Andrea Gillhuber, SCOPE editor-in-chief. © WBM

Of course, we know pioneers such as Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry. But despite Nobel's criterion - "has been of the greatest benefit to mankind" - it is usually difficult to immediately define the concrete benefit for oneself and also for society from the discoveries of the prize winners.

After all, would you know that without the research of James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, some modern cancer therapies would not yet be applicable, that without Paul Christian Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI for short, would not exist in its current form and that Jack Kilby's work on integrated circuits helped lay the foundation for today's ICs?

This year is different: the Nobel Prize for Chemistry goes to the scientists John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. Without this energy storage technology, there would be no smartphones with the performance we take for granted, laptops would not be an option due to the size of the required power storage, electromobility would not be at the current level and our inner cities would be free of electric scooters.

But in my opinion, the Nobel Prize has another important role to play: once a year, it puts the spotlight on the clever minds behind the scenes. It recognizes the work of those who make our everyday lives so much easier and who we take for granted. As a rule, we know Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Barack Obama or Willy Brandt, Nobel Prize winners in Literature such as Winston Churchill or Bob Dylan, because they were or are in the public eye. This is not the case with the laureates for chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine.

In this context - putting the bright minds in the background in the foreground - I liked an image campaign by Intel: in various advertisements, the company contrasted common everyday situations with the daily work of Intel employees. For example, the image of a rock band is juxtaposed with that of two development engineers. The slogan: Your Rock Stars aren't like our Rock Stars.