Are New Nobel Prizes Needed?

In an open letter in New Scientist, scientists and engineers urge the Nobel Foundation to create two new prizes and extend the physiology or medicine prize to cover all the life sciences, reports ScienceInsider. The signatories, which include Cancer Research UK's Tim Hunt, UMass's Lynn Margulis, Harvard's Steven Pinker, Harvard's E.O. Wilson, and others, write that prizes in global environment and public health are warranted and that revamping the physiology or medicine prize would allow it to include ecology and neuroscience, among other fields. "We feel that these suggestions will enable the prizes to appropriately recognise future achievements, and to remain influential for another hundred years," they say.