Working with a Nobel laureate may actually lower a researcher’s chances of winning a Nobel prize. This challenges the idea that having a laureate as a scientific peer increases the likelihood of receiving a call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Many laureates sit within an academic family tree where past supervisors and PhD students have also won a Nobel prize. For example, John Clarke – who won the 2025 Nobel prize in physics for his work on macroscopic quantum tunnelling – mentored his fellow winners Michel Devoret and John Martinis. Clarke’s academic ‘grandfathers’ were also laureates, including Pyotr Kapitsa (1978 physics) and Ernest Rutherford (1908 physics).

Collaborating with laureates seems like a sure way to increase chances of winning a future Nobel prize. However, a team in China suggest that this is not the case.

The team analysed nomination data for the Nobel prize in physics between 1930 and 1970 and found that scientists who worked alongside laureates were less likely to win a Nobel prize. (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awards the Nobel prizes only releases data after 50 years.)

Although collaborations may ‘boost academic visibility and impact’ through an increased number of citations, they may ‘impose an independence ceiling’, says Zikang Zhao at Nanjing University in China.

He adds that the academy may discount the independence and originality of contributions made by researchers if they worked closely with a laureate, ultimately lowering the likelihood of a scientist winning a Nobel prize.

However, he explains that this study ‘is not warning against collaboration’ and thinks that scientists must continue to work together to advance science.

Zhao adds that ‘the Nobel prize still maintains its “rule of three”,’ where only three people can win the prize. He thinks this ‘creates a severe bottleneck’ as ‘nominators attempt to sift through a team of hundreds to identify [key] contributors’, making it hard to identify younger, more independent collaborators.

Factors other than collaboration may influence who receives a Nobel prize. ‘It is important to bear in mind that the decision to award the prize is made by humans, who have biases,’ says Guillermo Restrepo, a chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Germany. ‘While it is vital to learn from exceptional minds, to be inspired by groundbreaking ideas and to build upon existing knowledge, true scientific advancement often lies in the ability to go beyond what has already been achieved,’ he says. ‘Collaborating with laureates is overall playing against the trip to Stockholm.’