[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Laypeople needs a simple way to know who's who in advanced research fields, without Nobel prices (or any other commitee) we don't get to have that.

I think first you're underestimating "laypeople" which seems to include many scientists who are not physicists, and second you are forgetting that many of the scientists the "lay" public knows as the greatest of all times never received a Nobel, or any other famous prize: Einstein, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, etc etc.

[Maxatar]

Einstein received the Nobel prize:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/

[myrmidon]

Neither for relativity nor mass-energy equivalence though, which laypeople are much more likely to know about than the photoelectric effect (what the price was actually awarded for).

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Ah. My mistake. Thanks for correcting me.

[sehansen]

Einstein received the Nobel prize in 1921, but your point is still correct.

[FrustratedMonky]

Do laypeople know Kepler?

[etiam]

Depends on the quality of the '"lay" public' I guess.

Where I live, in my estimation the 'educated "lay" public' would probably have heard of all the names mentioned, but with even worse notions of what their actual contributions were for Kepler.