Nobel winners are selected for their discoveries, not their I.Q.’s, and most are not geniuses, said one Nobel laureate, Dr. Michael S. Brown of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.Illustrating his point with a humorous anecdote, Dr. Brown recalled a moment when laureates met in Stockholm at the centennial of the Nobel Prizes: “If you really want to know what Nobel Prize winners are like, you should have been in the breakfast line seeing all these brilliant people wandering around randomly trying to find the scrambled eggs. It was like anything but a group of brilliant folks.”
Lawrence Altman, Alfred Nobel and the Prize That Almost Didn’t Happen, N Y Times, 26 September 2006.
Dr Geoff Pound
Image: Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, shown in 1853, left the bulk of his estate to create the prizes.