TOKYO - The Nobel Prize, except for the peace prize, is awarded to individuals. Winning scientists draw public attention as people of exceptional intellect, but scientific research is never carried out by one scientist alone: science is a vast system, and Nobel laureates are only the tip of the iceberg.
Consider the two scientists who won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine -- Roger Guillemin of the Salk Institute in California and Andrew Schally of the Veterans Administration Hospital, New Orleans. Though once working together, they parted ways and engaged in fierce competition over the same subject.
They pursued the chemical structures of hormones released by the hypothalamus in the brain. While the brain is generally regarded as the seat of consciousness, it is also an organ that releases hormones controlling activity throughout the body. The hypothalamus produces substances called peptides, which are chains of several amino acids.
Guillemin and Schally elucidated the chemical structures of these hormones, dramatically reshaping knowledge in endocrinology.
Schally's laboratory hosted many Japanese researchers, including his longtime collaborator Akira Arimura, then a professor at Tulane University. Hisayuki Matsuo, who later became a professor at Miyazaki Medical College, conducted key experiments that revealed the structure of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone, which is involved in ovulation, enabling Schally to produce results that matched those of his rival Guillemin.
The point is not the little-known contributions of Japanese researchers. Scientific research rests on teamwork.
Science journalist Nicholas Wade, who depicted the fierce rivalry between Guillemin and Schally in his book "The Nobel Duel," showed that their Nobel Prize-winning work became possible only through the cooperation of scientists from a wide range of fields.
A few years after Matsuo left Schally's laboratory, the young French anthropologist Bruno Latour visited Guillemin's laboratory. Latour stayed for two years and closely observed the scientists, with the fieldwork producing "Laboratory Life," co-authored with sociologist Steve Woolgar, which became a classic sociological work focusing on the sites where scientific discoveries are made.
The laboratory portrayed in the book is a chaotic space where people, samples, equipment and literature intermingle. Vast quantities of livestock hypothalami are brought in from slaughterhouses, and samples obtained from them are processed through various instruments and sent on for animal experiments.
Each instrument is attended by scientists conducting the experiment and assistants known as technicians. Laboratory members discuss results, turn them into papers and submit them to journals.
Guillemin's laboratory was a factory of science that generated new facts one after another through the collaborative work of many people.
A laboratory is a complex ecosystem made up of people, equipment and the natural world under study. Behind the glittering Nobel Prize, countless instruments and people are constantly at work.
Akihisa Setoguchi is a professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Research in Humanities. Born in Miyazaki Prefecture in 1975, he graduated the Kyoto University's Faculty of Science and completed a doctoral course at its Graduate School of Letters. He specializes in the history of science and has held his current post since 2025. He is the author of the book "Gaichu no Tanjo" (Birth of Insect Pests).
