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The 2025 Nobel Prizes were recently announced and largely there hasn’t been surprises (except for a few). Institutionalized in 1901 to ‘honour men and women from around the world for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for work in peace’, the coveted Prize has remained a bulwark against mediocracy, provincial thinking and power play.
If you study the lives and work of the Nobels, three themes emerge: quantity leading to quality, importance of multiple affiliations, and the proclivity of collaborating across disciplines.
The two-time Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling (1954 Chemistry and 1962 Peace), famously noted, ‘The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.’ Nothing validates the truism of quantity leading to quality more than the Nobel Laureates. Such eminent scientists are not only more productive but also work on a wider range of topics than their peers and produce at a higher chip.
In a 2020 study, researchers at the Northwestern University analysed career histories of 545 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, and medicine (1901 to 2016) and showed that during their first five years as working scientists, the future Nobel Laureates published twice as many articles as other early-career researchers. ‘In contrast to the iconic image of lone geniuses making guiding contributions, we find the giants in science show a greater propensity toward teamwork’, notes the organizational behaviourist, Dashun Wang. Their high productivity emerges from extensive and expansive collaborations.
Sample this: Between 1901 and 1911, 80 percent of Nobel Prizes were awarded for individual contribution, but over the last two decades of the 20th century as many as 75 percent were shared by researchers from diverse fields. In any domain, once the low hanging fruits get plucked, the advances become increasingly treacherous, as reflected by aging Nobel Laureates and more scientific grants going to cross-disciplinary studies. Creativity is becoming a networked, collaborative activity, where different participants offer specific skills and the whole takes shape over time. So goes the saying: A creative mind is a connected mind.
The social scientist Robert Root-Bernstein studied 773 Nobel laureates (1901- 2008) to understand their polymathic or multi-disciplinary networks of vocational and avocational interests. Such ‘Renaissance intellects’, noted Root-Bernstein ‘experience, on average, enhanced access to education; train differently and more broadly than their peers; retrain and extend themselves as serious amateurs; and meld vocational and avocational sets of skills and knowledge into integrated networks of transdisciplinary enterprise.’ In other words, what they do beyond their core discipline, let’s say hobbies, feed directly into their work’s creative upside.
As compared to ordinary people, the Nobel Laureates are eight times more likely to be photographers; eighteen times more likely to be a practicing musician, composer, or conductor; seven times more likely to be a visual artist, sculptor, or printmaker, twelve times more likely to write poetry, short stories, plays, essays, novels, or popular books; and twenty two times more likely to be an amateur actor, dancer, magician, or other performer. Take a moment to appreciate that a Nobel Laureate takes time to pursue artistic hobbies. What’s your excuse?
If India must up its ante on the Nobels, our students hold the key. The key unlocks the treasure of creativity that lies hidden in each of us but requires appropriate conditions. It starts with maintaining a fluid identity, where a student is not defining herself as a scientist or an artist, or on the narrow lines of provincial disciplines. In equal measures, it calls for honing artistic hobbies, which not only demonstrate discipline but can offer a fertile ground for germination of new ideas and perspectives. Afterall Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first Nobel Laureate (1913, Literature) was a poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwriter, essayist, musician, painter, actor-producer-director, educator, patriot, and social reformer.
Thirdly, the pupil must be willing to look across domains and collaborate more freely, without the fear of losing out on expertise. If ideas are born at the intersection of disciplines, the creative types locate themselves in such fluid networks, where serendipity can be engineered. While premium is associated with productivity, the creative types ensure an innate variety of ideas, by being willing to appreciate other’s point of views and being provisionally attached to theirs. It calls for maintaining a mind of a child in the body of an adult. Hope that we, as the world’s most populous nation, make our mark at the Nobels too and our students lead the way.
About the author
Dr Pavan Soni is an adjunct faculty at IIM Bangalore and the bestselling author of the books Design Your Thinking and Design Your Career.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.