Eponymous Prizes Honor Scientists, But Draw Criticism

HONORED ACHIEVERS: Anne and Paul Ehrlich, winners of this year's Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, have collaborated on ecological research since the 1960s. On Friday, April 17, at a black-tie dinner in Los Angeles, noted environmentalists Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich will receive the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. They will be awarded a gold medallion and $200,000 for a collaboration that began in the early 1960s with field work on butterflies, continued with Paul Ehrlich's codiscovery of the concept of coevolution, and then received wide notice when the couple--by then forceful environmental advocates--pointed out the ecological dangers of overpopulation and nuclear war. The recipients of numerous other awards, the Ehrlichs are members of a growing fraternity: scientists who receive awards endowed by individuals or families. These awards are increasing in number, and some of them exceed the Nobel Prize in monetary value, if not prestige. For example, John Marks Templeton, a global investor, annually sets the value of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to be just above that of the Nobel Prize. Several scientists have won the Templeton Prize, including physicist Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide and geneticist and zoologist L. Charles Birch of the University of Sydney. A PLUS: Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman says that although prizes call attention to good scientific work, the overall benefit is "not very great, but it's a net positive." According to sociologist Harriet Zuckerman, vice president of the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a professor, emerita, of sociology at Columbia University, the number of scientific prizes grew fivefold--to 3,000--between 1969 and 1991 (H. Zuckerman, Theoretical Medicine, 13:217-31, 1992). This growth rate is far faster than the increase in the number of scientists, notes Zuckerman. She attributes it to several factors, including the desire to honor worthy scientists in new and emerging fields and the desire of individuals and charitable organizations to establish their bona fides by identifying themselves with first-class science. Zuckerman reports that some scientists criticize the proliferation of prizes, especially awards having high monetary values, fearing that they might corrupt the scientific enterprise by increasing competition and channeling scientific work into more prizeworthy areas. And Zuckerman herself expresses skepticism about the altruistic motives of some prize givers. When it comes to the Tyler Prize, however, the benevolent motives of the late John and Alice Tyler are clear, insists Jerome B. Walker, executive director of the Tyler Prize and associate provost at the University of Southern California, where the prize is administered. John Tyler was founder and longtime chief executive officer of the Farmers Insurance Group. He and his wife "had a deep respect for nature," remarks Walker. "They did want to foster the growth of knowledge that might enable humanity to restore and preserve the environment [and] they had a deep respect for creative individuals . . . who would have a major impact on the betterment of the human environment." Paul and Anne Ehrlich certainly fit the bill. Paul, the Bing Professor of Population Studies, and Anne, a senior research associate, have been based at Stanford University for decades, and their research has long been at the forefront of the environmental movement. "This is a great honor, and we are extremely pleased to have it," Anne Ehrlich says. "What we've done is not in the same class as discovering DNA or figuring out the double helix. I think what we've done is find new ways of looking at things, and transmitted those to the public and the rest of the scientific community. We tend to be synthesizers, not great discoverers." While the motives of the Tylers are fairly well-known, the motives of John Scott are a complete mystery. An Edinburgh, Scotland, druggist who died in the early 19th century and apparently never visited the United States, Scott willed several thousand dollars to the city of Philadelphia to issue annual awards for useful inventions that improved the "comfort, welfare, and happiness" of humankind. The initial prizes tended to go to inventors of innovative farm implements, but more recently the award has been presented to scientists. Originally the prize consisted of $20 and a copper medal, but in recent years it has grown to $10,000 (still including the medal). Robin M. Hochstrasser, Donner Professor of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and secretary of the John Scott Award committee, says that despite a good deal of research, no one has been able to determine why Scott established the award. "There is suggestion from his interests that he admired Benjamin Franklin and had heard about what Franklin had done with his investments in Philadelphia and Boston. But it's really conjecture. He was not a wealthy man, really." Philadelphia has been something of a center of scientific prizes since the first half of the 19th century. The city's Franklin Institute now distributes 17 annual awards. "Even Alfred Nobel received an award from us--in civil engineering," notes Woodrow W. Leake, vice president of the Franklin Institute. "Someone had to figure out how to blow up mountains to build roads." Nobel won the Cresson Medal, which was established in 1846 by Elliot Cresson, a prominent Philadelphian. The institute's most recently established scientific prize is the Bower Award and Prize in Science, endowed in 1988 by Henry Bower, who was the third generation of the Bower family to maintain the Henry Bower Chemical Manufacturing Co. "He wanted to recognize excellence worldwide," explains Leake. "And he wanted some permanent tribute to his grandfather [also named Henry Bower]. He saw the prize and award as a way of helping our mission, which is to excite passion for science, and to enhance public literacy for science." DOUBLE WINNER: Ralph Brinster, recipient of the John Scott and Bower awards, remains modest and considers himself a flag bearer for a battalion of scientists. Prizes definitely have a positive impact, according to one award-winning scientist. Last year, Ralph L. Brinster, the Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, won both the John Scott and the Bower awards. Brinster was honored for a lifetime of important work on mammalian development. As a graduate student, he developed an egg-culture technique that allowed mammalian eggs to be modified and manipulated, which proved crucial in many areas, including in vitro fertilization and the production of transgenic mice. The paper he wrote describing this technique (R.L. Brinster, Experimental Cell Research, 32:205-8, 1963) has been designated a Citation Classic by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (R. Brinster, Current Contents-Life Sciences , 33[17]:25, April 23, 1990). Despite his significant contributions, Brinster remains modest about the awards he has won. "There's always some controversy about the importance of awards," he points out. "My feeling is that they have value in that they highlight the evolution of science. They reflect the evaluation of distinguished committees about what is important. So they serve, in a sense, as signposts or markers along the way of our understanding of biology and nature and the world around us. . . . I think prizes recognize an area and not an individual. . . . It's as if I'm carrying the flag for a battalion of people." "I think the value of prizes is in raising the visibility of excellence," adds Leake. "It's a celebration of excellence. It helps raise the visibility of a particular science, it helps with science and technology literacy for the populace, it helps set role models for young people, it helps in any number of ways. In that regard, I think it's as valuable as spending the money on direct research." "There are a number of ways one can encourage research," notes Hochstrasser. "If we accept that making significant discoveries that benefit mankind is a truly worthwhile thing to spend one's life on, then clearly it's worth supporting, it's worth encouraging. One way to do that is by giving rewards through awards and recognizing the contributions of individuals. It's a wonderful thing to do. What we're doing is recognizing, in many cases, a lifetime of work by an individual who is really making a difference to everybody s life." But when do the prizes get excessive in number and rewards? Zuckerman reports (H. Zuckerman, The Scientist, 10[22]:10, Nov. 11, 1996) that some scientists are highly critical of the proliferation of prizes. Hochstrasser is not among them. "For every prize that is given, there are three or four or five or maybe even 10 or more scientists who are virtually as qualified, as deserving of an award," he points out. "Many, many scientists who make extremely important contributions throughout their lives do not receive awards. . . . That would evidence that there are not enough awards, not too many." CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE: Woodrow Leake, vice president of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, describes prizes as "a celebration of excellence." Other scientists look askance at the especially rich awards. "The people who are quite negative about large prizes believe that they introduce into science a monetary motive which otherwise isn't there, and they think this has a corrupting effect," explains Zuckerman. "My own view is that the whole character of modern science has changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years. There was a time when it was unusual for scientists to take out patents on their discoveries. Well, that's all changed, so the monetary incentive is decidedly there for some, and I don't think prizes change the overall political economy of science that much." Walker adds, "If some of us come on later in their careers and honor [scientists] for the breakthroughs they have made, they are delighted to have that kind of recognition. It is a pat on the back for what they have accomplished, and encouragement for them to continue. It is not what they strive for. There are not enough prizes with enough money to make the scientific community wealthy." Zuckerman reports that another criticism of prizes is that they tend to promote competition and encourage what she calls "sharp elbows," but she says that her personal view is that prizes "just add another dimension to a system which is in any event exceedingly competitive." "I would say the need for funds drives these negative things more than the prizes do," observes Brinster. Moreover, he points out, "I've heard stories of intense competition in older science where there were no prizes, or essentially no prizes--the development of calculus and so on." And Zuckerman remarks that any competition for prizes may be an exercise in futility. "While the rich prizes have multiplied, they are still so rare that any individual who considers them when he is thinking about the way he's going to conduct his work would have to be insane, or at best unrealistic about the odds of winning." An additional criticism, says Zuckerman, is that the desire to win prizes "gives further fuel for the impulse to go for the main chance, to work in an area that's likely to get a lot of attention and recognition, and thus to lead people to stay away from kinds of research that takes a lot of time to do or is hard to do or is not so likely to pan out." "There may be a small amount of truth in that," concedes Hochstrasser, "but that may not be all bad. . . . Whatever in the environment that may stimulate people to go after new discoveries is worthwhile." Nevertheless, counters Brinster, "I don't know many people--maybe none--who are actually working in science and make decisions on the basis of whether they can get a prize. Maybe one of the reasons is that there are so many good people now for any prize that [who wins] becomes a little bit random in the end." Anne Ehrlich points out that she and her husband have been "at it long before any prizes were offered in this line of work." And Walker concludes that the idea that the availability of prizes might distort the direction of science is "a major misunderstanding of the social dynamics of the scholarly community. I'm unaware of anybody who's working toward a particular prize." While some scientists are critical of others who might go out of their way to win prizes, Zuckerman is most skeptical of the donors of eponymous prizes. "Some of those who underwrite prizes may be fascinated with science and the ideas their prizes come to be associated with," she notes, "but others are far less interested and might just as well have given the award for something else. . . . I guess in the scheme of things it's better to associate oneself with a prize or fellowship for very good science than to do something silly with the money. But the result is reflected glory." To take the most prominent example, Alfred Nobel guaranteed his continued fame by establishing the Nobel Prize. "To be sure, Alfred Nobel would have been remembered as the inventor of dynamite," remarks Zuckerman, "but the name would not have been known by a minute fraction of the population that knows it now had it not been for the Nobel Prize." Zuckerman is the author of Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York, Free Press, 1979; reprinted New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 1996), and she is the stepmother of Robert C. Merton, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics. "I think donors do understand the limited reach of their own lives and hope they might create something during their lifetime that will last beyond them, as the Nobel has, and bring some continued distinction to their families," agrees Walker. "[But] while the family name may continue because of its association, it is the quality of the recipients that will make it a vital institution . . . and keep the name of the award known to the larger social community." Hochstrasser bristles when the motives of award donors are impugned. "Here's a man [John Scott] with vision. Here's a man who wants to do something useful with a small amount of money: to reward people for making contributions that benefit mankind. It's hard for me to accept any form of criticism of that sort of activity." Although Zuckerman emphasizes that she doesn't necessarily share all the criticisms of scientific prizes, her enthusiasm for prizes is decidedly muted. "My view is that if you look at the long term, prizes have in some ways moderately good effects in the way the public perceives science. I don't think they have an awful lot of influence in what goes on in science. . . . Prizes do call attention to good scientific work, and that is on balance a good thing for science. The overall benefit to science is not very great, but it's a net positive, and therefore I don't think they're a bad thing." Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., can be reached online at finn@nasw.org.

Eponymous Prizes Honor Scientists, But Draw Criticism

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