How to Be Nominated for a Nobel Prize
The final 2018 Nobel laureate has been announced and it’s not you. How do I get my own Nobel Prize (which includes a million dollars and a medal)? Well, for this you will have to make significant contributions in the field of physics, chemistry, medicine or economics; culminate in an impressive literary career; or do humanitarian action at The Good Place . But if you just want to be nominated , you can ask someone on the nominating committee to name you.
Nobel nominations do not work like Oscar nominations. While the final winners are chosen by each individual Swedish or Norwegian organization, nominations come from hundreds of nominees who, in theory, could nominate anyone, regardless of qualifications. The nominees differ in each prize category, but mainly:
Nobel laureates
Anyone who has received a Nobel Prize can nominate someone in their category each year thereafter. If you’re friends with Al Gore, great, invite him for a drink! Otherwise, browse the list of 916 people and organizations that have won the prize , cross out the dead, and start finding your friends on LinkedIn. Or, if you think the laureates won’t be willing to discount the highest honor they’ve received, you can settle for a different kind of nominee.
Members of the Nobel Committee
The good thing is that these people are not that much less likely to make a laughingstock of Nobel. But those committees that choose the winner can also choose their own candidates. So look for your committee; for example, six members of the Nobel Committee on Physics .
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
“Swedish and foreign members” names the nominees for physics and chemistry; “Swedish and foreign participants in medicine and biology courses” can apply for a medicine degree. This is a double typo on the Nobel website . Tell someone at the Academy that you know about an annoying mistake on the site, and if they don’t offer you, you will portray them as the pseudo-intellectuals that they are.
Shit professors
In most categories, nominees include all relevant professors from several northern universities, as well as an ever-changing set of “universities around the world”. As with other categories of nominees, some of them choose one nomination as an organization rather than individuals, so you will have to convince the whole room to support your fictitious nomination.
Scientists loved by the respective Nobel committee
Well, the committee proposes to name the scientists. Maybe the committee personally hates them! Maybe scientists know this, or maybe they want revenge! Maybe their revenge can push you.
Presidents of national literary societies
“The presidents of those societies of authors who represent literary production in their countries” become nominees for a literary prize. This year, their candidacies were not heard, as the Nobel Committee on Literature erupted in a very serious scandal , several of its members resigned, and the rest of the committee decided not to award the prize this year.
Two awards are presented next year. In 2016, they presented the award to Bob Dylan, author of the lyrics “Wiggle Like a Big Fat Snake.” I say your odds are non-zero.
People at the highest levels of government
Heads of State, members of national assemblies and cabinets, and judges in The Hague can name candidates for the Peace Prize . If there was a sovereign nation with a corrupt head of state! If only some of the members of the head of state’s cabinet were unqualified and unprincipled!
But…
With so many leads, it will probably be easy for you to be nominated in one or two categories. Until your candidates lie to you! Nobel nominees are not required to name nominees or shortlisted members, and the committee only publishes lists of nominations fifty years later. This means that if you found a corrupt, possibly bribery nominee, he could simply lie to you, appoint someone else, and you would not know that you were deceived for half a century.
But that also means that technically no one can prove that you were n’t nominated. If you claim to be a candidate, but do not say who told you or who nominated you, the Nobel Committee cannot say otherwise. Or, if they do, they start by not naming every person in the world as a candidate and make the committee deny every one of them until the committee seals and just stands there and you are like “Oh, so this person is appointed!” and they can’t say anything, but you’re like, “I won!”
Which is as good as getting a real Nobel Prize, congratulations! Go ahead and start your own awards, “I outsmarted the Nobel Prize committee awards,” and give one to yourself.