Professor Hans Ellegren, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, defends the Nobel Committee's attempts to better reflect the breadth of achievement across the world after a season where every Nobel laureate came from either Europe or the USA.
He points to the increase in women laureates, including "half of all laureates in chemistry" as evidence of progress in the field over the past five years, and claims that the academy is taking "every measure we can" to increase the geographical diversity of the prize-winners.
"One must be aware that we don’t really mirror the scientific community as it looks now, but maybe how it looked 20 or 30 years back when these discoveries were made" he further adds.