“The Breakthrough Prize pays three times a Nobel Prize, and if you share a Nobel Prize, it could be up to nine times. But if you walk down the street in Manhattan and ask some random person, have you heard of the Nobel Prize? They'll say, oh yeah, sure. Have you heard of the Breakthrough Prize? They'll say, no, what's that?”
The Peterman Post · Software Engineering & Infra · November 2026
Context
Asked about 'pre-Nobelitis', his term for the distorted behaviour of researchers who think a Nobel might be coming, Ramakrishnan says society gives too much importance to one award. He then explains why the Nobel's brand outweighs even much richer prizes.
Transcript
…you know how to carry out an experiment or a calculation. So I would say skill is different. I mean, a genius means that you're able to see things that are not obvious to the vast majority of people. To see a few steps beyond what's obvious to the field. I think that would be my sort of definition.
…the politics of recognition, especially in the context of the Nobel Prize. And you mentioned these terms of pre-Nobelitis and post-Nobelitis. Basically, when you're getting close to the award, but not quite having it, or you've already won. And I was curious, did you get pre-Nobelitis at any point?
I did. I mean, everybody did. I think, you know, what happens is that you do something important. The first thing you don't think is, oh, you know, I could get a Nobel Prize. That's not what you think about. You think, wow, this is fantastic. But then you get invited to lots of talks, conferences, and so on. And everywhere you go, people say, hey, this could get a Nobel Prize. And then suddenly that kind of warps your own thinking. And then you start thinking, well, okay, it's limited to three people. And there are a whole bunch of people contributing to this field. And then I noticed that in conferences, people who are in this sort of pre-Nobelitis mode, they'll very subtly, you know, talk up their work. And, you know, they won't mention other people's work, especially competitors' work as much and so on. It's a kind of human psychology. And, you know, I just think that it's a little unfortunate. And it's partly the community's fault and society's fault that they give so much importance to this one award. I mean, there are lots of other prizes, you know, the Lasker Prize and Breakthrough Prize. But if you…
Is there a top book that impacted you or maybe a book that you'd recommend to people?
In physics, I really enjoyed Feynman's biographies. Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman. And then he's also had other short essay books. So I find him a very lively and entertaining writer. In biology, I was very influenced by a book that's highly controversial, which is Jim Watson's The Double…
And then, yeah, last question for you is, if you could go back in time knowing everything you know now, what advice would you give yourself if you were just entering the industry?
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