Yesterday, the Nobel prize in physics was awarded for the discovery of gravitational waves, following a massive group effort by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) experiment. The announcement reignited the perennial discussion of how a scientific advance can possibly be ascribed to so few people.
According to a tweet by BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, Professor Martin Rees, former Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, told BBC News, “@LIGO’s success was owed to hundreds of researchers. The fact that the #NobelPrize2017 committee refuses to make group awards is causing increasingly frequent problems + giving a misleading impression of how a lot of science is actually done