Seven rules for a Nobel-prize winner

Coming to Lindau could be your yearly treat if you win that Nobel gong

By Matin Durrani in Lindau, Germany

OK so you want to be a Nobel prize-winner?

Well here’s a seven-point checklist presented by Ivar Giaever at the 60th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. In case you’d forgotten or had never heard of him (surely not?), the Norwegian-born Giaever shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics at the age of 44 with Brian Josephson and Leo Esaki for their work on tunnelling in solids.

So to bag that top gong and the all-expenses-paid trip for you and your other half to the Swedish capital, here are what Ivar reckons are the required attributes:

· be curious

· be competitive

· be creative

· be self-confident

· be critical

· be patient

· and above all, be lucky.

Strikes me, there are a few key things missing, like, er, being clever. And, if I was being cynical, as you’d expect me to be, then it probably doesn’t hurt to have a couple of chums on the Nobel committee who can put in a good word for you.

Moving to the US wouldn’t be a bad idea either, if past experience is anything to go by. And don’t be an astronomer or geophysicist, who have never done that well on the Nobel gong front.

He makes it all sound so easy.