The program has been dubbed the "Nobel class" and the students enlisted will each be assigned an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or Chinese Academy of Engineers as their tutors. The courses will also be specially designed. The admissions office director was quoted as saying that the university hopes that the program may produce future Nobel laureates.

Setting lofty goals for the best students may have been done with the best of intentions, but waving banners for the sake of some "great goal" itself is not laudable if the essence of science is ignored.

Indeed, since the Nobel prizes were first awarded in 1901, only a tiny percentage of scientists have won one of them in the scientific subjects -- physics, chemistry, and physiology and medicine. Alfred Nobel dictated in his will that the interest payments on the fund established out of the whole of his remaining realizable estate "shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

In fact, the aim of scientists doing research is not to pursue a Nobel prize, but to discover what is still unknown to humankind, to deepen human understanding of nature, the universe and life on Earth, and to improve our lives, among other reasons.

To achieve these objectives, scientists across the world have devoted the best years of their lives, raking their creative minds, experimenting on the basis of their original ideas and working with tenacity and perseverance in the laboratory or out in the field.

The joint efforts of countless scientists in all the sciences worldwide have greatly contributed to the explosion of human knowledge in the past century, despite the fact that Nobel prizes are only awarded to only a few.

Universities should help nurture a scientific spirit of creative and original ideas, hard work, team spirit and even initial anonymity, rather than being seduced by the lure of fame.

(China Daily March 27, 2003)