The Road To Stockholm

The Nobel Prizes enjoy enormous prestige throughout the world. Every year, science is propelled into the limelight, and in October, when the prizes are announced, and December, when they are awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm, a chosen few scientists
acquire celebrity status and their science receives wide coverage in the news media. First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prize remains the only science prize widely recognized by the general public. What sort of scientists become Nobel laureates? How are
they chosen? Are there features common to them, and to their prize-winning research? These sorts of questions have long intrigued Istvan Hargittai and seeking answers, he began interviewing Nobel prize-winning scientists about their careers. Some 70
laureates, and a similar number of other distinguished scientists, have been interviewed, most of them during the late 1990s, and the result is this remarkable book. Written for a general readership, The Road to Stockholm illuminates the nature of
scientific discovery, the Nobel Prize selection process, the factors common to award-winning research, and the effects of the Nobel Prize on science itself. Here are stories of scientists who overcame adversity, eventually to win the Prize