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Who needs a Nobel prize in CS when you already have the Alan Turing Award (ACM), the John von Neumann Medal (IEEE) and the John von Neumann (again !) Theory Prize (INFORMS) ?

The lists of the recipients speak for themselves :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_John_von_Neumann_Medal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann_Theory_Prize

Moreover, as said above, CS has become so pervasive that it does not need the Nobel "brand power" to attract the general attention ... even if the three above distinctions do not attract much of the media interest !

By the way, strictly speaking, there is no "Nobel Prize in economy" but "the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", established (indepently of Nobel's will, obviously) in 1968.and "awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901".

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/

So ... a "XXX Prize in Computer Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" could as well be established.

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There is also no Nobel prize in mathematics. There is a rumor that a mathematician seduced Nobel's wife and this is his revenge ;-).

Computer science is very close to mathematics ;-P.

The Nobel for computer science?

The prize is definately not for all deserving categories. In fact the its given as per whats in the will of the of the man, Alfred Nobel. Now its neither his or computer greats fault that there wasnt much computer science when it was being written. As simple as that.

In fact the entire will is available for a read on the ofgicial website of nobel prize i think.

Just imagine someone writing thier will, or having it written. When i get to do so, it will be a strange time of my life. Not sure if i will remember evrrything that needs to be.

So cant blame him if he forgot abt a few categories. A lot is speculated abt why maths is nt there. Isnt it possible that he may have just not remembered maths when he wrote the will?

Sometimes i think we try to read to much into a situation when the reality is very very simple.

I do agree, how come?, e.g., there is a Nobel prize for others, peaceful, as Mr. Obama (USA President) awarded 4 years back. This is also new branch of prize. I am also wondering?, Technology and computer science are very important in our life now a days..

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Who needs a Nobel prize in CS when you already have the Alan Turing Award (ACM), the John von Neumann Medal (IEEE) and the John von Neumann (again !) Theory Prize (INFORMS) ?

The lists of the recipients speak for themselves :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_John_von_Neumann_Medal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann_Theory_Prize

Moreover, as said above, CS has become so pervasive that it does not need the Nobel "brand power" to attract the general attention ... even if the three above distinctions do not attract much of the media interest !

By the way, strictly speaking, there is no "Nobel Prize in economy" but "the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", established (indepently of Nobel's will, obviously) in 1968.and "awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901".

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/

So ... a "XXX Prize in Computer Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" could as well be established.

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@Clerot, thank you for clarification. Anyway, this prize for economy is listed on the "official Web site of the Nobel Prize"; so, we can see that they welcome this relatively new prize.

As for CS there are many prizes and awards around, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economics_awards.

I'm not looking for reputation for the awardees, though, rather looking for the funds that are associated with such a prize. Besides obvious people like Tim Berners-Lee and the founders of the Wikipedia, there might be many working in health informatics, who have already a major impact on society.

And, Clerot, I like your idea of X Prize in CS ...

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2012/

I find it funny that people keep saying that CS discoveries become "obsolete" after a while, when this is just not true. Even worse, when people think that CS is all about inventions rather than discoveries.

First of all, the Turing machine still is, to this day, the model of reality chosen to represent computation, second, a theorem in computational complexity does not stop being true only because the technology has changed, third, if you find an optimal algorithm to solve a problem, and you can prove that no better can ever be made, your algorithm won't turn obsolete ever.

We have the Turing Award, which is at about the same level of prestige as a Nobel is for physics.

My previous comment was about a rumor. The more reliable answers coan be found here: http://mathforum.org/social/articles/ross.html or http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp

Yes, Fabricio, agreed - and we have that medal for mathematics, too. Sorry, I don't remember the name ;-). It wasn't of the Fields of the Nobel Prize, though. Nobel is something we remember.

But, as I said, I am not after prestige for CS. On the other hand, there should be some balance. There are many awards for economists, and I don't think they really need a Nobel Prize, too.

Don't forget the Fields Medal, add that to the list. If you are doing serious computer science especially close to foundations or theory of computation (which can have heavy ramifications) this falls comfortably inside solid Formal Science which is a subject of Mathematics.

It is because the technological trends and development of computer science comes from basic physics and mathematics, they deserve to get instead of those using it.

I partly agree, @Sarma Dhulipala; although, mathematicians are not awarded a Nobel Prize, see the lengthy discussion in the shadowy zone above. Economics is also based firmly on maths. Why then economists should get funding in the follow up of the award?

We somewhere on RG have a discussion whether CS is a natural science or not: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_discipline_Computer_Science_a_Natural_Science

Again, CS is not only technology, but that's like talking to people who won't listen.

How many people with CS degrees profess to being a Computer Scientist instead of a developer? How can we expect others to treat is like a science, until internally we call ourselves scientists.

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@Thomas

two reasons (at least) not to worry so much :

- Nobel prize is definitely not a synonym for science : math is the generic example of a missing name in the list; economy ...well, economy is just the reverse. So, who cares about having CS written on that list ?

- how many people with a physics degree profess to being a "Physics Scientist " instead of an engineer ?.

If maths is indeed a science depends on your demarcation criteria for science.... and the economics prize is strictly speaking not a Nobel prize (it is not funded by the Nobel foundation and was started much later than the other ones). And the Nobel prize for literature is a clear example of Nobel not being for science only. In fact it might be benificial to check what the Nobel prize actually is for. And a last reason for CS not to be part of the Nobel prize list is that CS didn't exist when the Nobel prizes started... ;-).

There is a rumour : the "Nobel" for Economics came just 2 decades after WW2, when the economic framework of the post-war world was still young (FMI, World Bank, Bretton Woods) and there was criticism of that design, it was under attack (just in 1971 Bretton Woods came to an end). So, to give more respectability to the "Economic Science", a "Nobel Prize" for Economists was created.

There is a similar prize: Turing prize, which is named like great mathematician Alan Turing. As far as I know it is sponsored by google and Intel.

Why do we need to be so obsessed with External recognition and the applauds through awards and the certificates? Is there reason for this recognition?

Well Emmanuel, why are organizations (universities, funding agencies, commercial) so obsessed by certificates? Especially, if you want to do some groundbreaking research, where money is needed, you will be asked for merits of any kind. So, it's not the recognition I'm indicating but the opportunities that follow. And, why economists that have brought much of the world at the brink?

You can see that valuable approaches to almost all economics literature is not economics but economics applying other areas to gain new insights. So, why don't grant a prize for those? Even if it is CS?

Michael, although I am an ECE, my work deeply touches CS all day long. So, I totally appreciate this question. But, if I was to ask this question, I would go five steps back and ask: Why isn't there a Nobel prize for Mathematics ?

Ok, we can make the argument that, the field of CS is real young ... So, when they introduced the Nobel prize, CS wasn't really around ! But, what about mathematics ? It is 100's of years older than all of the honored Nobel prize categories ...

If I had to go ahead and answer this question, the answer would be the same as Fabrice's ... Mathematics doesn't need a Nobel prize. They have : EMS Prize, Fields Medal, Millenium Prize ...

Very well then, then you two seem to think that there is a lack of prizes for economists, which isn't the case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economics_awards). This year's winners worked about asset price evaluation. "There is no way to predict the price of stocks and bonds over the next few days or weeks. But it is quite possible to foresee the broad course of these prices over longer periods, such as the next three to five years. These findings, which might seem both surprising and contradictory, were made and analyzed by this year’s Laureates, Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller." In the light of the financial crisis (foreseen by those laureates??) this statement made on http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2013/press.html is just laughable but might make people think, see link below.

My feedback boils down to the position that economists should not stand in a row with true scientists carrying a Nobel prize away for work that usually does not improve the situation or knowledge of the population.

http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

Due to increasing influence of computational methods in physics, chemistry, medicine (bioinformatics, biocybernetics, assistive technology including neuroprosthetics, medical robots and many more), etc. there may be possible to achieve Nobel Prize thanks to applied computer science. So don't be so sad and let's try :)

Michael, when you say "you two," am I one of them ? If so, I definitely do not think there is a lack of prizes for the economists !!! My cousin is a professor at a business school. I am looking at what he does, it is pure math ! They try to formulate the economic behavior using mathematical models, but, sometimes it gets challenging to model "human behavior" ! and, heaven knows, economy is all about "human behavior" !

Yes, there is no doubt that, improper financial practices messed up the economy a few years ago. But, is it the "economists" or people that are executing it ?

Mortgage sales people that sold the mortgages that led to a collapse in the market do not know too much about "solving differential equations for stock options" ...

Why there is no Nobel Price for Mathematics?

The hearsay is that Alfred Nobel had personal animosities towards the Finnish mathematician Rolf Nevanlinna and that he assumed that Nevanlinna would be the first winner of the Mathematics price if there would be one.

The so called Nobel prize in Economics was never suggest by the will of Alfred Nobel, but was founded by the Swedish national bank in 1968, in memorial of Alfred Nobel, and also in memorial of the bank's 300th anniversary.

At Harvard University, some lecturers kick off some courses in Computer Science stating: "Welcome to the Computer Science course, despite Computer Science is not a Science at all".

Maybe they know why, exactly [scientifically].

—g

Giuseppe: Theoretical computer science is based on formal sciences (mathematics and logics) rather than empirical data, and formal sciences are in strict sense not science.

@Magnus, what about economics then? The question was why their 'scientists' can bask in the award ceremony and computerists cannot. I do not claim computer science to be a science but neither is economics.

Michael, are you aware that in English often 'science' is used as synonymous to 'natural science'? It is in this sense that Magnus states that mathematics is 'in strict sense not science'. In a wider sense (which does not imply 'natural') it is only in phases of computer-induced frustration that I doubt that computer science is science.

@Michael: Well, I believe good social science exists - carried out by mathematically skilled researchers that verify their models with empirical data and quantitative methods, and do not have a political agenda but still show a skeptical attitude. Although science traditionally refer to natural sciences, including medicine and engineering sciences, the concept of science today often includes social sciences such as economics. I think this is a positive development. (I'm in engineering myself.)

Okay. Economists suffer from the same problem as epidemiologists in medicine, since they can not carry out randomized experiments in a controlled lab environment, and their result may be subject to confounding. By implementing their prediction models in society, they may change the system behavior in an unpredictable way, making the models invalid. The data they used for deriving their predictions may not be a good statistical sample of the future situation. But there are ways to deal with this. Just like in epidemiology, economists should require a very strong level of statistical significance to consider a hypothesis reliable. They must verify their prediction models by testing them on other data than they were derived for. They can combine the quantitative methods with qualitative methods that may give a good understanding of the causing mechanisms, and may give rise to new testable hypotheses.

Some social scientists come from a very skeptical tradition, with philosophies such as critical realism and constructivism. For most of the part, this could be a good attitude when dealing with such difficult matters. However, some of them refuse to use stastistical methods, and claim that political bias can not be avoided - and therefor should not be avoided, but honestly reported. Objectiveness is not a goal to them. "Sociologism" make people intentionally allow for example left-wing views and political correctness to affect their analysis. In the same way, I suspect that many economists have a political agenda, not seldom a right-wing one. The thinking of both these groups tend to affect engineering research as well, but we never account for our views.

Magnus, do you think the engineering discipline can afford politically influenced (= biased) results, e.g. in studies to fracking or effects of global warming?

Team,

Advancement of Computer Technology are the accumulation of all the scientists from Computer technology - Hardware and Software , none of them can claim the ownership of the technology beside hard ware pattern ! This is why I stopped following the change of IT after I went to IBM lab and research center . All the new tech are the outcome of the group effort , individual with minimum financial resources is not able to claim what are the new finding ! so forget about Nobel price !

Yew, I'd like to say the same group effort is necessary in most other sciences to create new theories or results from experiments. Economists do not work out their results in an ivory tower as well. So, the work of the individual researcher is almost always embedded in a broader context (research group, peers, ResearchGate) but, nevertheless, worth the prize.

Dear Professor ,

I do agreed that , group effort is the basics building block of all knowledge. For Economic , the new ideal and model could be developed or carry out by a small group of researcher , but for hardware , the investment cost is so high that , a small group with minimum financial resources is almost like impossible . As my understanding with Computer engineering , the development is almost mature , unless there is another break through in Material science , or else , nor matter how fast the CPU and the I/O devices , there will be hardly any new invention in IT .

This is the reason why I dropped Msc in IT or Computer Engineering !

If you talk about 'invention', you mean progress that can be patented? In this case I think there lots of inventions, from Google Glass (hardware) to the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 (software).

Many of them, e.g. the Aircard, also have direct benefits for many communities around the world. My original question pointed at the idea that economics does not contribute to the benefit of people but CS does.

Michael wrote:

>Magnus, do you think the engineering discipline can afford politically influenced (=

>biased) results, e.g. in studies to fracking or effects of global warming?

Well, we should at least show awareness of that our problem formulations may be politically influenced. And we should analyze the impact of new technologies both from owner and society point of view.

Various economical and ethical aspects are often discussed in computer science and engineering publications, and we recommend our students to show an ability to see the technology in a larger perspective. Typical examples are potential market, efficient resource utilization, privacy, availability of the technology to people in the third world, accessibility to disabled, etc. The discussion often takes place in the very first sentence of the publication as motivation of the work; it may take place in the method and results chapters where it may affect the choice of performance criteria and design criteria; it may take place in the concluding chapter in an impact analysis of the suggested technology on organizations and societies.

Such discussions, and how we value technology, may be affected by our political views, for example if we believe in economical growth or if we see sustainable development as the aim of technology. In my area, some people have problems with the concept of fair scheduling while others like the idea. Some people often use analogies such as "greedy algorithms". I suspect that this is not only based on objective reasoning, but also political associations.

Sociologists criticize engineering scientists for not accounting for our views, and for not admitting our lack of objectiveness. I see their point. I think we need more ethical analysis in our publications, but that does not mean that I agree with those who claim that objectiveness should not be a a goal of science, but encourage politically influenced theories and models.

Good evening folks! Basically nobel prize is given to that person who did utmost research in a particular field!

If a person from economics is to be given a nobel prize , it is to be thought out that there might not be any such invention until a few more years!

But a person from computer is to be given a nobel prize for suppose, then we nust be in such a position that, there might not be any such invention until atleast 3 years or so so that it might get the enough value it ought to have!

Today technology is so advancing that by just watching how an application is running, many get to know the actual software that is being used which is helping someone or the other in a way they create one such similar application again and become competitors!

So computer field takes few more years to get induced into the Nobel Prize Hall of fame!.

Team,

If any possibility of set up another Nobel award ..I will strongly propose : Mathematics ...No Computer Science !

Why does the Nobel Prize need to include other fields? It was set up for particular fields. There are other awards for other fields that are very renowned. For example, the Fields Medal, and the Turing Award. These fit much better for formal scientists (Mathematicians, Computer Scientist (in core areas and foundations of CS), and other areas related directly).

Another misconception is creeping into this conversation. The misunderstanding that CS is about writing programs; which isn't true.