The scientific discoveries celebrated by this year��s Nobel prizes were as impressive as ever, spanning the creation of lithium-ion batteries, the first discoveries of planets beyond our solar system, and the revelation of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

However, they have also emphasised long-running perceived flaws with the awards �C and, in particular, have led to renewed calls for the prize committees to consider dispensing their science awards to teams rather than individuals and to use them to elevate less well-known figures in academia.

Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, said that while the Nobels were ��wonderful public outreach tools��, they ��inevitably celebrate the people instead of the discovery��.

��Many of the discoveries awarded Nobels are from those who saw farther because they ��stood on the shoulders of giants��,�� he said on Twitter, questioning whether other scientists who had made important advances on exoplanets �C the subject of this year��s physics prize �C but had been more cautious in their claims might have won the award had they been ��more cavalier��.

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Speaking to Times Higher Education, Professor Wright said that he would ��prefer to see the prize focus more on the discovery rather than the discoverers��, and one way to do that would be to include ��group awards��.

A maximum of three people can share a Noble prize, under the current rules, although the peace prize has previously been handed out to organisations.

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Although Professor Wright recognised that there was some value in ��having someone who��s the face of a discovery��, one drawback was that ��you tend to create heroes instead of focusing on a discovery that might have happened anyway without them��, he said.

��We look at who wins the prize, and it��s overwhelmingly white men. And if the purpose of putting a face on a discovery is just to tell a story, the story that you end up telling is that it��s generally white men who are doing important science,�� he said.

��The story should instead be about all the people who do science and [about] how science really happens. And that��s a big drawback to the Nobel committee��s approach.��

This year��s physics, chemistry and medicine awards were each handed out to three men, only one of whom was not white: Akira Yoshino, a Japanese chemist.

Professor Wright added that he welcomed the fact that the literature prize has often been awarded to someone who he, ��not being in the field of literature, had never heard?of��.

��It��s a way to elevate that person and their work to a broad audience that might not otherwise know about them,�� he said. ��The physics prize doesn��t always do that. It tries to pick the obvious person, the person who has already been celebrated and won prizes for the work that they��ve done.

��The Nobel prize could elevate voices instead of just amplifying the stature that people have already earned.��

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Sophia Nasr, a cosmology PhD student at the University of California, Irvine, agreed that the Nobel prize does not recognise the large teams of people who have contributed to a discovery and said that group awards would also help to ��mitigate the issue�� of gender and diversity bias.

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��We can��t ignore the fact that there has been throughout the years persistent gender discrimination in the prizes awarded,�� she said.

��It is literally snubbing so much work by so many people, and putting that one face to the award [means] that no one remembers or thinks about the fact that these are huge team efforts.��

However, Ms Nasr said, it was unlikely that the Nobel prize would make this change because team awards would be considered to have less ��prestige��.

She cited Vera Rubin, a US astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, as one woman who had been snubbed by the awards, noting that her discovery was ��akin�� to the breakthrough finding that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, which won the physics prize in 2011.

��There is no reason why she did not get the Nobel prize, except for one thing, and that is that she��s a woman,�� Ms Nasr said.

��The prizes that were awarded this year were so exciting, [yet] I?just can��t get excited about it any more, knowing what the committee has persistently done and will probably continue to do.��

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

Science heroes: 2019 Nobel prizewinners

Chemistry
John Goodenough, Virginia H. Cockrell centennial chair of engineering, University of Texas at Austin; Stanley Whittingham, distinguished professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Akira Yoshino, professor, Meijo University, ��for the development of lithium-ion batteries��.

Physics
James Peebles, Albert Einstein professor of science at Princeton University, ��for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology��.
Michel Mayor, honorary professor, University of Geneva; Didier Queloz, professor of physics, University of Cambridge, ��for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star��.

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Physiology or medicine
William Kaelin, professor of medicine, Harvard University; Sir Peter Ratcliffe, director of clinical research, Francis Crick Institute; Gregg Semenza, professor of genetic medicine, Johns Hopkins University, ��for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability��.