In the wake of the news that Susumu Tonegawa of MIT had been chosen as the 1987 Nobel laureate in medicine (See THE SCIENTIST, November 2, 1987, P. 4), an article by Stephen Kreider Yoder appeared in the Wall Street Journal (October 14, 1987, p. 30) under the headline “Native Son’s Nobel Award Is Japan’s Loss: Scientist’s Prize Points Up Research System’s Failings.” The writer asserted that Tonegawa’s prize is “as much an embarrassment as a victory for Japan’s research community [and] illustrates the dire shortcomings of Japan’s research system.” (See “Japan’s Embarrassing Victory “p. 24.) This conclusion stems from Tonegawa’s personal history. Although he earned a B.S. degree from Kyoto University in 1963, he left the country thereafter and has studied and worked outside Japan ever since. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego in 1968, was a postdoctoral fellow there from 1968-1969, a ...
What Tonegawa' s Nobel Doesn't Mean
In the wake of the news that Susumu Tonegawa of MIT had been chosen as the 1987 Nobel laureate in medicine (See THE SCIENTIST, November 2, 1987, P. 4), an article by Stephen Kreider Yoder appeared in the Wall Street Journal (October 14, 1987, p. 30) under the headline “Native Son’s Nobel Award Is Japan’s Loss: Scientist’s Prize Points Up Research System’s Failings.” The writer asserted that Tonegawa’s prize is “as much an embarrassment as a victo
Written byEugene Garfield
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Meet the Author
Eugene Garfield was an American linguist and businessman, one of the founders of bibliometrics and scientometrics. He also founded The Scientist magazine in 1986.
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