On the face of it, this year’s Nobel Prize awards have been a triumph for British scientists. No fewer than five laureates come from these shores: three physicists, one chemist and an economist. But before anyone starts praising our higher education system, there is one small snag: all five are currently working at US universities.
David Thouless, who was awarded half the Physics prize, has followed a typical career path. After taking a degree at Cambridge, he took a PhD at Cornell University and a postdoc at the University of California before heading back to Britain, where he worked for 13 years at the University of Birmingham. There, he started the work that would eventually win him his Nobel prize. But it might not have happened if he had not taken up an appointment as professor of physics at the University of Washington in Seattle, where his work was far better funded.
Plenty of Nobel prizes have been won at British universities, but there is a very definite direction of travel for ambitious British academics: across the Atlantic, where the pay is far better and the facilities superior to those in Britain.
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