The Nobel Prize System and the Astronomical Sciences

Abstract

There is no Nobel Prize in astronomy, and perhaps for this reason, historians of science have rarely examined the astronomical sciences from the perspective of the Nobel Prize system. And yet, since the establishment of this system many astronomers and astrophysicists have been nominated for the physics prize and these nominations provide the historian with valuable sources for understanding the dynamical relationship between astronomy and physics during the twentieth century. Apart from giving a general account of the role of astronomy in a Nobel context, this paper investigates a select number of scientists who contributed to astronomy and its allied sciences and were nominated for a Nobel Prize. The focus is on the period from about 1950 to 1966, but earlier nominations of, for example, M. Saha, H. N. Russell, and A. Eddington are also considered.