| Name | The Nobel Prize |
|---|---|
| Alt | A golden medallion with an embossed image of Alfred Nobel facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "MDCCCXXXIII" above, followed by (smaller) "OB•" then "MDCCCXCVI" below. |
| Description | Outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, identified with the Nobel Prize, is awarded for outstanding contributions in Economics. |
| Presenter | Swedish Academy Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Karolinska Institutet Norwegian Nobel Committee |
| Country | Sweden Norway (Peace Prize only) |
| Year | 1901 |
| Website | http://nobelprize.org |
The Nobel Prizes (definite form, singular, Swedish: Nobelpriset, Norwegian: Nobelprisen) are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of the cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895. The prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace were first awarded in 1901. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was instituted by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and was first awarded in 1969. Although technically not a Nobel Prize, its announcements and presentations are made along with the other prizes, with the exception of the Peace Prize which is awarded in Oslo, Norway. Each Nobel Prize is regarded as the most prestigious award in its field.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Swedish Academy grants the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded by a Swedish organisation but by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Each recipient, or laureate, is presented with a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money which depends on the Nobel Foundation's income that year. In 2009, each prize was worth 10 million SEK (c. US$1.4 million). The prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless the winner of the prize has passed away after the prize's announcement. Nor may a prize be shared among more than three people. The average number of laureates per prize has increased substantially over the 20th century .
Alfred Nobel ( ) was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers. He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1895 Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he converted into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite, the immediate precurser to many smokeless military explosives. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, most of it from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Alfred had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, titled ‘The merchant of death is dead’, in a French newspaper. As it was Alfred's brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. Alfred was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896 Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, at the age of 63 from a cerebral haemorrhage.
To the surprise of many, Nobel's last will requested that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature. Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. The last was written over a year before he died, signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes. Because of the level of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the prizes.
Nobel's instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organisations were established: the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded, and in 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly-created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II. In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to market the prizes internationally and to oversee informal administration related to the prizes. The Foundation is not involved in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates. In many ways the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company, in that it invests Nobel's money to create a solid funding base for the prizes and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953). Since the 1980s, the Foundation's investments have become more profitable and as of 31 December 2007, the assets controlled by the Nobel Foundation amounted to 3.628 billion Swedish kronor (c. US$560 million).
According to the statutes, the Foundation should consist of a board of five Swedish or Norwegian citizens, with its seat in Stockholm. The Chairman of the Board should be appointed by the Swedish King in Council, with the other four members appointed by the trustees of the prize-awarding institutions. An Executive Director is chosen from among the board members, a Deputy Director is appointed by the King in Council, and two deputies are appointed by the trustees. However, since 1995 all the members of the board have been chosen by the trustees, and the Executive Director and the Deputy Director appointed by the board itself. As well as the board, the Nobel Foundation is made up of the prize-awarding institutions (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee), the trustees of these institutions, and auditors. The committee awarded the Peace Prize to two prominent figures in the growing peace movement around the end of the 19th century: Frédéric Passy was co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Henry Dunant was founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Nobel Committee's Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize. In the last decades of the 19th century many chemists had made significant advances in their subject. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the Academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize." The Academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van't Hoff. Van't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.
The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to win. Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the Academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet. The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physicist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then was causing thousands of deaths each year.
During the occupation of Norway, three members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee fled into exile. The remaining members escaped persecution from the Nazis when the Nobel Foundation stated that the Committee building in Oslo was Swedish property. Thus it was a safe haven from the German military, which was not at war with Sweden. These members kept the work of the Committee going but did not award any prizes. In 1944 the Nobel Foundation, together with the three members in exile, made sure that nominations were submitted for the Peace Prize and that the prize could be awarded once again. Although not technically a Nobel Prize, it is identified with the awards; its winners are announced with the Nobel Prize recipients, and the Prize in Economic Sciences is presented at the Swedish Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. The Board of the Nobel Foundation decided that after this addition, it would allow no further new prizes.
In 2008 the Physiology or Medicine Prize was shared among three virologists. French team Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi together shared half the prize for discovering that the virus now known as HIV causes AIDS. Harald zur Hausen shared the prize for his discovery that the human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer. The Chemistry Prize was shared among three biologists; Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien isolated and developed the green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish. The GFP has important applications in many areas of cell biology and biotechnology. Martti Ahtisaari received the Peace Prize "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts." The Physics Prize was awarded to Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio received the Literature Prize and was described as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation." The Economics Prize was awarded to Paul Krugman for his work on international trade and economic geography.
In 2009 the Chemistry Prize was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath, for their work on the structure and function of the ribosome. The Physics Prize was awarded to Charles K. Kao for his research on the transmission of light through optical fibres and to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for inventing a sensor that turns light into electrical signals, which made inventions such as the digital camera possible. Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson were awarded the Economics Prize for "their work in economic governance, especially the commons." Ostrom was the first woman to receive the Economics Prize. The Physiology or Medicine Prize was awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak for their research on telomeres. The Literature Prize was awarded to Herta Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." The President of the United States, Barack Obama, was awarded the Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
Awards for physics, chemistry, and medicine require that the significance of the achievement is "tested by time." In practice, the lag between the discovery and the award is typically 20 or more years. For example, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Physics Prize for his 1930s work on stellar structure and evolution. Not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognised. Some discoveries can never be considered for a prize if their impact is realised after the discoverers have died.
The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm occurs when each Nobel Laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of the King of Sweden. In Oslo, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway. Since 1902, the King of Sweden has presented all the prizes, except the Peace Prize, in Stockholm. At first King Oscar II did not approve of awarding grand prizes to foreigners, but is said to have changed his mind once his attention had been drawn to the publicity value of the prizes for Sweden.
Among the most criticised Nobel Peace Prizes was the one awarded to Henry Kissinger and Lê Ðức Thọ, who later declined the prize. This led to two Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigning. Kissinger and Thọ were awarded the prize for negotiating a ceasefire between North Vietnam and the United States in January 1973. However, when the award was announced hostilities still occurred from both sides. Many critics were of the opinion that Kissinger was not a peace-maker but the opposite; responsible for widening the war.
Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine. According to journalist Caroline Frost many issues, such as the plight of Palestinian refugees, had not been addressed and no lasting peace was established between Israel and Palestine. Immediately after the award was announced one of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members denounced Arafat as a terrorist and resigned. Additional misgivings about Arafat were widely expressed in various newspapers.
The award of the 2004 Literature Prize to Elfriede Jelinek drew a protest from a member of the Swedish Academy, Knut Ahnlund. Ahnlund resigned, alleging that selecting Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art." He alleged that Jelinek's works were "a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure." The 2009 Literature Prize to Herta Müller also generated criticism. According to The Washington Post many US literary critics and professors had never previously heard of her. This made many feel that the prizes were too Eurocentric.
In 1949, the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for his development of the prefrontal leucotomy. The previous year Dr. Walter Freeman had developed a version of the procedure which was faster and easier to carry out. Due in part to the publicity surrounding the original procedure, Freeman's procedure was prescribed without due consideration or regard for modern medical ethics. Endorsed by such influential publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, lobotomy became so popular that about 5,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States in the three years immediately following Moniz's receipt of the Prize.
The Literature Prize also has controversial omissions. Adam Kirsch has suggested that many notable writers have missed out on the award for political or extra-literary reasons. The heavy focus on European and Swedish authors has been a subject of criticism. The Eurocentric nature of the award was acknowledged by Peter Englund, the 2009 Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, as a problem with the award and was attributed to the tendency for the academy to relate more to European authors. Notable writers that have been overlooked for the Literature Prize include; Émile Zola, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, August Strindberg, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Graham Greene and Mark Twain.
The strict rule against awarding a prize to more than three people at once is also controversial. When a prize is awarded to recognise an achievement by a team of more than three collaborators one or more will miss out. For example, in 2002, the prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, an award that did not recognise the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt. Similarly, the prohibition of posthumous awards fails to recognise achievements by an individual or collaborator who dies before the prize is awarded. In 1962, Francis Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin, a key contributor in that discovery, died of ovarian cancer four years earlier.
An example where discovery has been preferred over theory is Albert Einstein's prize. His 1921 Physics prize recognised his discovery of the photoelectric effect rather than his Special Theory of Relativity. Historian Robert Friedman proposes that this may be due to the Nobel Prize Committee's discrimination against theoretical science.
Two organisations have received the Peace Prize multiple times. The International Committee of the Red Cross received it three times: in 1917 and 1944 for its work during the world wars, and in 1963 during the year of its centenary. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has won the Peace Prize twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.
Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates. Gunnar Myrdal received the Economics Prize in 1974 and his wife, Alva Myrdal, received the Peace Prize in 1982. J. J. Thomson was awarded the Physics Prize in 1906 for showing that electrons are particles. His son, George Paget Thomson, received the same prize in 1937 for showing that they also have the properties of waves. William Henry Bragg together with his son, William Lawrence Bragg, shared the Physics Prize in 1915. Niels Bohr won the Physics prize in 1922, and his son, Aage Bohr, won the same prize in 1975. Manne Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1924, was the father of Kai Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1981. Hans von Euler-Chelpin, who received the Chemistry Prize in 1929, was the father of Ulf von Euler, who was awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1970. C.V. Raman won the Physics Prize in 1930 and was the uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who won the same prize in 1983. Arthur Kornberg received the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1959. Kornberg's son, Roger later received the Chemistry Prize in 2006. Jan Tinbergen, who won the first Economics Prize in 1969, was the brother of Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the 1973 Physiology or Medicine Prize. The other is Lê Ðức Thọ, chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize for his role in the Paris Peace Accords. He declined, claiming there was no actual peace in Vietnam.
During the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler hindered Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk from accepting their prizes. All of them were awarded their diplomas and gold medals after World War II. In 1958, Boris Pasternak declined his prize for literature due to fear of what the Soviet Union government would do if he travelled to Stockholm to accept his prize. In return, the Swedish Academy refused his refusal, saying "this refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award."
* Category:Science and engineering awards Category:Organizations based in Sweden Category:Academic awards Category:1895 establishments
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