The number of scientific prizes has proliferated in the past 20 years (see Nature 498, 152–154; 2013). But once a scientist has published a seminal contribution, how long is it before these glittering symbols of recognition come through?

Occasionally, recognition comes early in a scientific career. For example, the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1851 at age 26, and William Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 when he was just 25. But these may be exceptions.

We looked at 466 recipients of Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine, awarded from 1901 to 2000, using a biographical encyclopedia that also lists all other major institutional awards won by an individual (G. T. Kurian The Nobel Scientists, Prometheus; 2002). These include prizes such as the Davy Medal, the Max Planck Medal and the Canada Gairdner International Award.

Using the year in which laureates produced their Nobel-prizewinning work as an indicator for the timing of their peak scientific achievement, we calculated the average lag time in each field between this and the timing of the Nobel prize and other major awards.

Our investigations indicate that recognition is conferred relatively rapidly. In physics, the lag was just 5 years; in chemistry, 9 years; and in physiology or medicine, it was 11 years. It seems that important discoveries in physics, and perhaps in chemistry, are more easily defined than in physiology or medicine, so their merits are more swiftly recognized.