The Best of the Best by William

The Best of the Best by William - December 2018 Scholarship Essay

“The Nobel Prize.” Everyone has heard the name; Nobel Laureates are considered by many to be the "best of the best". The judging process is thorough, and the qualities expected of the recipients are high. However, if I was on the nomination committee for the Nobel Prize, there are two qualities in addition to their outstanding work that I would view as important: moral integrity and advocacy.
Last spring I attended the 2018 International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During my stay, I received the honor of presenting a question before the Panel of Excellence in Science and Technology; among the panelists were a number of Nobel Laureates. My question related to the issue of morality: “Did you ever have worries about the ethics of your own research and how the results might be used?” To my immense surprise, not one of the Nobel Laureates appeared to have considered the question before.
This episode brought to my attention how often moral integrity is overlooked. On later reflection, I realized that this quality plays a key role in helping to identify an outstanding person, for two reasons. First, is it right to hold someone up as a standard of outstanding achievement if they are not ethical? Secondly, how can you be sure about the credibility of a person’s work if he or she acts without integrity?
The purpose of the Nobel Prize is to distinguish outstanding persons who have made significant contributions to humanity, whether it is through scientific innovation and discovery or social accomplishments. By awarding someone a Prize, the committee is holding the nominee up as a standard for the rest of the world. Essentially, it is saying, “Try to be like this!” On that note, no one would want to nominate a mass-murderer for the Nobel Prize, no matter what contributions they had made to, say, physics.
Another perhaps more obvious reason to require ethics is the need to determine whether the nominee even deserves the Prize or not. Many individuals in the past have received credit for stolen inventions or fabricated results. People are generally not unethical only on certain occasions; if a person has a history of being unethical (dishonest, etc.), then it is less likely their actions were credible, and are therefore not qualified for the Prize. With this in mind, I would place moral integrity as a key quality required of any potential Nobel Laureate.
The second most important quality I would choose is advocacy. A person who lacks the ability to communicate, or “advocate”, the significance of their work is unlikely to have a great effect on society. To illustrate my point with an example, imagine what it would be like if Edward Jenner never put in the time and effort to convince people of the importance of his smallpox vaccine? Or, perhaps, if two national leaders had written out the grounds for a treaty and never encouraged their countries to accept them? Would society have benefited from their work at all?
The answer is, “probably not.” Advocacy is critical for effecting the actual good which results from the advancements of innovators and leaders. A person could be the greatest inventor in history, but his or her inventions would have very little effect on humanity without the person’s ability to persuade others about the magnitude of the findings. Therefore, advocacy is a critical quality that I would require of the nominees.
There are many types of Nobel Prizes, and even more types of people who are nominated for them. However, they all have something in common: all have made a significant contribution to society. While there are many different qualities that can be used to gauge which of these outstanding contributors should be elected as the nominee, if I was on the nomination committee I would draw from two main traits – moral integrity and advocacy – to distinguish the applicant who is most deserving of being called the "best of the best.”