Bob LeChevalier <lojbab at lojban.org> writes:
> "John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote:
>> >To normal people, she was the "winner" of a quarter of a Nobel Prize
>> Normal people don't pay attention to whether the prize was shared or
> not, because other than the prize money award, the sharing is
> considered irrelevant. Meanwhile, it remains the fact that she was a
> winner of TWO Nobel prizes, not one.
I think I see the source of the misunderstanding. You seem to be
thinking of it as wholly unquestioned recognition. And certainly
no-one is plucked off the street to be given a Nobel solely because of
their birth group.
But there is also a legitimate question of favoritism towards a
birth-group, women. Consider just the facts we saw in the Curie case,
well before Feminism reached its current power: A confessed advocate
for women scientists sitting on the nominating committee and taking
direct action to secure a woman's nomination, the admitted fact that
Pierre secured Marie her part of the prize by his letter, Marie's
second prize for which the cited work was at best joint work with
Pierre, a prize which the committee admitted (not noted on either site
AFAICT) was aimed at giving her unshared recognition.
Thus when a prize is shared between man and woman, there's a
legitimate suspicion that the man provided disproportionately more of
the gravitas and credibility, since the woman also provided the
rewarded quality of being female.
Of course, favoritism to women is not the only factor, it's probably
not even the dominant factor, but one shouldn't overlook it.
--
Tom Breton at panix.com, username tehom. http://www.panix.com/~tehom
