Why Didn't They Win? 10 Huge Discoveries Without a Nobel Prize

The 2014 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has gone to three scientists who discovered brain cells that help us stay orientedour "inner GPS." Announced Monday, the award kicks off the annual salute to human accomplishment that is Nobel week, including Friday's announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize. (See: "Nobel Prize a Reminder of How the Brain Can Surprise Us.")

The ritual of Nobel speculation, particularly about who will win the three science prizes, got the editors at National Geographic thinking: What amazing discoveries haven't won? We asked our Phenomena science bloggers, science editors, and select contributors to pick their favorite advance or invention that was passed over.

Here are their ten picks for discoveries and inventions that haven't won a Nobel, but sorely deserve one.

The World Wide Web

When the National Geographic folks asked what discovery deserves the Nobel Prize but never won, my first instinct was to ask my followers on Twitter. After they gave me a few candidates, I Googled "Velcro" and "dark matter" and "embryonic stem cells" and read about these discoveries.

Then it occurred to me: What could be more deserving of the Nobel Prize than the invention I had so relied on to learn about inventions?

Beginning in the 1960s, researchers in the U.S. federal government created computer communication networks that would evolve into the Internet. But I'd give the Nobel to British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who in 1989 proposed the idea for the World Wide Web and in 1990 created the first website (a page describing the Web).

The Web democratizes information, whether dumb videos of dancing cats or brave tweets from the Arab Spring. And information is power.

Virginia Hughes, Phenomena blog: Only Human

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Why Didn't They Win? 10 Huge Discoveries Without a Nobel Prize