Fahy Declan
Dublin City University, Ireland.
Public Underst Sci. 2018 May;27(4):433-445. doi: 10.1177/0963662518762663.
When scientists become Nobel laureates, they become famous in science and public life, but few studies have examined the nature of their scientific celebrity. This article examines how Scientific American portrayed laureates in order to identify and explain core features of Nobel fame. It examines the portrayals of seven laureates - Francis Crick, Linus Pauling, Hans Bethe, Murray Gell-Mann, Brian Josephson, Philip Anderson and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - in magazine profiles written between 1992 and 1995 by science writer John Horgan. Its textual analysis finds the scientists are portrayed as combining the sociological characteristics of genius, including enormous productivity and lasting impact, with the representational characteristics of celebrities, such as the merging of public and private lives. Their form of scientific celebrity is grounded in their field-changing research, which is presented as a product of their idiosyncratic personalities. Nobel science is presented as knowledge created by an ultra-elite of exceptional individuals.
当科学家成为诺贝尔奖得主时，他们在科学界和公众生活中声名远扬，但很少有研究考察他们科学声誉的本质。本文研究了《科学美国人》如何描绘诺贝尔奖得主，以识别和解释诺贝尔声誉的核心特征。它考察了科学作家约翰·霍根在1992年至1995年间撰写的杂志人物简介中对七位诺贝尔奖得主的描绘，这七位得主分别是弗朗西斯·克里克、莱纳斯·鲍林、汉斯·贝特、默里·盖尔曼、布赖恩·约瑟夫森、菲利普·安德森和苏布拉马尼扬·钱德拉塞卡。其文本分析发现，这些科学家被描绘为兼具天才的社会学特征，包括极高的产出率和持久的影响力，以及名人的代表性特征，如公众生活与私人生活的融合。他们的科学声誉形式植根于他们改变领域的研究，而这种研究被呈现为他们独特个性的产物。诺贝尔科学被视为由一群超凡的精英创造的知识。
