Nobel laureates excel at spotting fundamental problems and devoting years to solving them, even when it means challenging established authorities and accepted knowledge. That is the mindset Taiwan must learn if it wants to produce Nobel-level breakthroughs, says Academia Sinica President James C. Liao (廖俊智). In an exclusive interview with Storm Media, Liao set out the core principles he believes Taiwan's scientists urgently need to embrace.
His remarks come as Academia Sinica's “Taiwan Bridge Project” brings multiple Nobel Prize winners to Taiwan in collaboration with National Taiwan University, domestic research institutions and the International Peace Foundation. Since November last year, laureates in peace, physics, chemistry, biomedicine, economics and literature have engaged in intensive exchanges with local scholars and young researchers, offering Taiwan a rare, first-hand look at how Nobel-caliber science is actually done.
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Learning to see fundamental problems, not just flashy results
For Liao, the “spirit of the Nobel Prize” lies less in glamorous outcomes than in how those outcomes are achieved. “Beyond seeing the brilliant research results of Nobel laureates, what matters even more is how they identify major problems, find the most fundamental issues and invest long periods of time to solve them. That is what most people find difficult to learn,” he said. “Through this lecture series, we hope Taiwan's students and teachers can experience how Nobel laureates originally identified problems and the spirit with which they solve them.”
The Taiwan Bridge Project's lecture series is deliberately designed to highlight the laureates' way of thinking rather than treat them as distant “knowledge authorities” dispensing correct answers. “Nobel laureates dare to challenge existing knowledge authorities,” Liao said. “When we invite them to Taiwan, we are not here to study under established authorities or simply learn what they know. The most important thing is to learn their spirit—that is the real gain.”
He emphasizes that persistence in the face of repeated failure is central to that spirit. “We need to understand how they dare to take on major scientific and social problems, why these problems differ from our current understanding and why experiments fail,” Liao said. “Most people retreat when they hit these obstacles. Laureates keep probing why they failed, and ultimately discover that existing knowledge is not enough. They then propose new theories—that is the true spirit of the Nobel Prize.”
Just as important, he added, is that these discoveries do not exist in a vacuum. “The major discoveries of Nobel laureates usually make significant contributions to society. That is another core element of the Nobel spirit.” In other words, the gold standard is not only intellectual daring, but also the ability to produce work that reshapes how societies live, heal, build and understand the world.
