- What is the Nobel Prize?
- Who was Alfred Nobel?
- Nobel Prize Categories
- What does the Nobel Prize consist of?
- Nobel Prize Winners
We explain what the Nobel Prize is, what it consists of and in which categories it is awarded. Also, who was its creator, Alfred Nobel.
What is the Nobel Prize?
The Nobel Prize (pronounced /nobél/) is one of the most famous and recognized international awards in recent history, awarded annually to individuals, groups or institutions that have made exceptional and significant contributions to the humanity in six different thematic categories: physical, chemistry, physiology (medicine), literature, economy and the prize of peace (social activism, charity or similar).
The award has been given since 1901 in five of its current six categories, and since 1968 in its economics category. The institutions in charge of choosing the winners in each area are the Swedish Academy of Sciences (chemistry, physics and economics), the Karolinska Institute (medicine), the Swedish Academy (literature) and the Central Nobel Committee (peace). The first five are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, while the last one is awarded in Oslo, Norway. All activities related to the prize are administered by the Nobel Foundation.
The Nobel Prize is named after the Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), inventor of dynamite and 355 other patents. In his will, Nobel dedicated 95% of his immense fortune to the creation of the prizes, as a way to stimulate the most positive aspects of human inventiveness and also to clear his own name, associated with the creation of cannons and other weapons of war. For this reason, the prize is awarded every December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
Who was Alfred Nobel?
Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers. After spending his childhood in Tsarist Russia, where he received an education in natural Sciences and human, he returned to his native country in 1863 to devote himself to research in the area of explosives.
His family's factories had been heavily criticized for handling nitroglycerin and industrial accidents (in one of which, in fact, his own brother Emil had died); so Nobel got down to business, and in 1867 he invented dynamite, a much more stable explosive and one that turned out to be immensely profitable.
Dynamite was just one of the 355 inventions he patented during his lifetime, although perhaps the most famous. Thanks to this, in 1894 Nobel bought the Bofors steel industry, dedicated to iron and steel, and turned it into a formidable war weapons factory, which earned him the nickname "the merchant of death".
It is believed that such was the impact that his nickname caused him, that he decided to invest his remaining time and his fortune in compensating for the damage that his invention had caused to the world. This is how the Nobel Prizes were born: in the last of his living wills, Alfred Nobel left just 5% of his wealth to his family, and the rest he invested in the creation of a series of prizes for those who carried out “the greater benefit to humanity.
Nobel was a cultured and sensitive man, who spoke five languages and cultivated literary crafts (especially poetry in English), but extremely lonely: he never had a wife or family of his own, or offspring.
One of his best-known affections was that of the novelist and pacifist Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914), whose correspondence with Alfred is considered to be the seed of the Nobel Peace Prize: an award that she herself would receive in 1905, becoming the first woman to receive it in history (and the second winner of a Nobel after Marie Curie).
Nobel Prize Categories
The Nobel Prize is currently awarded in six distinct categories:
- Nobel Prize in Physics. It has been awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those people or institutions that have made significant contributions to the understanding of the laws and composition of the universe. It has been taught just over 200 times.
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It has been awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those people or institutions that have made significant contributions to the understanding and transformation of matter. It has been taught about 160 times.
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It has been awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden to those people or institutions that have made significant contributions to the study and understanding of the human body, health and the fight against disease. It has been taught about 206 times.
- Nobel Prize for Literature. It has been awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy to those whose literary career is considered to be of importance and interest to humanity. It has been taught 114 times.
- Nobel Peace Prize.It has been awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation and the Norwegian Nobel Committee (composed of 5 people elected, in turn, by the Norwegian parliament) to those people or institutions that have contributed significantly to peace, human coexistence, fraternity of the nations, the abolition of war and injustice, and other important forms of social and political activism. It has been taught almost 100 times.
- Commemorative Nobel Prize in Economics. Also called the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, it has been awarded since 1968 by the Nobel Foundation, the Bank of Sweden and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to individuals and institutions that have made significant contributions to development. of the economic Sciences. It is not technically a Nobel Prize, since it was not in Alfred Nobel's will, but it is considered as the "Nobel Prize in economics" and has the same prestige and importance.
What does the Nobel Prize consist of?
No Nobel Prize can be awarded to more than three people at a time, and it awards the winner or winners a substantial sum of money, equivalent to about $1.5 million or €1 million (10 million Swedish kronor).
In addition, the winners of the categories of physics, chemistry, medicine and literature receive a medal with the image of Alfred Nobel in left profile, with the Latin inscription You invent vitam juvat excoluisse per artes ("Those who ennobled life by discovering the arts"), corresponding to a verse by the Roman poet Virgil. This medal is the work of the sculptor and engraver Erik Lindberg, and has the symbols of each institution that awards them.
The winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, on the other hand, receive a medal by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland that also exhibits the profile of Alfred Nobel, and the Latin citation Pro pace et fraternitate gentium ("For the peace and brotherhood of nations"). And, for his part, the Nobel Prize in Economics receives a medal with the image of Alfred Nobel, the work of the Swedish Gunvor Svensson-Lundkvist, in which there is no inscription.
All winners also receive a diploma from the King of Sweden, or from the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (in the case of the peace prize), whose design belongs to the granting institutions and details the reasons that led to the awarding of the prize.
Nobel Prize Winners
Some examples of Nobel Prize winners in their different categories are:
Nobel Prize in Physics:
- In 1901 the German Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was awarded for the discovery of X-rays (then called “Röntgen rays”).
- In 1918, the German Max Planck was awarded for his contributions to physics by discovering energy quanta and laying the foundations for quantum physics.
- In 1921 the German Albert Einstein was awarded for his revolutionary contributions to theoretical physics and the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
- In 1922, the Dane Niels Bohr was awarded for his contributions in the investigation of the structure of atoms and the radiation that emanates from them.
- In 1938 the Italian Enrico Fermi was awarded for the discovery of nuclear reactions produced by neutrons slow and for demonstrating the existence of new radioactive elements created by neutron irradiation.
- In 1971 Hungarian Dennis Gabor was awarded for the invention and development of the holographic method.
- In 2017 it was awarded to Americans Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for their contributions to the LIGO detector and observation of gravitational waves for the first time in history.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry:
- In 1908, the British Ernest Rutherford was awarded for his research on the degradation of elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances.
- In 1911 it was awarded to the Polish Marie Curie for her services in advancing chemistry with the discovery and isolation of radium and polonium.
- In 1944 the German Otto Hahn was awarded for discovering the fission of heavy atomic nuclei.
- In 1958 it was awarded to the British Frederick Sanger for his work on the structure of the proteins and especially insulin.
- In 1989 it was awarded to Canadian Sidney Altman and American Thomas Cech for discovering the catalytic properties of ribonucleic acid (RNA).
- In 2020, Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the United States were awarded for the development of the CRISPR gene-editing method.
Nobel Prize in Medicine:
- In 1902 it was awarded to Briton Ronald Ross for his discovery of how the malaria parasite enters the body and effective methods of combating it.
- In 1906 it was awarded to the Italian Camillo Golgi and the Spanish Santiago Ramón y Cajal for their work on the structure of the nervous system of the human body.
- In 1923 it was awarded to Canadian Frederick Grant Banting and British John James Richard Mcleod for the discovery of insulin.
- In 1930 the Austrian Karl Landsteiner was awarded for the discovery of human blood groups.
- In 1945, the British Alexander Fleming, the German Ernst Boris Chain and the Australian Howard Walter Florey were jointly awarded for the discovery of penicillin and its antibiotic effect on different bacterial diseases.
- In 1985 the Americans Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein were awarded for their discoveries on the metabolic regulation of cholesterol.
- In 2020, it was awarded to the Americans Harvey James Alter and Charles Rice, and to the British Michael Houghton, for the discovery of the virus of hepatitis C.
Nobel Prize in Literature:
- In 1907 it was awarded to Briton Rudyard Kipling for "his powers of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and an extraordinary talent for narration that characterize the creations of this world famous author”.
- In 1913, the Indian Rabindranath Tagore was awarded "because of his verse deeply sensitive, fresh and beautiful, with which, with consummate skill, he has created the poetic thought of it, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.
- In 1945 it was awarded to the Chilean Gabriela Mistral "for her lyrical poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has turned her name into a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world."
- In 1954 the American Ernest Hemingway was awarded “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The old man and the sea, and for the influence he has exerted on contemporary style”.
- In 1968, the Japanese Yasunari Kawabata was awarded "for his narrative mastery, which expresses with great sensitivity the essence of the Japanese mind."
- In 1982, Colombian Gabriel García Márquez was awarded "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the real are combined in a world richly composed of imagination, reflecting the life and conflicts of a continent."
- In 2015 Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich was awarded “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
Nobel Peace Prize:
- In 1901 it was given to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in the creation of the International Red Cross and to the Frenchman Frédéric Passy for being one of the founders of the Interparliamentary Union and the main organizer of the Universal Congress for Peace.
- In 1935 it was awarded to the German writer and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, founder of the movement Nie Wieder Krieg ("Never again the war") and international denouncer of the secret rearmament carried out by Adolf Hitler.
- In 1954, the High Commissioner for the United Nations for Refugees in Switzerland, an organization dedicated to the work of serving refugees around the world since 1951.
- In 1964, the American Martin Luther King was awarded for his fight for the rights of the African-American minority in his country and his role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
- In 1979 it was awarded to the Indian mother Teresa of Calcutta, leader of the religious congregation of the Missionaries of Charity.
- In 1992 it was awarded to the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú for her work in favor of social justice and the recognition of the legacy of indigenous peoples.
Nobel Prize in Economics:
- In 1974, Gunnar Myrdal of Sweden and Friedrich Hayek of Austria were awarded for their work on monetary theory and their analyzes of the independence of economic phenomena. social and institutional.
- In 1976 the American Milton Friedman was awarded for his demonstration of the complexity of political stabilization and his contributions in the field of consumption analysis, history and monetary theory.
- In 1988, the Frenchman Maurice Allais was awarded for his contribution to the theory of markets and the efficient distribution of resources.
- In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee of India, Esther Duflo of France and Michael Kremer of the United States were awarded for their experimental approach to reducing global poverty.