One can only become a specialist and a recognized scientist in their homeland, as Alexey Avdonin, a pro-government analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, claimed on “Alfa Radio” on August 28, 2024.
“No one will make our talented youth Nobel laureates. No one, under any circumstances. They will take all the nominations for themselves. Therefore, you can only become a talented and recognized scientist at home, creating benefits for your people and the national economy,” Avdonin stated.
The list of Nobel Prize winners across the years does not support the analyst's words. In the USA, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants have been awarded 40% of Nobel prizes in 2000.
A quick look at the list of laureates reveals a number of prominent examples who achieved success abroad. This includes figures like writer Joseph Brodsky, who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
We have economist Simon Kuznets, born in Belarusian Pinsk in 1901, who studied and worked in Ukraine before emigrating to the USA in 1922 and winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971.
And then there's Andre Geim, a Nobel laureate in Physics in 2010, known for his work on graphene. Born in Sochi, he studied in Moscow, worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences, and emigrated in the 1990s, now living and working in the UK.
Belarusian talents have twice received the Nobel Prize: Svetlana Alexievich, a writer, and Ales Bialiatski, a human rights activist. Alexievich left Belarus, while Bialiatski was sentenced to ten years in prison in his homeland for allegedly financing protests after the 2020 presidential election and smuggling money.