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Nobel Prize: How English beat German as language of science

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29543708

Two Norwegian scientists have won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine - for work published in the English language. Historian of science Michael Gordin explains why they wrote in the language of Dickens and Twain rather than Ibsen and Hamsun.

Permafrost, oxygen, hydrogen - it all looks like science to me.

But these terms actually have origins in Russian, Greek and French.

Today, though, if a scientist is going to coin a new term, it's most likely in English. And if they are going to publish a new discovery, it is most definitely in English.

Look no further than the Nobel Prize awarded for physiology and medicine to Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser. Their research was written and published in English.

This was not always so.

A fascinating looks at how English has come to dominate the world of science- but in an alternate Universe, it may well be German than scientists up and down this country would be striving to learn. It so nearly was German, but WW1 changed everything.

Reply 1

Studentus-anonymous

Original post by navarre

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29543708

A fascinating looks at how English has come to dominate the world of science- but in an alternate Universe, it may well be German than scientists up and down this country would be striving to learn. It so nearly was German, but WW1 changed everything.

Dunno, English owes a lot of it's position to the length and breadth of the British Empire and then following that the rise of Anglo-speaking USA onto the world-dominating stage.

Germany by itself is and has been too small to really effect a change in lingua franca, being that it's locked into central Europe and thus struggled to establish colonies and empire to gather the resources needed to effect 'might makes right'.

Hitler had a good pop but his Germany was a flash in the pan and we can all be glad for that.

Interesting link!

Reply 2

Jammy Duel

As said, it's largely down to our empire being so much better than thiers and the English language being so widespread, so when we stopped hating on the Europeans ways of thinking and when the Americans started producing large amounts of work instead of the Germans (thank you Mr Hitler) the shift to English is the natural way to go.