Check out the mania (and enormous $$$) around sports and sports figures, actors, and musicians. I can't recall a nerd ever getting an endorsement contract. The only nerd prize is the Nobel; the Oscars, Emmys, Grammies, Halls of Fame, Heisemann Trophies, etc., are for other professions.
Just for a small slice of it, the mania over the Olympics. Billions and billions of dollars, wall-to-wall TV coverage, of 2 weeks seeing who can run faster than the next.
There seems like a pretty obvious distinction here. Sports brings people together because it's something we can all understand quite easily and it's entertaining. Actors do the same thing. As do musicians. Nerds help improve our lives but do you expect wall-to-wall TV coverage of someone coding the latest app? Most viewers wouldn't be able to understand what's going on and even for most coders it wouldn't be entertaining. When it comes to the awards you've mentioned - they're setup by the very organisations the winners work for. It's not like the world is recognising someone for an achievement. It's their employers and colleagues.
I think it's largely the same everywhere in the world (it's not "American anti-intellectualism") - as an example, people in rural Syria haven't neccesarily heard about my country (Poland), but they've heard about our best footballer (Lewandowski). These fields serve as entertainment for the masses - no wonder people get more excited about it than about other stuff they don't necessarily understand or care about. Watching people sing or perform extraordinary physical feats have always (since the ancient times) moved us on a deep level.
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Just for a small slice of it, the mania over the Olympics. Billions and billions of dollars, wall-to-wall TV coverage, of 2 weeks seeing who can run faster than the next.