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Steven Weinberg is a public intellectual and the best-selling author of The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature, Glory and Terror: The Coming Nuclear Danger, and many other books. Weinberg is known for being an atheist and anti-religious, and for winning the Nobel Prize in physics for his electroweak interaction theory, showing how the weak nuclear interaction related to electromagnetism in 1979. Weinberg joined the small scientific army waging war on religion. His book, Dreams of a Final Theory, written to rally support for the supercollider, contains a powerful assault on God and religion, making one wonder about the connection.

This chapter discusses the significance of a Nobel Prize in economics. In a turbulent world, the prizes that Alfred Nobel endowed in 1895 shine as beacons of enduring value. They signal that effort, integrity, and success in pursuit of truth can earn mighty acclaim. In 1968, the Swedish central bank persuaded the Nobel Foundation to add a prize in economics, identical in all but name to those in science, literature, and peace. For a paltry investment, it extended the aura of Nobel authority to the discipline of economics. It was an entrepreneurial move worthy of Alfred Nobel himself. Like Nobel's invention of dynamite, the economic prize was a force with potential for good but also for harm. But how does one think of economics as science? Specialists in scientific method, practising economists, and Nobel Prize winners tell different stories. This matters when we look to economics for policy advice.

This chapter begins with the prestige of the Nobel Prize. It then describes Salam's receipt of the prize and the condemnation he received from his own country of Pakistan. It is argued that although Salam was a great scientist, as his Nobel Prize attests, he was greater as an organizer and achiever, but greatest as a voice, a conscience of justice, speaking for the advancement of science among the disinherited.

This chapter focuses on Austrian-born molecular biologist Max Perutz (1914–2002). Perutz was one of twenty scientific refugees from continental Europe who went on to win Nobel Prizes. A chemist and molecular biologist, he led the first successful attempt to discover the three-dimensional structure of protein molecules using X-ray crystallography, for which he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize. He was the founding chairman of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, an institution that continues to thrive and counts thirteen Nobel Prize-winners among those who have spent time in its laboratories. Although Perutz applied to the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) for funding, in the event he did not need their money. His case, however, offers an excellent example of the emotional and practical support SPSL's officers extended to all academics who found themselves in precarious situations in the years following the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany and their subsequent conquest or annexation of neighbouring countries.

As soon as Julian Schwinger burst upon the stage, one could hardly doubt that a Nobel Prize was in the offing. Certainly, after his solution of the problems of quantum electrodynamics in the late 1940s the award of the Nobel Prize was just a matter of time. Yet years passed with no news of the award. Clarice Schwinger, his devoted wife, described waiting for the Prize and thought he would get it soon after they got married. When it did not happen, she then decided Julian simply was not going to get it. This chapter looks at Schwinger's winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 and the attention he received afterwards, his Nobel lecture entitled ‘Relativistic quantum field theory’ delivered in December 1965, his development of the source theory as an alternative to the operator quantum field theory, source theory calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, Schwinger's research on chiral symmetry, his influence on Steven Weinberg with regards to effective Lagrangians, and his last years as a professor at Harvard University.

This chapter begins with a description of Pauli’s stay in Princeton. It details his experiences in the U.S. during the Second World War, the papers he published, and his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1945.

This chapter discusses the life of Abdus Salam. He was born in British India and was a subject of George V, who was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Emperor of India. In 1947, what had been British India was torn into two new nations — India, with a majority Hindu population, but with no official state religion, and a new Muslim country, Pakistan. Salam became a citizen of Pakistan while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Among his achievements are setting up his International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, under the banner of the United Nations. He received the Nobel Prize in 1979, which he shared with American scientists Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg.

This introductory chapter considers the historical trend in the field of economics. Economists are among the few who aspire to tell society how it should manage. They rarely speak with a single voice, but that does not diminish their confidence. Society treats them with bafflement and respect. As such, the chapter examines the extent of their expertise and how they have come about it. It asks where their authority comes from and how far it is justified. After all, economic theorizing may be speculative, but its impact is powerful and real. Since the 1970s, it has been associated with a large historical trend, the ‘market turn’ associated with the rising ascendancy of market liberalism, a political and social movement that (like economics) holds up buying and selling as the norm for human relations and for social organization. In this light, the chapter considers how much influence the field of economics exerted over this ‘market turn’ and whether or not it was an improvement from previous models.

This concluding chapter explains that the influence of economics is at odds with its shortcomings as a philosophy, as a scientific doctrine, and as a set of policy norms. The invisible hand is magical thinking, and its repeated disconfirmation has had little effect. On the other hand, economics has a set of empirical disciplines and achievements, with enclaves of technical and even scientific credibility. This suggests some downgrading of authority, but not all the way. Economics is not superior to other sources of authority, but is not necessarily inferior to them either; it should be taken as one voice among many. In that respect, it is rather like Social Democracy. The Nobel Prize committee has been able to maintain the credibility of the prize only by acknowledging that economics does not hang together as a single all-encompassing system of thought. Social Democracy provides an alternative that is pragmatically successful, analytically coherent, economically efficient, ethically attractive, and theoretically modest.

It was the year 1929 in which the first of William Faulkner's great novels, The Sound and The Fury, was published. It was also the year in which he married Estelle Oldham and thereby, reentered Oxford's tight little world. Both events marked the beginning of a phase of his life that culminated with his taking the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Returning to Oxford in the fall, Faulkner moved his family of four into a sufficient, high-ceilinged, first floor apartment in a large house belonging to Miss Elma Meek at 803 University Avenue. The family needed money immediately, and he took a job as the night supervisor at the university's power plant.

This chapter focuses on the life of William Lawrence Bragg during World War I. It begins with a description of Bragg's military career. It then describes his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1915. The magnitude of this achievement is perhaps best shown by the fact that Bragg received the Nobel Prize in Physics before Albert Einstein, who had already interpreted the photoelectric effect and developed the special theory of relativity, and before Max Planck, who had already done the work on black-body radiation that initiated the quantum revolution.

The American Journal “Diagnostic Imaging” speculated about who might be awarded the Nobel Prize for magnetic resonance imaging in 1993. Many people were canvassed for there views in the States and Europe including Paul Lauterbur and Raymond Damadian. Both Brian Worthington and the author declined to comment. With the passage of time interest and speculation waned and the whole episode was forgotten. He had retired in 1994 but was concentrating on acoustic problems. Following the initial stir of interest in the Nobel further interest had largely been forgotten. For the New Millennium they celebrated with the family at Stapleford Park Country Hotel. One year later he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fortunately following a radical prostatectomy, all seems to be well. Efforts in quiet gradient technology intensified. However, on 5 October 2003 he was informed that the Nobel Committee had awarded him and Lauterbur with the Nobel Prize in Medicine. After the shock and excitement they prepared for the trip to Stockholm later in October. A week or so before leaving, Damadian published a two page advertisement in the Times, saying why he should be awarded the Nobel. A translation of this appeared in the Swedish Newspaper the Dagens Nyhetter, timed to appear on the very day of the Nobel Lectures. The week was packed with interesting events and parties culminating with the official Award presentation/ceremony made by King Carl Gustaf. This was followed by a scrumptious meal in the Reception Hall of the Town Hall. The following day, their two daughters left for home. They visited the University of Upsala, met an old friend then returned to Stockholm for a very grand reception and dinner at the royal palace. While there they met personally with Queen Silvia and the King. They returned to England the following day.

Wartime Nobel Prizes were honoured in Sweden in 1920, but William declined because ‘several Germans are going’. Lawrence returned to Cambridge, met Alice Hopkinson, but was appointed to succeed Rutherford in Manchester, where staff and returned students were hostile. Things improved in 1921: Lawrence was elected FRS, became engaged to Alice, and teaching and research blossomed. The ‘Manchester School’ of X-ray analysis was formed, with the Bragg-James-Bosanquet collaboration at its centre. Lawrence concentrated on inorganic materials, while William began to examine organic crystals. William rebuilt his department from the ashes of war, gathered a formidable research team, and lectured widely, becoming the voice of science in Britain. He returned to the nature of radiation and was delighted when Arthur Compton, persuaded by one of William's Adelaide and Leeds' students, showed conclusively that it had both wave and particle characteristics.

This chapter looks at how Swedish Social Democracy was eventually challenged by the doctrines honoured by the prize it had created. Economists first took their place among the Nobel Prize winners in 1969, at the height of the golden age of Social Democracy in Sweden. The prize was paid by the central bank out of public money. However, a chronic economic crisis in the 1970s drove voters away from Social Democracy and towards a market liberalism which finally prevailed (for a while) in the 1990s. The focus here is on the role of economic theory. For this purpose, the travails of Social Democracy are followed as they affected the public trajectory of Assar Lindbeck (b. 1930), ‘the key figure in Swedish economics’. The discipline of economics in Sweden mostly spoke with one voice in this period, so this method provides for a sharp focus and fewer words.