The Nobel Duel

Summary

We’ve begun shipping out orders for the first commercial book written and sold in both natural language and DNA. Learn more in our announcement article or click here to order.What would you give for a Nobel Prize?For more than a century, the Nobel has been science’s highest honor. The prize is awarded to only a few researchers per year for achievements in physics, chemistry, and “physiology or medicine.” Nobel laureates hold immense prestige and wield influence not only within their fields but also within the broader public sphere. Nearly every scientist, at some point in their career, dreams of winning a Nobel, even if just as an overconfident undergraduate student. But for some, the prize is more than merely a dream: it’s an obsession.Published in 1981, Nicholas Wade’s The Nobel Duel recounts how endocrinologists Andrew Schally and Roger Guillemin discovered peptide hormones produced by the hypothalamus, earning each of them a 1/4 share of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But more than this, Wade’s book details an intensely bitter rivalry, shaped not only by the personalities of the characters involved but by the incentives of the system in which they worked. More than forty years later, The Nobel Duel remains a valuable cautionary tale about the competitive pressures that shape scientific discoveries.Before diving into Schally and Guillemin, it’s helpful to learn a bit about the hypothalamus, the subject of their scientific struggles. The hypothalamus is a small lump of brain tissue, about the size of a hazelnut, that sits about seven centimeters behind the nose.Despite its small size, the hypothalamus serves an important role as a regulatory center for hormonal signaling. It controls the pituitary gland, for example, another small tissue nodule located directly underneath it. The hypothalamus responds to nerve signals from the brain and stimulates the pituitary to release hormones that act on the rest of the body. This pathway controls a wide vari...