Admittedly , complaining about the Swedes and their awarding of Nobel prizes is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
But their famous 1945 rewarding of a Nobel prize in medicine to some of the pioneers of penicillin has to rate near the top for ineptitude.
The British pair of Florey and Fleming had spent years touting their vision for what successful wartime penicillin would look like :
It would be (1) a chemical synthetic, (2) useful particularly as an antiseptic on wounds , and (3) produced only in relatively small quantities during the war because it would only be used to treat those returnable to active service among the Allied military casualties.
In fact the wartime penicillin that so cheered the world was as completely opposite from their vision as anything could be and still be in this universe.
It was (1) naturally produced , (2) only really effective when used as a general internal systemic to save lives from massive internal infections (3) produced in such great amounts - during Total War - that it could treat all the dying it could heal all over the world - be they civilian or soldier , Allied, Neutral and even Axis.
In particular, the pair's obsession with chasing the mirage of man-made penicillin for so many wasted, precious years, delayed the mass production of natural penicillin when it could have saved millions.
By contrast, Australian J V Duhig in Brisbane in 1943 showed how simple it was to produce life-saving penicillin - with just the few techniques Fleming had at his command back in 1928 - when you genuinely care about saving people.
Given that Mr Nobel originally intended his prizes to award nobility of spirit as well as scientific acumen , I personally believe that he himself would have given the penicillin Nobel prize to Duhig and people like him not to cold fish and indifferent scientists like Florey and Fleming ...
But their famous 1945 rewarding of a Nobel prize in medicine to some of the pioneers of penicillin has to rate near the top for ineptitude.
The British pair of Florey and Fleming had spent years touting their vision for what successful wartime penicillin would look like :
It would be (1) a chemical synthetic, (2) useful particularly as an antiseptic on wounds , and (3) produced only in relatively small quantities during the war because it would only be used to treat those returnable to active service among the Allied military casualties.
In fact the wartime penicillin that so cheered the world was as completely opposite from their vision as anything could be and still be in this universe.
It was (1) naturally produced , (2) only really effective when used as a general internal systemic to save lives from massive internal infections (3) produced in such great amounts - during Total War - that it could treat all the dying it could heal all over the world - be they civilian or soldier , Allied, Neutral and even Axis.
In particular, the pair's obsession with chasing the mirage of man-made penicillin for so many wasted, precious years, delayed the mass production of natural penicillin when it could have saved millions.
By contrast, Australian J V Duhig in Brisbane in 1943 showed how simple it was to produce life-saving penicillin - with just the few techniques Fleming had at his command back in 1928 - when you genuinely care about saving people.
Given that Mr Nobel originally intended his prizes to award nobility of spirit as well as scientific acumen , I personally believe that he himself would have given the penicillin Nobel prize to Duhig and people like him not to cold fish and indifferent scientists like Florey and Fleming ...
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