Potential Nobelites
Who will be awarded the Nobel Prize-2019 scientometric data
As a rule, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to one or another scientist is quite expected: whether due to the significance of the discovery, which is impossible not to bypass, or the general merits of the scientist himself. However, history knows quite a lot of "unexpected" Nobel laureates. It is all the more interesting to look at the forecasts, one of the most authoritative among which is published every year by Clarivate Analytics. Indicator.Ru figured out to whom and for what, as expected, the Nobel Prizes for 2019 will be awarded.
A little methodology
Clarivate Analytics became an independent company in 2016, separating from the Thomson Reuters media corporation. But the lists of potential Nobel laureates selected by the number of citations in the Web of Science database of scientific articles have a longer history: the first list was published back in 2002. The authors of the forecast emphasize in each publication that they do not set the task of predicting the laureates of the current year: the purpose of the work is to highlight the most influential scientists in the world whose work is comparable to the Nobel discoveries. In the long run, the company's predictions coincide with the choice of the Nobel Committee quite often. "Of the slightly more than 300 scientists that we have named since 2002, 50 have received the Nobel Prize, and 29 people – within two years from the moment they were included in the list of Citation Laureates. That is, our list is a great way to keep abreast of the applicants for the award," Clarivate Analytics scientometrics expert Pavel Kasyanov emphasizes. For example, the company's forecasts previously included last year's laureates in physiology and medicine James Ellison and Tasuku Honjo and economics William Nordhaus and Paul Romer. Scientists from Russia, Kasyanov recalls, also got into the lists of potential laureates: in 2017, the company noted chemist Georgy Shulpin and astrophysicist Rashid Syunyaev.
When making a forecast, Clarivate Analytics experts focus on the most cited articles in the Web of Science, and there are actually quite a few of them – 18700, only about four hundredths of a percent of the more than 47 million indexed publications. Each of these articles has collected more than a thousand citations. The choice of such articles is the first, quantitative stage of research, and then comes the turn of qualitative analysis. Here, experts find out whether the authors of the most cited articles have received other prestigious awards, for example, the Lasker Prize in biomedicine, and select from the list of scientists whose articles are associated with the most striking discoveries of the Nobel level. Scientometry meets the human factor. Since the Nobel Prize is more often awarded for discoveries whose significance has already been confirmed by subsequent research or practice, when compiling the list of Citation Laureates, experts also take into account mostly fairly old works.
Optogenetics, immunity and organoids from stem cells
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine will be the first to be known. The list of potential Nobel laureates in this field, the authors of the Clarivate Analytics forecast included a researcher who could receive the award individually, a team and scientists who worked independently.
Hans Klevers, a Dutch geneticist from Utrecht University, could become a Nobel laureate for his research on the role played by the intracellular signaling pathway Wnt in embryonic development, in stem cells and in the formation of cancerous tumors. Having isolated adult stem cells, which the body uses to renew intestinal tissues, he became one of the pioneers in the cultivation of mini-organs. These copies of the intestine, liver, and pancreas can be used for drug testing. In 2013, Clevers has already received one of the first Breakthrough Prize for Wnt research.
Clarivate Analytics experts also consider the work of American biochemists and immunologists from the National Jewish Health Research Center John Kappler and Philippa Marrack on the study of T-lymphocytes to be worthy of recognition. The Kappler and Marrack spouses participated in the discovery of the T-cell receptor in the group of last year's laureate James Ellison, and then investigated how T-cells develop tolerance to the body's own antigens, and how this process can be disrupted in autoimmune diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Guillain-Barre syndrome.
According to the third version of the forecast, three scientists who independently worked on the development of optogenetics could receive the Nobel Prize at once. These are Ernst Bamberg from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Germany, Gero Misenbeck from Oxford University and Karl Deisseroth from Stanford. By embedding photosensitive proteins into the membranes of neurons of experimental animals, over the past 15 years, scientists have created tools to control the activity of individual neurons. The creation of optogenetics has been repeatedly recognized as the most significant breakthrough in neuroscience in the first decade of the XXI century, and Deisseroth has already become one of the laureates of the Breakthrough Prize thanks to this discovery. Whether the time has come to celebrate the developers of a new field with the Nobel Prize, we will find out on October 7.
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Nominal reactions and biotech as a business
For the discovery of a method for identifying specific nucleotide sequences in DNA, already named after him, Oxford Professor Edwin Southern could become a Nobel laureate. Southern blotting was the first method that allowed us to find out exactly where and how many times the desired DNA sequence (for example, a specific gene) occurs in the sample under study. To do this, individual DNA fragments are transferred to the membrane, which is treated with a DNA probe - a sample labeled with a radioactive or luminous substance with a DNA fragment complementary to the desired one. The method was discovered in 1975, and since then such variations of it as northern and Western blotting have already appeared to search for specific RNA and protein sequences in a sample.
According to the report, three more researchers and entrepreneurs can be awarded for the development of research methods jointly: Marvin Caruthers from the University of Colorado, Leroy Hood from the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle and Michael Hankapiller, president of Pacific Biosciences of California. All of them are developers of new methods and devices for sequencing and synthesis of DNA and proteins. Without their inventions, as Clarivate Analytics experts emphasize, the success of the Human Genome project would have been impossible. Which of the chemists will be worthy of the Nobel Prize this year, it will be known on October 9.
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(Read about the alleged Nobel laureates – physicists, "pure" chemists and economists in the original article – VM.)
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