We've written a play on the Nobel Prize--the ultimate reward in the kudos-driven culture of science--as well as on a chemical theme, the discovery of the element oxygen. What is discovery? Why is it so important to be first? These are the questions that trouble the people in this play. Oxygen alternates between 1777 and 2001--the Centenary of the Nobel Prize--when the Nobel Foundation decides to inaugurate a "Retro-Nobel" Award for those great discoveries that preceded the establishment of the Nobel Prizes one hundred years before. The Foundation thinks this will be easy, that the Nobel Committees who select the laureates can reach back to a period when science was done for science's sake, when discovery was simple, pure, and unalloyed by controversy, priority claims, and hype.
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Citation
Djerassi, Carl; Hoffmann, Roald. J. Chem. Educ.2001 78 283.
Keywords
Conferences; History / Philosophy; Public Understanding
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