Why the Nobel Prize remains so elusive

Despite the recent stir that resulted when retired chemist and Quezon City resident Prof. Richard Heck was named as one of this year’s Nobel laureates, I think it remains unlikely that any locally based Filipino researcher will win a Nobel Prize for work in chemistry, physics, medicine or economics in the foreseeable future. With the exception of the latter (which is more properly known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), Nobel Prizes have been given since the early 20th century in recognition of outstanding contributions in these disciplines, as well as for literature and for peace. Scientific culture and productivity in the Philippines still lags significantly behind the rest of the world, and it will take a massive, concerted effort by government and academia to bring about the structural changes that are needed to enable such cutting-edge, world-class research to be done here. What is perhaps less unlikely is that a researcher of Filipino descent, but based overseas, might just have the right combination of talent, work ethic and good fortune to take home the prize. There are certainly some who have already come within striking distance, and may conceivably win it in the near future; and there are also researchers whose papers were cited by future Nobel laureates in their award-winning work.

In the field of engineering, a case in point is that of Prof. Jose B. Cruz Jr., professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the Ohio State University and currently a DOST Balik Scientist at Ateneo de Manila University. During his career, Prof. Cruz made important contributions in the field of control theory, for which he received (among other honors) the Richard E. Bellmann Control Heritage Award in 1994. What is interesting is that in 1973, he published two papers in the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications with his student, Marwan Simaan, outlining some interesting results in dynamic Stackelberg games (i.e., games involving leaders and followers). Their results were then used by Finn Kydland, an economics graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, whose early work appeared in the International Economic Review in 1975 and in the Journal of Economic Theory in 1977. A subsequent article entitled “Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans” by Kydland and Edward Prescott then appeared in the Journal of Political Economy in 1977. This paper would later become part of the basis for Kydland and Prescott being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2004. The key insight that they reported in their work is that, in a dynamic leader-follower game, the best course of action for the leader (i.e., the government) may involve changes in policy; however, such changes may result in loss of credibility. This result, which they referred to as “time inconsistency,” is the same as “violation of the principle of optimality” given by Simaan and Cruz in 1973, for a broader class of mathematical systems. This ancestral link is fully documented by a trail of citations, and was revisited in 2005 in Guido Tabellini’s article in the Scandinavian Journal of Economics. 

Simaan and Cruz did not win the Nobel Prize, but it is evident that their work was one of the key building blocks for Kydland and Prescott’s later success. What lessons can we draw from this chain of events? Here are three key principles that I’ve learned:

The benefits of research may take a long time to become evident. A quarter of a century elapsed from the time Kydland and Prescott’s work was published, and the time they received the Nobel Prize. An inspection of the roster of Nobel laureates (the interested reader can visit www.nobel.se) shows this to be the common trend. The delay is more concretely illustrated by the case of lasers, which were first developed in the 1950s as scientific curiosities with no clear technological application; half a century later, lasers have become the indispensable backbone of optical data storage and transmission systems. This is a lesson often lost to researchers in the Philippines, who too often try to pursue short-term applied results at the expense of deep theoretical advances.

Scientific progress is incremental in nature. Hindsight bias gives the strong illusion of science and technology progressing in fits and starts. However, what is important for a researcher facing the unknown future is to see his or her work as part of a continuum. This philosophy also emphasizes the value of publication of research findings, so that the shared knowledge may create opportunities for other researchers to make their own advances. It is in the incremental nature of progress that scientific publication finds its inherent social value. Or, to put things in simpler terms, one can say that publication is the necessary flipside of literature review. Again, this is a lesson that Filipino researchers have yet to fully internalize, as evidenced by our low collective publication rates, even in comparison to our counterparts elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Important ideas can transcend traditional boundaries between disciplines. The experience of Simaan and Cruz illustrates this clearly enough: theoretical work done by two electrical engineers becomes part of one of the most important ideas in contemporary economics. And this is not even by any means a rare occurrence. For example, another Economics Nobel laureate, John Nash (whose life was depicted a few years ago in the film “A Beautiful Mind”), was a mathematician, not an economist! Similarly, Jack Kilby, an electrical engineer, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000 for inventing the integrated circuit in the 1950s (it is also worth noting that Kilby did not even have a Ph.D. degree, but this is a topic we will leave for a future column). The lesson here, for Filipino researchers, is not to be too bound by the traditional confines of one’s discipline. Research, after all, is about exploring new territory.

These three points are essential to conceptualizing, executing and documenting the sort of meaningful research that remains rare in the Philippines. At the moment, scientific output of even the best local institutions (as measured by publication rates) will need to increase dramatically, tenfold, a hundredfold, to match the leading research universities of the world. The local research community will also need to develop a greater appreciation of pure science as the ultimate source of true innovation. Perhaps, then, a Filipino will take home the Nobel Prize.

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Raymond R. Tan is a full professor of chemical engineering and university fellow at De La Salle University. His main research interests are process systems engineering (PSE), life cycle assessment (LCA) and pinch analysis. Tan received his BS and MS in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from De La Salle University, and is the author of more than 50 articles in ISI-indexed journals in the fields of chemical, environmental and energy engineering. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, and co-editor of the forthcoming book Recent Advances in Sustainable Process Design and Optimization. Tan is also the recipient of multiple awards from the Philippine National Academy of Science and Technology and the National Research Council of the Philippines. E-mail at [email protected].