Nobel "Big Game" Score: Berkeley vs. Stanford

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>There was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday about the 54 Nobel Prizes awarded in the Bay Area to powerhouses Berkeley, UCSF, and Stanford. For those who don't know, UCSF is a dedicated biomedical graduate school.</p>

<p>Berkeley's 21 Nobels put the number of most other universities to shame (if indeed this is about shaming) -- only not Stanford's which is listed as having 31 Nobels. </p>

<p>To even the account a bit, though, in the Nobel "Big Game" remember that Berkeley does not have a medical school. UCSF, based across the bay in San Francisco is the closest to being called that but it's really separate from Berkeley though it is also a UC school (though as a med school consistently outranks Stanford's med school, by the way).</p>

<p>Nor does Berkeley have the Hoover Institution which "bought" several of Stanford's Nobel Laureates after they had essentially retired from academia (Bauer, Friedman from University of Chicago, etc). </p>

<p>After accounting for these facts, the Big Game Score is a lot closer, even if you discount Steven Chu who left Stanford for Berkeley after getting his Nobel prize. But then, he was returning to the place where he had done his PhD - i.e. Berkeley.</p>

<p>The fact is the Bay Area in a much faster time than the Boston area has become an academic powerhouse rivaling the best in the world. And quality researchers go back in forth amongst all the powerhouses. That's why you have Berkeley grads getting Nobels at Stanford or NASA (as with Mather this year who did his PhD at Berkeley), Stanford grads getting Nobels elsewhere, and Harvard and MIT and Johns Hopkins and plenty of other schools in the mix too adding lots of brain power. </p>

<p>The same goes for a lot of other academic prizes: MacArthur Genius Awards, for instance. Berkeley has tons, Stanford does too, and in many cases they earned PhDs at the other (e.g., Dan Jurafsky, BA/PhD Berkeley, distinguished professor at Stanford), National Academy of Sciences placements similarly.</p>

<p>One private, one public: they serve very different missions in a way, but they reinforce one another in a way and they are both far younger than some of their main "competitors" in the Nobel arena. To be sure, in some ways they are as different as night and day, but they are amazing each in their own right.</p>

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<p>^ Great post. I had goose bumps after reading your post. </p>

<p>Of the 21 from Berkeley, how many from this year? 2?</p>

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<p>What are they counting in those numbers? Check this out:</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I believe they're counting Nobels received by current/past faculty. Personally I'm more interested in alumni, because it shows that many Berkeley grads end up doing big things. Which makes me feel better against the CC stigma of "Berkeley grads aren't as good as x ivy grads" :)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The fact is the Bay Area in a much faster time than the Boston area has become an academic powerhouse rivaling the best in the world.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, let's be fair here. Neither the Bay Area nor Boston were true academic powerhouses in the world until WW2 or so. Let's face it. Before WW2, the vast bulk of the best science research in the world was done in Europe. That's why in the pre-war days, the vast majority of Nobels were won by Europeans - i.e. the Brits, Germans, Swiss, French, etc. </p>

<p>The point is, while sure, Boston and Harvard have long histories, most of that history they were not true academic powerhouses in any world-class sense. For more than 300 years after its founding, Harvard could not touch the research proclivity of schools like Oxford, Cambridge, or any of the other major European powerhouses. </p>

<p>The point is, while Boston may have, technically speaking, had a head-start over the Bay Area just because Boston was founded far earlier, Boston didn't really do anything with that head start. It's not like Boston was building up over time its research ability ever since its founding, and then the Bay Area just quickly caught up. The truth is, there was no region in the US that was truly world-class in science until WW2. It was events of the war and its aftermath that caused certain regions, the Bay Area and Boston being two of them, to establish world-class scientific credentials.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
One private, one public: they serve very different missions in a way, but they reinforce one another in a way and they are both far younger than some of their main "competitors" in the Nobel arena.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, I don't find this to be a particularly fair characterization either. Let's keep in mind that the Nobel Prizes didn't even exist until 1901. Berkeley was founded in 1868. Stanford was founded in 1898. Now I agree that it takes some decades for a school to fully establish itself, but it means that both Berkeley and Stanford were both well-established schools during most of the eligible timeframe of the Nobel Prizes. From the standpoint of the Nobels, it doesn't matter that Harvard was founded in 1636 when the fact is, Nobels didn't even exist back in those days. You can't win a prize that doesn't even exist. </p>

<p>In the case of Berkeley in particular, Berkeley had 33 years to establish itself before the first Nobels were even handed out, and 33 years ought to be sufficient time. As a point of comparison, MIT was founded only a few years before Berkeley was. </p>

<p>Furthermore, like I said in my previous post, US universities were not real science powerhouses before WW2, relative to the univeristies in Europe. Before WW2, Harvard profs had only won 3 Nobels. MIT hadn't won any. So it's not like Harvard/MIT had built up some huge lead from a Nobel prof-winning standpoint. It was during WW2 that Nobels began to proliferate at many US schools as the big-time science in the world shifted from Europe to the US.</p>

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<p>headstart, let's face it, to get to the point that it could attract that talent --and MIT did too in terms of shared resources and some reflected glory. Though I agree with you to a significant degree. The larger point is about presumptions that people have -- and these clearly favor the Eastern schools.</p>

<p>Harvard has been around a hell of a lot longer than any of the others, and is widely viewed as pre-eminent. Cambridge for a long time has been viewed as more of a center. This clearly should be an advantage in terms of attracing talent and certainly is so in terms of attracting attention. This largely applies to the Ivy League as a whole, being seen as more of the critical mass of quality university education. </p>

<p>One example that doesn't even involve academics and is about Yale, not the Cambridge couple: one of the Western universities (you can figure out which one) had a student-written newspaper sex advice column that had some local acclaim for a couple of years and was the first of its kind in the nation, according to all reports. But then Yale started one and NYT wrote about it as the first of its kind in the nation. </p>

<p>Of course, it happens within the Bay Area too; most people even there don't know about UCSF, the fact that its consistently ranked more highly than Stanford med, that it was the birthplace of recombinant DNA biotech (through the technology development and founding of Genentech), spins out huge numbers of biotech and has won a few Nobels itself. Standalone med schools just don't rate that much attention.</p>

<p>But I digress...I think it's clear what I am talking about presumptions. None of these schools should be in the shadow of any other -- look how many of the Berkeley/Stanford Nobels went to MIT/Harvard. All ships rise.</p>

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<p>This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine going to researchers at University of California, San Francisco (the West Coast's premier, and Berkeley's de facto, med school -- see above) and Johns Hopkins:</p>

<p>The</a> Associated Press: Medicine award kicks off Nobel Prize announcements</p>

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<p>
[quote]
This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine going to researchers at University of California, San Francisco (the West Coast's premier, and Berkeley's de facto, med school -- see above) and Johns Hopkins:</p>

<p>The Associated Press: Medicine award kicks off Nobel Prize announcements

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</p>

<p>Uh, they haven't won the award (yet). The winners will be announced tomorrow. The article clearly states that the researchers in question could be candidates.</p>

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<p>Here are the actual Medicine winners of this year.</p>

<p>AIDS</a>, cancer scientists scoop medicine Nobel - CNN.com</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>My mistake....mea culpa. I misread that article...and thought it had been published too early.</p>

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<p>On a more positive note, Roger Tsien of UCSD did win the chemistry prize this year.</p>

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<p>Which universities have the most nobel prize affiliates? I was looking at Wikipedia, but it really looks messed up.</p>