American scientists will again dominate the Nobel prizes at this week's award announcements in Sweden, analysts have predicted. But one says this dominance may soon end.
David Pendlebury, a citation analyst who has correctly predicted 10 Nobel winners since 2002, believes that the countries of the east will soon start to rule the awards.
"In the first half of the 20th century the UK, Germany and France dominated the sciences. The US emerged as the world leader after World War II. Now, I believe we will begin to see as many Nobel prize winners from Asia as we do from the US and Europe. US investment in the physical sciences is no longer as robust as its investment in biological and medical sciences."
A maximum of three individuals are allowed to share a Nobel, with each prize being worth around $2 million. Over the past 10 years, 31 out of the 76 individuals who won science Nobels were US-based while 16 out of the 21 economics winners were from the US.
Pendlebury has tipped a number of US teams as possible winners including Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, of Boston, for their work on tissue engineering; Sajeev John (Toronto, Canada) and Eli Yablonovitch (Berkeley) for work on photonics; and Allen Bard (Austin) for his work on scanning electrochemical microscopy.
