Nobel committee members say the first prize awarded to Chinese will likely be in the literature or peace categories.

Although a Chinese national has never won a Nobel Prize, Nobel committee members suggested at a March 23 forum in Beijing that the time is approaching.

"Not today, not next year, perhaps next, next year," said Anders Flodstrom, president of the Sweden-based The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), to Chinese students at a forum titled "Nobel Prize and Scientific Discovery" held at Tsinghua University.

Flodstrom and three Nobel committee members Borje Johansson, Sven Lidin and Bertil Fredholm were invited to share their thoughts on the Nobel Prize and its history.

During the one-hour forum, the four scientists covered a wide range of topics, including an overview of the Nobel Prizes, historical anecdotes, and the procedures for selecting candidates and, ultimately, prizewinners from the pool of nominees.

Flodstrom and the three Nobel committee members predicted that a female scientist will most likely claim China's first Nobel Prize in a scientific field, and that the first Nobel Prize awarded to a Chinese will likely come in either the literature or peace categories. The other four Nobel Prize categories are physics, chemistry, medicine and economics.

The lack of a Nobel prize winner is said to give some Chinese a "Nobel complex."

In the 1990s, rumours circulated widely in the media that Lu Xun (1881-1936) and Lin Yutang (1895-1976), two renowned Chinese literary masters, declined to receive the Nobel literature prize.

Although fabricated, these rumours still mystify some less-informed Chinese and add glamour to the Nobel Prizes for all Chinese.

Anticipation for China's first Nobel Prize winner continues to grow especially since Chen-Ning Yang, a Chinese-American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, returned to stay permanently on the campus of Tsinghua University, where he taught a physics course to freshmen from September 2004 to January 2005.

The Nobel Prize committee members at the Tsinghua forum fielded questions from students regarding the selection of prizewinners.

According to the committee members, a potential Nobel Prize winner in the field of science must have 20 to 25 years of scientific research experience.

The winner must also have at least one novel discovery that has bettered humankind. Nobel Prizes awarded today "reflect the development of science in the 1970s and 1980s," they said.

The committee members described a potential Nobel Prize winner as a courageous person willing to stand up for his or her ideas and defend them amid scepticism and rejection.

Sven Lidin joked that Chinese students aspiring to win the prize should not only know "99 per cent perspiration," but also "1 per cent inspiration."

And when Lidin tried to persuade Chinese students to have "a little bit of laziness" for fear they "will soon take all Nobel prizes away from Swedes," the auditorium filled with laughter.

At another event, Dr Barry Marshall, 2005 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, encouraged Chinese students to "question everything" they learn in school and evaluate information for themselves.

Marshall made the remarks last Thursday at a lecture in Beijing's 101 Middle School, where he discussed his research experience with about 200 Chinese teenagers. "No one can predict where a next Nobel Prize will come from," Marshall said. "You have to explore and discover something new."

"At the beginning, you cannot know whether a discovery is important or not because it is something new and nobody knows about it," Marshall said.

Marshall encouraged students to persevere despite doubts and discouragements, citing his own bramble-overgrown path leading up to the Nobel Prize.

"You may encounter many doubts like 'It is not a very useful project,' or 'It is a stupid experiment.' But you need to carry on because you like to do it," he stressed.

Marshall said he had talked with many Chinese students and was very glad to see that "Chinese students are very interested in sciences and technology and have the desire to do something new."

"They are very creative and asked me many good questions that I have not been asked before," Marshall said to the young Chinese audience.

"The future is very bright for you."

(China Daily 03/29/2006 page14)