[belorn]

> "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.

It used to be that professor status was very regulated. In Sweden prior to 1993, a professor title was granted by the government, and in practice one could only become a professor if such role was currently unfilled.

Was the Noble price nomination rules created before 1993?

[_delirium]

It's a bit unclear in English nowadays, because in Scandinavian-written academic English, 'professor' sometimes refers only to the formal title Professor, which corresponds to what Americans sometimes call "Full Professor", but in other usages it includes a broader set of faculty. For example the three academic titles in Danish are Professor, Lektor, and Adjunkt, but in recent years their official English translations are Full Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor, which better reflects how the roles have evolved in practice. So are the latter two included under the term "professors" when a Danish institution writes something in English? Sometimes yes, sometimes no...

[Lazare]

The rules actually were relaxed in 1993; I'm not sure what they were before that.