Today's Nobel prize for Cardiff stem cell pioneer Sir Martin Evans may not fill the Millennium stadium but should be cause for a little discreet champagne at the university.
The award for medicine, shared with Mario Capecchi, of the University of Utah, and Oliver Smithies, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brings invaluable prestige to the institutions concerned.
And Sir Martin, professor of mammalian genetics, will find himself single-handed boosting Cardiff's rating in the international rankings published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University which allot 20% of marks for staff who have won Nobel prizes or Field medals (the equivalent for mathematics).
This year Cardiff was grouped among the 50 institutions rated between 151 and 202 in the Chinese table, scoring zero for Nobel laureates on the staff, so its position should rise next year.
Nottingham University jumped after the 2003 Nobel prize for medicine went to Sir Peter Mansfield for his work on magnetic resonance imaging and is currently ranked 81 in the world.
Meanwhile Manchester University is a pursuing a policy of recruiting Nobel laureates in order to boost its standing in the world rankings.
Sir Martin will also boost the point score for Cambridge where he was a student - alumni who win Nobels account of 10% of marks in the Shanghai methodology.
Today's announcement will also bring a ratings payoff for Oxford, where Yorkshire-born Professor Smithies studied - although the ancient university can no longer claim any Nobel laureates on the staff.
But Cardiff has been slow to boast about its success. In contrast to Wikipedia where entries for the scientists were updated within 20 minutes of the announcement from Sweden, the university's website was still leading on "Exploring Roman Caerleon" well into the afternoon. Something its noted school of journalism might want to look into perhaps.
