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Nobel Prizes and Fuzzy Boundaries

Experience shows you don't have to be a chemist to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

by Bethany Halford
October 25, 2004 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 82, Issue 43

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Credit: © NOBEL FOUNDATION
Nobel medal

© THE NOBEL FOUNDATION
Credit: © NOBEL FOUNDATION

Here at C&EN, we get a little itchy just before the Nobel Prizes are announced. We can't help it. As chemists and journalists, we find it exciting to know that there's one day each year when chemistry will be at the heart of a big, international news story.

"Well, I'm not sure about the Chemistry Prize, but I do think that Roderick MacKinnon will win the Physiology or Medicine Prize some day," she answered.

So, it felt a little eerie when I woke up two days later to the news that MacKinnon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and Rockefeller University professor, had won that year's prize in chemistry, along with Peter C. Agre, a professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes."

Apparently, Yarnell wasn't the only one surprised that the work got the nod from the Nobel Prize's Chemistry Committee, rather than Physiology or Medicine. Agre tells me that, while he never thought he was actually going to win the prize, he considered his work on water channels more appropriate for the Physiology or Medicine honor. "But when the Chemistry Committee called, I didn't feel I should argue," he jokes.

Aaron Ciechanover, one of the 2004 Chemistry Laureates and a professor at Technion--Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, has expressed a similar sentiment, saying that winning the Chemistry Nobel was a "total surprise." He told National Public Radio's Richard Harris: "I'm never working with the idea of getting prizes. I'm working because I love science. But if I had any thoughts, they were in the direction of Physiology and Medicine."

If even the laureates are surprised to learn their work merits the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, I wonder, how does the Nobel Committee decide whether research falls into the domain of chemistry, rather than that of physiology or medicine?

Håkan Wennerström, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry and a professor of theoretical physical chemistry at Sweden's Lund University, says that in choosing the laureates, the committee must consider the scientific discovery or improvement as well as its consequences for humankind. Those consequences, Wennerström says, don't have to be chemical. "With this year's prize, the more important consequences are in medicine, but the discovery is in chemistry," he notes. "Less seriously, when molecules become boxes, then it's molecular biology. When it matters how they look, then it's chemistry."

Wennerström adds that there isn't necessarily a clear-cut line that determines whether a prize goes to medicine or chemistry. Sometimes the discovery could claim either prize. "If you look for a trend in modern science, the boundaries are becoming more and more fuzzy, and that's how science advances," he says.

The 1962 Nobel Prizes illustrate what's perhaps the most striking example of this fuzziness. That year, Max F. Perutz and John C. Kendrew were awarded the Chemistry Prize "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins." That same year, Francis H. C. Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice H. F. Wilkins claimed the Physiology or Medicine Prize "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material."

"If you ask me in hindsight, I would, of course, have loved that that prize be given in chemistry," Wennerström remarks. He says it's just another example of good science that falls under the aegis of more than one scientific discipline. "There is a merging of chemistry with biology and chemistry with physics and physics with biology," he says. "Much of the dynamic work is at these interfaces. These prizes are a manifestation of this trend. To me, this is healthy and not a problem at all." He also notes that while there's no formal communication between the award-granting committees, there is a mechanism that ensures that two different prizes don't go to the same people for the same research.

Wennerström also suggests that questioning whether or not biochemical advances--such as those that garnered the Chemistry Nobel Prize in 2003 and 2004--merit that award instead of the Physiology or Medicine Prize may reflect an American attitude that lumps biochemistry in with biology instead of chemistry.

I think Wennerström has a point. In its announcement of the award, National Public Radio said, "This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three men who actually work more in the realm of biology." And even though he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Agre still doesn't consider himself a chemist. He'll concede that perhaps he is a biochemist. When I ask why he doesn't see biochemistry as an extension of the central science of chemistry, he answers that he actually sees biochemistry as central to medicine.

"Do you have to think of yourself as a chemist to make an important chemical discovery?" asks Jeremy M. Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. "As far as the chemical community goes, it's a positive statement about the importance of chemistry that there are these sorts of contributions that have an impact on the well-being of mankind, even if they haven't been made by card-carrying chemists," he says.

Wennerström agrees: "It's not so important that these researchers recognize themselves as chemists, but that they recognize chemistry as a fascinating and challenging discipline."

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