Full Description
Scientific Elite is about Nobel prize winners and the well-defined stratification system in twentieth-century science. It tracks the careers of all American laureates who won prizes from 1907 until 1972, examining the complex interplay of merit and privilege at each stage of their scientific lives and the creation of the ultra-elite in science.
The study draws on biographical and bibliographical data on laureates who did their prize-winning research in the United States, and on detailed interviews with forty-one of the fifty-six laureates living in the United States at the time the study was done. Zuckerman finds laureates being successively advantaged as time passes. These advantages are producing growing disparities between the elite and other scientists both in performance and in rewards, which create and maintain a sharply graded stratification system.
Contents
Introduction to the Transaction Edition, Preface and Acknowledgements, Chapter 1: Nobel Laureates and Scientific Elites, Chapter 2: The Sociology of the Nobel Prize, Chapter 3: The Social Origins of Laureates, Chapter 4: Masters and Apprentices in Science, Chapter 5: Moving into the Scientific Elite, Chapter 6: The Prize-Winning Research, Chapter 7: After the Prize, Chapter 8: The Nobel Prize and the Accumulation of Advantage in Science, Appendix A: Interviewing an Ultra-elite, Appendix B: Nobel Laureates in Science, 1901-76, Appendix C: Prize-Winning Research: Specialty and Year of Award, Appendix D: Official Occupants of the Forty-first Chair: "Honorable Mentions" for Nobel Prizes, Appendix E: Age-Specific Annual Rates of Productivity of Laureates and a Matched Sample of Scientists Who Survived to Each Age, Bibliography, Index of Names, Index of Subjects
