<p>USC prof Arieh Warshel among the recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry:</p>
<p>Nobel</a> Prize in chemistry for work that led to complex computing - CNN.com</p>
<p>I believe that brings our total Nobels to at least five…fight on!</p>
<p>Dr. George Olah is also on the faculty at USC. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry years ago. So there are now two Nobel Laureates in the USC chemistry department.</p>
<p>Another testimate of USC rapid climb to a top university. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that there are more nobel prizes to be announced… litature will be tomorrow and the peace prize will be on friday. </p>
<p>Congrats to Stanford (2) and Cal, which also had professors that won this year.</p>
<p>California is blessed to have so many top notch universities.</p>
<p>And the Cal professor is a Stanford and UCLA alum. Each California Pac-12 school represented this year.</p>
<p>How many <em>homegrown</em> Nobel winners do we have, though? It’s my understanding that George Olah was the only other one. How do you get 5, Seattle? Were there winners in previous decades? I don’t pretend to know, but Olah is the only other one I’ve heard of.</p>
<p>Either way, a tremendous honor for all of the scientists and for USC. Glad to see us continuing to climb the ranks, and, yes California is truly blessed to have so many wonderful universities. I have to explain this to friends all the time - compare CA to the other mega-states like TX and FL and there’s no comparison whatsoever, in terms of both quantity and quality.</p>
<p>There are two other Nobel Laureates among the faculty – Murray Gell-Mann and Daniel McFadden. They received their Nobel Prizes prior to coming to USC.</p>
<p>The fifth Nobel Laureate affiliated with USC is Werner Arber, who spent time as a researcher at USC.</p>
<p>I consider Olah and Warshel to be USC’s legitimate Nobel prize winners. The other three are only very loosely affiliated with USC.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, Wikipedia, in its List of Nobel Laureates by University Affiliation topic, lists five Nobel Laureates affiliated with USC: [List</a> of Nobel laureates by university affiliation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation]List”>List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation - Wikipedia) . It’s interesting to see the lists from other Universities too…</p>
<p>Simba,
Both of those other Nobel Laureates are on the faculty at SC. A recipient does not lose the Nobel Laureate status because he/she decides to join the faculty at another institution.</p>
<p>I disagree with the term “loosely affiliated”.</p>
<p>Gell-Mann and McFadden are part-timers at USC who have minimal interaction with students. Both also have current affiliations with other universities. They were brought in for show.</p>
<p>If you go to McFadden’s homepage, his contact information references UC Berkeley, and his phone #'s use Berkeley’s area code. </p>
<p>Gell-Mann lives in Santa Fe, and most of his professional time is spent at the Santa Fe Institute. When his appointment was announced, the article I was reading said he’d be on campus several weeks each year.</p>
<p>USC needs to produce Nobel prize winners, not buy them after the fact.</p>
<p>Werner Arber only did research at USC for about a year, very early in his career.</p>
<p>Olah and Warshel were long-time professors at USC when they won their Nobels. They’re the ones that count.</p>
<p>As far as the prize itself is concerned, undergrad, PHD, and university affiliation before prize, are all much more prestigious than post prize affiliation. Universities want to be known as places that produce prize winners, or have departments where such winner will come to teach. This was a big win for USC which will certainly add prestige to its chemistry department.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>What Simba and Beyphy said. Unfortunately, this is where USC is still very much a university “of” Southern California. USC needs to PRODUCE Nobel winners, not bring them in for millions every year after they’ve won the award. See how the L.A. Galaxy brought in David Beckham when he was long past his prime, how the L.A. Kings paid millions for Wayne Gretzky, etc. This is what I meant by “homegrown” Nobel winners.</p>
<p>Nice for the university but still a ways to go. This is where USC needs to grow its own research excellence if it’s going to <em>really</em> improve in the global rankings.</p>
<p>Adding a Nobel to the faculty will boost our rankings in the world’s most dubious ranking, the Shanghai Tong ARWU ranking that relies mainly on the number of Nobels on a school’s faculty…</p>
<p>Stanford has been buying Nobels for decades, most of whom go there to retire in the sunshine. It’s nice to see USC in the game.</p>
<p>USC should do both at the same time.</p>
<p>“Produce nobel” is much more recognized and deserving,
but it also takes much longer time.</p>
<p>“Buy Nobel” is more immediate, takes $money (also some resource and reputation),
but SC does have the $money, and “buying” should also help be a catalyst
to further “producing” for years to come.</p>
<p>e.g. Stanford does both?</p>
<p>According to Wikipedia, Stanford has 58 Nobel laureates, four of whom were hired after they won. As far as I can tell, all four worked at Stanford full-time, and lived in the SF Bay Area.</p>
<p>Wikipedia shows 5 Nobel laureates for USC. Two of those were hired after they won. Neither of those two works at USC full-time, nor do they live in Southern California.</p>
<p>Most prize winners have been famous long before they won the prize, and may have been “sold” multiple times, and have multiple affiliation when they won.</p>
<p>While this is important to a school’s reputation, it is more important to have a high quality faculty and student population. A key index in the ARWU ranking, is the citation index, which records the number of citations of the research papers published by people in your school. This is especially important for basic science subjects. USC made some progress in the past 30 years or so, but still not fast enough. It is a shame that we are even behind the likes of Rutgers and University of Minnesota on this front.</p>
<p>I remember in the 1980s, asking a young promising physics professor who just left USC for UCSD the reason for his departure, his answer was that there was no one in USC he could talk to.</p>
<p>So USC still has a long way to go.</p>
<p>Improving USC’s status as a research institution is the next logical step, and it’s already happening. USC has been hiring numerous accomplished faculty. Dean of Dornsife came from UCSD. Brain institute from UCLA. Etc. Might be more difficult with the STEM fields, but look how quickly USC philosophy jumped up the rankings as a result of key faculty hires.</p>
<p>Short of drastically cutting its undergraduate enrollment, I think USC has done about as much as it can at the undergrad level to climb up rankings. Things like reputation, research citations, faculty awards, etc. depend on the quality of faculty. And while the quality of faculty is great and continuing to get better, the results of USC’s push in this area will take longer to be seen/realized. Sometimes Nobels aren’t awarded until decades after the research was done.</p>