The week following Nobel Prizes is a good time to analyse Indian science. Specifically, it is a good time to ask yet again why an Indian hasn't won — since CV Raman — a Nobel Prize in science for work done in India. By extension, we should also probe the consequences of such an omission, both for Indian science and its overall economic development.
Is the Nobel Prize really all that important for Indian science? We have to look at, before we come to Indian science, the reason why a researcher is awarded a Nobel Prize. Scientists win Nobel Prizes for a single path-breaking discovery. It is all right if he or she hasn't accomplished anything before or after this breakthrough. A Nobel Prize is not a life-timeachievement award. It is an award for blazing a trail.
Nobel Prize winners open up completely new avenues that didn't exist before. This fact is important while looking at the achievement of Indian scientists. For example, CNR Rao, arguably India's greatest living scientist, has yet to win a Nobel. This is probably because he hasn't made a breakthrough that has generated a new field in chemistry. The absence of a Nobel doesn't reduce his achievement though; he continues to be one of the world's best chemists. George Whitesides, the world's most-cited living chemist, hasn't or probably never will win a Nobel Prize.
While a Nobel Prize is not the only yardstick for judging an individual's research work, it is important for judging a country or even a top-ranking research institution.
Lead, Not Follow
No quality research institution in science can afford not to produce a Nobel laureate over long periods of time. It would clearly mean that its scientists are not thinking out of the box enough or not taking intellectual risks, qualities critical for the success of a research institution at a global level.
An individual can make different kinds of contributions, but an institution has to produce different kinds of people. For a country with a large research infrastructure, a complete absence of Nobel Prize winners is a serious deficiency. There is only one Nobel Prize given in a field in a year, and so we should exercise caution before dismissing Indian science as not world class.
But after Raman, only one other scientist knocked on the Nobel doors hard enough: GN Ramachandran, the outstanding biophysicist who made fundamental contributions to our understanding of protein structure. Ramachandran not winning a Nobel Prize is now considered a significant omission on the part of the Nobel committee, but that is a different matter.
India did have a few other world class scientists who, like Rao, had made outstanding contributions to their fields. One name that is worth mentioning is S Chandrasekhar, the physicist who had discovered some fascinating properties of liquid crystals. We can find such names only with difficulty, as pioneering scientific breakthroughs are conspicuous by their absence in India.
Indian science is usually a follower and not a leader in the global arena. And followers do not win Nobel Prizes. It takes great courage to continue working in a field with slim chances of success. James Rothman, who won this year's prize in medicine, was told that he was "nuts" to attempt to reproduce the cell's complexities. The US university system tolerates or even awards such courage, no matter what the results are. There is no such tolerance in India.
Indian scientists are thus encouraged to pursue safe lines of research that are guaranteed to result in publications. Unless institutions reward risk-taking, Indian science will follow and not lead.
(This column looks at global science from an Indian perspective)