Chapter 5 Discovery or Reputation? Jacques Loeb and the Role of Nomination Networks Heiner Fangerau, Thorsten Halling and Nils Hansson A 2015 contribution to the Journal of the American Medical Association (jama) raised the question of why American Nobel Laureates outnumber those of any other nativity.1 Times are changing. About 100 years ago, when the Prize was quite new, the same journal asked why only European scientists were acknowledged.2 At that time, U.S. medical journals praised the Nobel Prize as ‘the ideal method of encouraging the best scientific research’3 and used it as a yardstick for other medical honours. Commentators repeatedly bemoaned that American research ‘of fundamental importance’4 had been disregarded. Whether for the prize money (corresponding to about one million usd) or the international competition in science and medicine, the Prize was perceived as a coveted trophy right from its inception.5 It is not as if Americans did not nominate domestic candidates. In fact, jama even published calls to name Walter Reed and James Carrol for their investiga- tions into yellow fever.6 However, another American candidate would eventu- ally come to play a larger role in the nomination cycle. The physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924) was, according to the Nomination Database of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, nominated 78 times between 1901 and his death,7 which makes him one of the most nominated scholars in the first half of the 20th century.8 Nevertheless, Loeb was, as Robert Merton phrased it in his classical paper on the Matthew effect, an occupant of the ‘41st chair’.9 1 Naylor and Bell 2015. 2 Anon 1905. 3 Anon 1903. 4 Anon 1905. 5 Halling, Fangerau, Hansson 2018. 6 Anon 1904. 7 Fangerau 2010, 183. 8 17 additional nominations arrived too late to be included in the Nobel committee’s decisions. 9 Merton used the example of the French Academy of Science and their early decision that ‘only a cohort of 40 could qualify as members and so emerge as immortals’ in order to describe the ‘artifact of having a fixed number of places available at the summit of recogni- tion’ (Merton 1968). © heiner fangerau, thorsten halling and nils hansson, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/97890044064��_007 This is an open access chapter distributed under the termsHeiner of Fangerau, the cc-by-nc-nd Thorsten Halling, 4.0 License. and Nils Hansson - 9789004406421 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:09:14AM via free access <UN> 98 Fangerau, Halling and Hansson In 1951, the former Secretary of the Nobel Committee, pharmacologist Göran Liljestrand, gave a short explanation as to why Loeb (according to his opinion) never made it. He wrote that ‘the examiners […] remained unconvinced as to […] [the] scope and general significance’ of his work. On the other hand, he stressed that ‘between 1901 and 1924, Loeb was proposed for a Nobel Prize by about a hundred sponsors in ten different countries’.10 One should bear in mind that the sheer number of Nobel Prize nomina- tions gives a first hint of a researcher’s worldwide reputation and recognition. Furthermore, a substantial amount of nominations might even increase the chances to be awarded. The early American Nobel complaints in jama, Mer- ton’s Matthew effect and Liljestrand’s remark on the number of nominees reflect a common idea about why certain scientists receive the Prize for Physi- ology or Medicine and others do not: the final selection depends on networks of nominees. The underlying hypothesis is that because science is not just a cognitive activity but also a social endeavour, the effects of social processes in prize politics need to be examined to understand why research is considered prize-worthy or why the contribution of a scientist remains disputed. In our chapter, we will address this hypothesis using the example of Jacques Loeb and his nominations. We will ask who nominated him and for what rea- son and describe some of the links that connected the nominators with Loeb. Additionally, we will examine how the Nobel committee’s referees evaluated the nominations. A Loeb case study is particularly suitable for such an investi- gation not only because of the rich archival files on him but first and foremost because it highlights disciplinary conflicts (struggles in the grey areas between morphology, chemistry, biology and experimental physiology) and scientific priority disputes in the first two decades of the 20th century.11 From a histori- cal perspective, it is unusual for a candidate to be awarded after only a few nominations. Normally, the Nobel committee watched their front-runners for several years before making a decision (see the chapter by Fabio De Sio et al. on Nobel laureate John C. Eccles in this volume). During the years in which Loeb had been nominated, some requirements were repeatedly stressed in evaluative reports following a first selection of him as a potential candidate (see Introduction). It should be a fresh discovery, and it should have potential to open up new scientific avenues of research. It was also crucial that the dis- covery in question be verified by the scientific community and that issues of priority were settled. 10 Liljestrand 1962, 242. 11 On Loeb, his science and struggles see Pauly 1987; Rasmussen and Tilman 1998; Fangerau 2010. Heiner Fangerau, Thorsten Halling, and Nils Hansson - 9789004406421 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:09:14AM via free access <UN> Discovery or Reputation? 99 We will analyse whether the nominators addressed these points and we will reconstruct Loeb’s nomination network. Loeb was a disputatious character who fought for his scientific convictions in a polemical manner. At the same time, he had powerful supporters and friends. An analysis of his Nobel nomina- tions will offer a better understanding for how reputable his research really was among medical scientists. With the help of this case, we come to some conclu- sions regarding the value of nomination networks for understanding the intel- lectual and social organisation or the reputational system of the Nobel Prize.12 Sources The starting point of our analysis is the material on Loeb in the Archive of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, which includes nomination dossiers as well as four reports by members of the Nobel Committee written in 1906, 1909 and two in 1917. Most of the nominations are written in English or German, and all evaluations in Swedish. The original documents are not accessible – only copies which have been transcribed by Swedish staff of the Nobel Committee and bound together in yearbooks. Therefore, we cannot in- vestigate marginalia or corrections. Nevertheless, we get as close as possible to the decisions of the Nobel Committee. The Swedish historian Franz Luttenberger was one of the first scholars to explore the Nobel Archive for Physiology or Medicine.13 He focused on files concerning Svante Arrhenius, Paul Ehrlich, Emil von Behring and Émile Roux. His work is of particular interest for this study since the formal statutes in the Nobel Committee of the early 20th century concern Loeb as well: the Interna- tional Nominating System, the Nobel Committee and evaluative reports. At the beginning of the century every year, all professors of medicine in Scandinavia were invited to nominate a scholar for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medi- cine. This right was also enjoyed by the Faculty members of the Karolinska Institute, and a few leading universities and scientific associations. The job of the Nobel Committee consisted of agreeing on one candidate mentioned in the nominations, whom they proposed to the Faculty. As a basis, the commit- tee first agreed on a shortlist with usually five to fifteen candidates. In order for the Nobel Committee to get a nuanced view of Loeb’s work, experts discussed the statements of the nominators and the strengths and weakness of his meth- ods. However, Loeb’s research was also brought up in Nobel Committee reports 12 Whitley 2000, 11. 13 Luttenberger 1996. Heiner Fangerau, Thorsten Halling, and Nils Hansson - 9789004406421 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 07:09:14AM via free access <UN> 100 Fangerau, Halling and Hansson about other scholars, such as the one on surgeon Alexis Carrel in 1912.14 In the discussion over Carrel’s experiments with tissue culture, competitors like Loeb and Ross Granville Harrison (1870–1959) played a part. These reports offer a mediated perspective on how Loeb’s achievements were interpreted during these years. Jacques Loeb and the Nobel Prize Jacques Loeb was born in Germany and educated as a physiologist.15 After completing his studies in medicine, he worked as an assistant of Nathan Zuntz in Berlin (1885), Adolf Fick in Würzburg (1886–1888) and Friedrich Goltz in Straßburg (1888–1891). In 1891, he emigrated to the United States. In letters to Ernst Mach and other colleagues and friends, he attributed his emigration to the rigid hierarchical structures of German universities and the anti-Semitism in German academia which made it difficult for him to find a permanent ap- pointment.16 In the United States, he held positions at Bryn Mawr, Chicago (1882), Berkeley (1902) and finally at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re- search (1910), which offered a unique and innovative research atmosphere.17 During his scientific life, Loeb developed his own research programme of ‘gen- eral physiology’ directed at investigating life phenomena by reducing them to the laws of physics and chemistry. Furthermore, he intended to apply these laws in order to synthesise living matter – ‘that is, to form new combinations from the elements of living nature, just as the physicist and chemist form new combinations from the elements of non-living nature’.18 The construction of life meant for him fully understanding its underlying processes.