Edison's and Tesla's Nobel Prize: Science and Nationalism

抄録

The theme of this article is nationalism and the Nobel Prizes. The article will highlight some aspects of this issue by using a rather odd story from the history of science about rumours in 1915 concerning a shared Nobel Prize to Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla. The paper will discuss how the Nobel Prize is used as a measure of national prestige, and the difficulties of using it as such. The status of engineers as "discoverers" vs. "inventors" in the early last century will also be discussed, as well as the issue of leaks in the process of selecting Nobel Laureates.