Talk:Sam Ruben
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Nobel Prize?
"The discovery of Carbon-14, the most useful of all artificial isotopes and consequent major advances in biology and medicine, failed to result in a deserved Nobel Prize for Ruben and Kamen."
This is an opinion, noting the word "deserved" in particular. Where is the support for this statement? The 1960 Noble prize was awarded to Libby for the _method_ of carbon-14 dating, which Ruben and Kamen did not develop themselves. In addition, Ruben died in 1943 and so he would not have won a Noble prize under any circumstance for this discovery.
I will give it a few weeks and then would likely delete that last statement completely. I think trying to patch it up will only lead to a sort of debate on the entry page, which is not appropriate. But I will give it the benefit of some more thought before taking action.
24.58.15.86 17:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I took a closer look at the page history: I am grateful for the amount of work put in by the authors responsible for the statement in question and note that they share Ruben's surname. Still, stating that the prize was deserved is an editorial opinion. Regretably Nobel prizes do follow at least several years after the work for which they are awarded, to allow time for reflection on the significance of the work. I will also clarify that I am not claiming that Ruben did not deserve the Prize, only that it cannot be stated here that he did, nor would it have been possible for the award to be made due to his unfortunate early death.
A more appropriate edit might be to note that this groundbreaking work made possible the discoveries in 1949 that led to the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (i.e., clarify the statement in the earlier paragraph regarding Libby).
24.58.15.86 17:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
