From North American hegemony to global competition for scientific leadership? Insights from the Nobel population

Abstract

Based on the entire population of Nobel laureates in science from 1901 to 2017, we show that North America’s rise as global power in science started in the 1920s. Following a transition period (1940s to 1960s), its scientific hegemony was consolidated in the 1970s. Yet since the 2000s, North America’s global leadership in science has come under pressure. In that time, its share of laureates across disciplines dropped, although it has retained its attractiveness as a destination for future laureates from Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, we find that North America has become apparently less effective since 2010 in transferring capacities for conducting ground-breaking research from one generation of scientists to another. Furthermore, both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region have similarly high shares of newcomer organizations with regard to where prize-winning work is conducted, indicating that these two regions are very active in the inter-organizational competition for scientific talent. Despite this competition, however, we find no support for the rise of a new global center of science.

Institutional environments and breakthroughs in science. Comparison of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States

“…Further research should also focus on research systems like Japan that are outside Hollingsworth’s theoretical perspective, but which have received high-ranking scientific prizes in recent years and thrive with a rising number of Nobel laureates [ 25 ]. Another possible avenue for further research could be a broader disciplinary spectrum, including more high-ranking scientific awards in other disciplines, such as the Fields Medal in Mathematics.…”

“…In addition to [ 25 ], we compiled historical data on the annual population by country. For the United States, we used census data, as available in [ 26 – 29 ]; for the United Kingdom and France, we retrieved population estimates, as available in [ 30 ] and [ 31 ], respectively.…”

“…3 laureates, 1961-2017). We conducted two sample T-Tests, both for the entire observation period 1901-2017 (UK+US = 0,719; FR+DE = 0,455; p<0,035) and the North-American hegemonic period 1961-2000 [25] (UK+-US = 0,904; FR+DE = 0,354; p<0,022) that show these differences to be statistically significant at the p<0,05 level.…”

Der talentierte Briefeschreiber Robert K. Merton als einflussreicher Gate-Opener: Eine Analyse von 1460 Empfehlungsschreiben

“…One account by Parsons' student Renée C. Fox describes how Parsons assisted his students in the circulation of their ideas by making publication avenues accessible or introducing them to influential intellectual networks (Fox 1997). However, this scattered and scarce evidence offers only limited insights into how "master-apprentice relations" (Heinze et al 2019) operate in the academic job market.…”

The gender gap in highly prestigious international research awards, 2001–2020

“…The charts can be read as follows, Geographically, from 2001 to 2020, women affiliated with institutions located in the U.S. received nearly twice as many awards (n=272) as their counterparts in other high-income countries (n=140) and considerably more than the rest of the world (n=15) (Figure 4). During these 20 years, women in the U.S. always received a higher proportion of all awards received by scientists affiliated with institutions located in the country compared to women in other highincome countries; however, women in the latter group substantially increased their share of all awards in their respective countries during 2016-2020 bringing them closer to achieving parity with their women colleagues in the U.S. (Heinze, Jappe, & Pithan, 2019). Although women in the rest of the world enjoyed a better success rate during 2016-2020 compared to women in the U.S. and other high-income countries (21% vs. 18% and 17%, respectively), they received only nine of the 187 awards given to women worldwide during these five years.…”