Want to win a Nobel? Pick your parents carefully...

If you want to win the Nobel Prize, pick your parents carefully. Marrying a Nobel laureate is the second best option, according to Borje Johansson, a member of the Nobel committee on physics.

"Since that is not in our hands, please ensure that your wife or husband is a Nobel awardee," he said.

He was delivering the annual Nobel memorial lecture on "How to get a Nobel Prize", organised here by the Swedish embassy Wednesday evening.

At the end of his one-hour speech, Johansson could not suggest a sure-shot way of winning the coveted prize, but did give certain 'tips' based on analysis of previous Nobel Prize winners.

He cited examples of Nobel laureates who were kin - Maria Curie won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie and 32 years later, their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie also received the Nobel for chemistry.

But, perhaps, a more practical strategy would be to ensure that the Nobel committee hears of you.

"Find someone willing to nominate you. Of course, it will be nice to have a good science background," he said, tongue firmly in cheek.

However, this path is also easier said than done, as the committee sends out confidential forms to selected professors and universities, who are chosen anew every year and whose identities are never made public.

"Maybe, you should have as many friends as possible around the world," he said.

He speculated that perhaps a lack of nomination had prevented Indian physicist S.N. Bose from being awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics in the 1920s.

"The papers on the deliberations during that period have not been made public, so I cannot be sure. But, there is also likelihood that he was not even nominated," said Johansson.

While Bose never got a Nobel, several awardees following that had based their work on concepts developed him and Albert Einstein. For example, the 2001 Nobel Prize for physics went for work done to advance the theory of Bose-Einstein condensates.

Why there are few women in the list of Nobel physics laureates? Johansson said that there was usually a time lag of about 20 years between a discovery or invention and the recognition with a Nobel. "So, the awards now reflect the field of physics 20 years ago. With the number of women physicists increasing, this fact (of a handful women Nobel laureates) may change two decades from now," he stated.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is set to announce this year's award winners from next week, starting with Medicine on Oct 8.

(IANS)

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