilemma of the Nobel Prize at 125 Years [125 Years of the Nobel Prize]①

Rethinking the Idea of the "Discoverer"

Even with 1,200 LIGO Scientists Detecting Gravitational Waves, Only Three Won the Nobel Prize

From the “Lone Genius” to Mega-Collaborations

How the Landscape of Discovery Has Changed Over 100 Ye

Editor's Note125 years have passed since the first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901. Science has transformed from an era of lone geniuses making discoveries to a new age where thousands of researchers and artificial intelligence (AI) collaborate together. The Asia Business Daily is conducting a seven-part series on the 125th anniversary of the Nobel Prize to examine how the agents and methods of scientific discovery have changed, and how the Nobel Prize reflects these transformations.

American theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate. Approximately 1,200 scientists and engineers participated in the LIGO-Virgo collaboration, which first directly detected gravitational waves. Thorne described himself, as a Nobel laureate, as a 'symbol' representing the vast collaborative research team. Official Nobel Prize website / Photo by Alexander Mahmoud

When Albert Einstein unveiled his general theory of relativity in 1915, only one name appeared on the paper: his own. A century later, on September 14, 2015, gravitational waves, which Einstein had predicted, were directly detected for the first time. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States captured these "ripples in spacetime" created by the collision of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. In the paper published the following year, a list of more than 1,000 names filled its pages—representing the LIGO and Virgo international research collaboration that had worked for decades on the discovery.

This moment—where a phenomenon predicted by a single genius was confirmed a century later by thousands of scientists—symbolizes how fundamentally the method of scientific discovery has changed in the past century. Nonetheless, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to just three people: Rainer Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, both Professors Emeritus at Caltech. The reason given for the award was "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Even in an era when thousands create a single discovery collectively, the Nobel Prize singles out the few who made decisive contributions.

A panoramic view of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Hanford Observatory located in Hanford, Washington, USA. It sends lasers along two 4 km-long vacuum tubes extending at right angles to each other to measure extremely minute changes in spacetime. Together with another LIGO detector in Livingston, Louisiana, USA, it made the first direct detection of gravitational waves by humanity in 2015. Provided by Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory

A Paper with One Author 100 Years Ago, Written by 1,000 Today

In a written interview with The Asia Business Daily, Wang Dasun, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States, pointed to the century-long gap between Einstein and LIGO as a representative scene showing the transformation of modern science. Professor Wang, whose research focuses on the “Science of Science,” said, “In 1915, Einstein announced general relativity as a sole author, but the gravitational wave detection in 2015 was the result of international collaboration involving more than 1,000 researchers,” adding, “The method of scientific discovery has fundamentally changed over the last century.”

As scientific knowledge accumulates and research questions become more complex, it's no longer possible for one person to cover all theories, experiments, instruments, and data alone. Detecting gravitational waves required expertise not only in lasers and optics but also in vacuum and precision control technologies, as well as computing and data analysis. After decades of work by numerous researchers from various fields, these efforts finally culminated in the construction of a vast observational system, making direct detection of gravitational waves possible at last.

At his 2017 Nobel Lecture, Professor Thorne explained that the first observation of gravitational waves was the result of nearly half a century of effort by about 1,200 LIGO and Virgo scientists and engineers. He said that while the Nobel Prize for "decisive contributions" had gone to three people including himself, "the primary credit belongs to the entire collaboration," viewing himself as a "symbol" representing the whole research team.

This is not unique to gravitational waves. In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle whose existence had been theorized in the 1960s. The Higgs boson is a crucial key to understanding how elementary particles acquire mass.

About 3,000 scientists participated in each of the two large-scale international experiments, ATLAS and CMS, that discovered the Higgs boson. However, the following year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to just two people: François Englert and Peter Higgs, who developed the theoretical foundation. The Nobel Prize chose those who made the "decisive theoretical discovery," distinguishing between those who built the theories and the thousands who confirmed them through experiments.

AI-generated graphic.

The Nobel Prize is governed by a longstanding principle: the Nobel Foundation's statutes stipulate that no more than three people may share a prize. This fundamental structure, established in the early 20th century, persists even in the 21st century—when a single scientific paper can have thousands of co-authors. Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University in the United States, commented on this situation, saying, “The three-person rule is, in many ways, out of step with how discoveries are made today.”

She added, “I’ve never really believed in the model of the ‘lone genius.’ It's a great story, but mostly just a story.” Science, she explains, has always advanced by building on the knowledge and research of others; what has changed today is that the collective nature of science has become far more visible.

She continued: “When we take a picture of a black hole’s shadow, or hear the sound of two black holes colliding, no one can say, ‘I did this all by myself.’”

Professor Wang also pointed out that, in modern science, there is an expanding gap between “how knowledge is created” and “how that knowledge is recognized.” Even with large-scale collaborations, it is possible to single out those with central ideas or intellectual leadership, but “identifying these people and claiming that they made the discovery alone are two very different matters,” he emphasized.

When glory is concentrated on only a few, countless contributors responsible for experiment design, data analysis, software development, detector calibration, and other vital roles may remain completely unknown to the public. Professor Wang also noted the operation of the “Matthew effect,” where researchers with established reputations and higher status receive disproportionate credit—even among those who made similar contributions.

Individual Insights Still Remain in the Age of Massive Collaborations

Albert Einstein, the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate, is delivering his Nobel lecture in Gothenburg, Sweden on July 11, 1923. Einstein was unable to attend the award ceremony held in December 1922 and gave his Nobel lecture the following year in Gothenburg. Photo by Anders Wilhelm Karnell / Gothenburg Library Archive

All the same, it's difficult to conclude that the role of individuals has disappeared from modern science. According to Professor Wang’s research, small and large research teams tend to play different roles in science: small teams are generally better at breaking existing paradigms and pioneering new research directions, while large teams excel at developing established ideas and solving complex problems.

Professor Natarajan also noted that “individuals or small groups may be better positioned to pursue high-risk, high-reward radical new ideas,” cautioning against viewing all scientific discovery through the single framework of large collaborations.

Tobias Erb, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany, similarly remarked, “Science has always been a collective endeavor,” but that “what’s changed is the increasing complexity of the problems we seek to solve, which now require much more sophisticated technologies, equipment, and interdisciplinary cooperation.” He went on to emphasize that “it is still the mind of the individual that challenges convention, makes unexpected connections, and develops new ideas that push the frontiers of knowledge.”

Hiroshi Shimizu, professor at Waseda University in Japan, explained that science has always advanced on a network of knowledge accumulated and shared across individuals, institutions, and generations. He pointed out that, “No matter how brilliant a person may be, attributing an entire scientific discovery to a single individual can be misleading,” but at the same time, “It is realistically impossible to identify and acknowledge every person who contributed to a breakthrough.”

This is precisely where the Nobel Prize’s 125-year-old dilemma becomes apparent. Peter Brzezinski, professor at Stockholm University and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which selects Nobel laureates for physics and chemistry), stated that “the limitation of three laureates has been raised and discussed within the Academy in the past as well.” Nevertheless, the outcome has leaned more toward maintaining the status quo than changing it. “The current consensus is that the rules for selecting Nobel Prize recipients will remain as they are for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Professor Brzezinski added that the Nobel Prize was never designed as a system to meticulously record every contributor’s input. Its real function, he said, is to announce groundbreaking scientific discoveries to the world, increase public interest in science by highlighting the stories of individuals connected with these discoveries, and serve as inspiration to the next generation of researchers.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.