"It has more of a bearing on graduate students and on research than on the undergraduates," Glauber says.

Economics

Gund Professor of Economics Richard E. Caves seems slightly stung that the Nobel Prize in Economics has not been awarded to a Harvard professor since 1973.

"I couldn't deny that is significant," he says. But "the economics department at Harvard is identifies and correctly identified, as the strongest in the U.S. at this time."

"The number [of Nobels] that one has doesn't say anything about the contemporary quality of the department," Caves adds.

Caves says the dearth of economics awards can be attributed to the youth of the Harvard department."

"Our faculty is several decades younger than the point where Nobel Prizes are often awarded," he says.

"We make our appointments of faculty in their 30s and 40s when the Nobel is often awarded for work influential over a long period of time."

A department may be the best in the world but have no Nobels because they are given for long-term research quality, Caves says.

"In recruiting department members, we're always looking for the distinctive and creative qualities that the Nobel Prize committee looks for," Caves says.

The prize Harvard actually came closest to this year, the Nobel for literature, is the one it has never won. Boylston Professor of Rhetoric Seamus Heaney, a poet, was considered a top contender for the award.

"The only drought here is in the field of literature," Herschbach says. "The Crimson is our big hope there.