Nobel laureates in fiction: From La fin du monde to The Big Bang Theory

The history of the Nobel Prize, since its establishment, interlaces with the history of the public image of science. The aim of this article is to illustrate cinematic scientists, portrayed precisely in their moment of maximum glory. The films and television shows upon which the study is based compose a corpus of 189 media texts. The article identifies three main areas that concern the relation between the Nobel Prize and its audiovisual representations: biopics of real Nobel laureates, the presence of real or fictional Nobel laureates in the film or the show plot, and films and TV series that depict the Nobel ceremony. The article then focuses on four texts that deserve a detailed examination: La fin du monde, The Prize, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory. The conclusion compares the representation of the Nobel scientist with general changes in the image of the scientist conveyed by cinema and television.