Jump to content

Nobel Prize

Edit links
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Listen to this article
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MKarl18 (talk | contribs) at 16:57, 3 July 2020. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about the awards established through Alfred Nobel's will. For the memorial prize, see Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. For the unrelated American civil engineering prize, see Alfred Noble Prize.

Nobel Prize
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.
DescriptionOutstanding contributions for humanity in chemistry, literature, peace, physics, and physiology or medicine
Country
  • Sweden (all prizes except the Peace Prize)
  • Norway (Peace Prize only)
Presented by
Reward(s)Prize money of 9 million SEK, approx. US$986,000 (2018);[1]
a medal;[2] and a diploma
First awarded1901; 123 years ago (1901)
Number of laureates597 prizes to 950 laureates (as of 2019)[1]
Websitenobelprize.org

The Nobel Prize (/ˈnoʊbɛl/, NOH-bel; Template:Lang-sv [nʊˈbɛ̂lːˌpriːsɛt]; Template:Lang-no) is a set of annual international awards bestowed in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist Alfred Nobel established the five Nobel prizes in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901.[1][3][4] The prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.[5][6][7]

In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden's central bank, established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The award is based on a donation received by the Nobel Foundation in 1968 from Sveriges Riksbank on the occasion of the bank's 300th anniversary. The first Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969. The Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901.[8] However, as it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is not a Nobel Prize.[9]

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel; the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; the Swedish Academy grants the Nobel Prize in Literature; and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Nobel Peace Prize.

Between 1901 and 2019, the Nobel Prizes (and the Prizes in Economic Sciences, from 1969 on) were awarded 597 times to 950 people and organizations.[1] With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 27 organizations and 908 individuals.[1][10] The prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden (with the exception of the Peace Prize ceremony, which is held in Oslo, Norway). Each recipient (known as a "laureate") receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money that has been decided by the Nobel Foundation. (As of 2020, each prize is worth 9,000,000 SEK, or about US$935,366 (equivalent to $1,101,222.9774978 in 2023), €848,678, or £716,224.[11]) Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23-carat gold, and later in 18-carat green gold plated with a 24-carat gold coating.

The prize is not awarded posthumously; however, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, the prize may still be presented.[12] A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people.[13]

History

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.
Alfred Nobel had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, which was titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper.

Alfred Nobel (listenⓘ) was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.[14] He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.[15]

In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. It was Alfred's brother Ludvig who had died; the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will.[16] On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 63 years old.[17]

Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895.[18][19] To widespread astonishment, Nobel's last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.[20] Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million, €150 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes.[21][22] Owing to skepticism surrounding the will, it was not approved by the Storting in Norway until 26 April 1897.[23] The executors of the will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of the fortune and to organise the awarding of prizes.[24]

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 organizations were designated. These were Karolinska Institute on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June.[25] 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.[20] In 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved.

Nobel Foundation

Formation of Foundation

Main article: Nobel Foundation
A paper with stylish handwriting on it with the title "Testament"
Alfred Nobel's will stated that 94% of his total assets should be used to establish the Nobel Prizes.

According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity. The Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobel's personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed from the shares 94% of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize.[citation needed]

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organization on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.[26] In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Robert and Ludvig Nobel were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan, and according to Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archive, it was this "decision to allow withdrawal of Alfred's money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established".[27] 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.[28][29] 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).[30] 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).[31]

According to the statutes, the Foundation consists of a board of five Swedish or Norwegian citizens, with its seat in Stockholm. The Chairman of the Board is 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.[31]

Foundation capital and cost

The capital of the Nobel Foundation today is invested 50% in shares, 20% bonds and 30% other investments (e.g. hedge funds or real estate). The distribution can vary by 10 percent.[32] At the beginning of 2008, 64% of the funds were invested mainly in American and European stocks, 20% in bonds, plus 12% in real estate and hedge funds.[33]

In 2011, the total annual cost was approximately 120 million krona, with 50 million krona as the prize money. Further costs to pay institutions and persons engaged in giving the prizes were 27.4 million krona. The events during the Nobel week in Stockholm and Oslo cost 20.2 million krona. The administration, Nobel symposium, and similar items had costs of 22.4 million krona. The cost of the Economic Sciences prize of 16.5 Million krona is paid by the Sveriges Riksbank.[32]

First prizes

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.
Wilhelm Röntgen received the first Physics Prize for his discovery of X-rays.

Once the Nobel Foundation and its guidelines were in place, the Nobel Committees began collecting nominations for the inaugural prizes. Subsequently, they sent a list of preliminary candidates to the prize-awarding institutions.

The Nobel Committee's Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize.[34][35] In the last decades of the 19th century, many chemists had made significant contributions. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the Academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize".[36] The Academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van 't Hoff.[37] Van 't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.[38][39]

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 be awarded.[40] Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticized 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.[41] The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist 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.[42][43]

The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention, and jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization.

Second World War

In 1938 and 1939, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich forbade three laureates from Germany (Richard Kuhn, Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk) from accepting their prizes.[44] Each man was later able to receive the diploma and medal.[45] Even though Sweden was officially neutral during the Second World War, the prizes were awarded irregularly. In 1939, the Peace Prize was not awarded. No prize was awarded in any category from 1940 to 1942, due to the occupation of Norway by Germany. In the subsequent year, all prizes were awarded except those for literature and peace.[46]

During the occupation of Norway, three members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee fled into exile. The remaining members escaped persecution from the Germans 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.[47] 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.[44]

Prize in Economic Sciences

Main article: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
Map of Nobel laureates by country

In 1968, Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank celebrated its 300th anniversary by donating a large sum of money to the Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a prize in honor of Alfred Nobel. The following year, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded for the first time. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences became responsible for selecting laureates. The first laureates for the Economics Prize were Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes".[48][49] The Board of the Nobel Foundation decided that after this addition, it would allow no further new prizes.[50]

Award process

The award process is similar for all of the Nobel Prizes, the main difference being who can make nominations for each of them.[51]

The announcement of the laureates in Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 by Gunnar Öquist, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
2009 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement by Peter Englund in Swedish, English, and German

Nominations

Nomination forms are sent by the Nobel Committee to about 3,000 individuals, usually in September the year before the prizes are awarded. These individuals are generally prominent academics working in a relevant area. Regarding the Peace Prize, inquiries are also sent to governments, former Peace Prize laureates, and current or former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The deadline for the return of the nomination forms is 31 January of the year of the award.[51][52] The Nobel Committee nominates about 300 potential laureates from these forms and additional names.[53] The nominees are not publicly named, nor are they told that they are being considered for the prize. All nomination records for a prize are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of the prize.[54][55]

Selection

The Nobel Committee then prepares a report reflecting the advice of experts in the relevant fields. This, along with the list of preliminary candidates, is submitted to the prize-awarding institutions.[56] The institutions meet to choose the laureate or laureates in each field by a majority vote. Their decision, which cannot be appealed, is announced immediately after the vote.[57] A maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected per award. Except for the Peace Prize, which can be awarded to institutions, the awards can only be given to individuals.[58]

Posthumous nominations

Although posthumous nominations are not presently permitted, individuals who died in the months between their nomination and the decision of the prize committee were originally eligible to receive the prize. This has occurred twice: the 1931 Literature Prize awarded to Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and the 1961 Peace Prize awarded to UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. Since 1974, laureates must be thought alive at the time of the October announcement. There has been one laureate, William Vickrey, who in 1996 died after the prize (in Economics) was announced but before it could be presented.[59] On 3 October 2011, the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were announced; however, the committee was not aware that one of the laureates, Ralph M. Steinman, had died three days earlier. The committee was debating about Steinman's prize since the rule is that the prize is not awarded posthumously.[12] The committee later decided that as the decision to award Steinman the prize "was made in good faith", it would remain unchanged.[60]

Recognition time lag

Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the awards usually recognised recent discoveries.[61] However, some of those early discoveries were later discredited. For example, Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused cancer.[62] To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the awards increasingly recognized scientific discoveries that had withstood the test of time.[63][64][65] According to Ralf Pettersson, former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine, "the criterion 'the previous year' is interpreted by the Nobel Assembly as the year when the full impact of the discovery has become evident."[64]

A room with pictures on the walls. In the middle of the room there is a wooden table with chairs around it.
The committee room of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

The interval between the award and the accomplishment it recognises varies from discipline to discipline. The Literature Prize is typically awarded to recognise a cumulative lifetime body of work rather than a single achievement.[66][67] The Peace Prize can also be awarded for a lifetime body of work. For example, 2008 laureate Martti Ahtisaari was awarded for his work to resolve international conflicts.[68][69] However, they can also be awarded for specific recent events.[70] For instance, Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations.[71] Similarly Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres received the 1994 award, about a year after they successfully concluded the Oslo Accords.[72]

Awards for physics, chemistry, and medicine are typically awarded once the achievement has been widely accepted. Sometimes, this takes decades – for example, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Physics Prize for his 1930s work on stellar structure and evolution.[73][74] 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.[75][76][77]

Award ceremonies

Two men standing on a stage. The man to the left is clapping his hands and looking towards the other man. The second man is smiling and showing two items to an audience not seen on the image. The items are a diploma which includes a painting and a box containing a gold medal. Behind them is a blue pillar clad in flowers.
A man in his fifties standing behind a desk with computers on it. On the desk is a sign reading "Kungl. Vetensk. Akad. Sigil".
Left: Barack Obama after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall from the hands of Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland in 2009; Right: Giovanni Jona-Lasinio presenting Yoichiro Nambu's Nobel Lecture at Aula Magna, Stockholm in 2008

Except for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Prizes are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, at the annual Prize Award Ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The recipients' lectures are normally held in the days prior to the award ceremony. The Peace Prize and its recipients' lectures are presented at the annual Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, usually on 10 December. The award ceremonies and the associated banquets are typically major international events.[78][79] The Prizes awarded in Sweden's ceremonies' are held at the Stockholm Concert Hall, with the Nobel banquet following immediately at Stockholm City Hall. The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony has been held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (1905–1946), at the auditorium of the University of Oslo (1947–1989), and at Oslo City Hall (1990–present).[80]

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.[79][81] At first, King Oscar II did not approve of awarding grand prizes to foreigners. It is said [by whom?] that he changed his mind once his attention had been drawn to the publicity value of the prizes for Sweden.[82]

Nobel Banquet

Main article: Nobel Banquet
A set table with a white table cloth. There are many plates and glasses plus a menu visible on the table.
Table at the 2005 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm

After the award ceremony in Sweden, a banquet is held in the Blue Hall at the Stockholm City Hall, which is attended by the Swedish Royal Family and around 1,300 guests. The Nobel Peace Prize banquet is held in Norway at the Oslo Grand Hotel after the award ceremony. Apart from the laureate, guests include the President of the Storting, on occasion the Swedish prime minister, and, since 2006, the King and Queen of Norway. In total, about 250 guests attend.

Nobel lecture

According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, each laureate is required to give a public lecture on a subject related to the topic of their prize.[83] The Nobel lecture as a rhetorical genre took decades to reach its current format.[84] These lectures normally occur during Nobel Week (the week leading up to the award ceremony and banquet, which begins with the laureates arriving in Stockholm and normally ends with the Nobel banquet), but this is not mandatory. The laureate is only obliged to give the lecture within six months of receiving the prize, but some have happened even later. For example, US President Theodore Roosevelt received the Peace Prize in 1906 but gave his lecture in 1910, after his term in office.[85] The lectures are organized by the same association which selected the laureates.[86]

Prizes

Medals

The Nobel Foundation announced on 30 May 2012 that it had awarded the contract for the production of the five (Swedish) Nobel Prize medals to Svenska Medalj AB. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were minted by Myntverket (the Swedish Mint), Sweden's oldest company, which ceased operations in 2011 after 107 years. In 2011, the Mint of Norway, located in Kongsberg, made the medals. The Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation.[87]

Each medal features an image of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse. The medals for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature have identical obverses, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death. Nobel's portrait also appears on the obverse of the Peace Prize medal and the medal for the Economics Prize, but with a slightly different design. For instance, the laureate's name is engraved on the rim of the Economics medal.[88] The image on the reverse of a medal varies according to the institution awarding the prize. The reverse sides of the medals for chemistry and physics share the same design.[89]

A heavily decorated paper with the name "Fritz Haber" on it.
Laureates receive a heavily decorated diploma together with a gold medal and the prize money. Here Fritz Haber's diploma is shown, which he received for the development of a method to synthesise ammonia.

All medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold. Since then, they have been struck in 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold. The weight of each medal varies with the value of gold, but averages about 175 grams (0.386 lb) for each medal. The diameter is 66 millimetres (2.6 in) and the thickness varies between 5.2 millimetres (0.20 in) and 2.4 millimetres (0.094 in).[90] Because of the high value of their gold content and tendency to be on public display, Nobel medals are subject to medal theft.[91][92][93] During World War II, the medals of German scientists Max von Laue and James Franck were sent to Copenhagen for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark, Hungarian chemist (and Nobel laureate himself) George de Hevesy dissolved them in aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), to prevent confiscation by Nazi Germany and to prevent legal problems for the holders. After the war, the gold was recovered from solution, and the medals re-cast.[94]

Diplomas

Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the hands of the King of Sweden, or in the case of the peace prize, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Each diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureates that receive them.[88] The diploma contains a picture and text in Swedish which states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. None of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates has ever had a citation on their diplomas.[95][96]

Award money

The laureates are given a sum of money when they receive their prizes, in the form of a document confirming the amount awarded.[88] The amount of prize money depends upon how much money the Nobel Foundation can award each year. The purse has increased since the 1980s, when the prize money was 880,000 SEK per prize (c. 2.6 million SEK altogether, US$350,000 today). In 2009, the monetary award was 10 million SEK (US$1.4 million).[97][98] In June 2012, it was lowered to 8 million SEK.[99] If two laureates share the prize in a category, the award grant is divided equally between the recipients. If there are three, the awarding committee has the option of dividing the grant equally, or awarding one-half to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the others.[100][101][102] It is common for recipients to donate prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes.[103][104]

Controversies and criticisms

Main article: Nobel Prize controversies

Controversial recipients

When it was announced that Henry Kissinger was to be awarded the Peace Prize, two of the Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest.

Among other criticisms, the Nobel Committees have been accused of having a political agenda, and of omitting more deserving candidates. They have also been accused of Eurocentrism, especially for the Literature Prize.[105][106][107]

Peace Prize

Among the most criticized Nobel Peace Prizes was the one awarded to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ. This led to the resignation of two Norwegian Nobel Committee members.[108] 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, both sides were still engaging in hostilities.[109] Critics sympathetic to the North announced that Kissinger was not a peace-maker but the opposite, responsible for widening the war. Those hostile to the North and what they considered its deceptive practices during negotiations were deprived of a chance to criticise Lê Đức Thọ, as he declined the award.[54][110]

Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine.[54][111] Immediately after the award was announced, one of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members denounced Arafat as a terrorist and resigned.[112] Additional misgivings about Arafat were widely expressed in various newspapers.[113]

Another controversial Peace Prize was that awarded to Barack Obama in 2009.[114] Nominations had closed only eleven days after Obama took office as President of the United States, but the actual evaluation occurred over the next eight months.[115] Obama himself stated that he did not feel deserving of the award, or worthy of the company in which it would place him.[116][117] Past Peace Prize laureates were divided, some saying that Obama deserved the award, and others saying he had not secured the achievements to yet merit such an accolade. Obama's award, along with the previous Peace Prizes for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, also prompted accusations of a left-wing bias.[118]

Literature Prize

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 the selection of 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".[119][120] The 2009 Literature Prize to Herta Müller also generated criticism. According to The Washington Post, many US literary critics and professors were ignorant of her work.[121] This made those critics feel the prizes were too Eurocentric.[122]

Science prizes

In 1949, the 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, leucotomy or "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.[123][124]

Overlooked achievements

The Norwegian Nobel Committee declined to award a prize in 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate."

The Norwegian Nobel Committee confirmed that Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Peace Prize in 1937–39, 1947 and, a few days before he was assassinated in January 1948.[125] Later, members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee expressed regret that he was not given the prize.[126] Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006, said, "The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize. Whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question".[127] In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate" that year.[126][128] Later, when the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".[129] Other high-profile individuals with widely recognised contributions to peace have been missed out. Foreign Policy lists Eleanor Roosevelt, Václav Havel, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sari Nusseibeh, and Corazon Aquino as people who "never won the prize, but should have".[130]

In 1965, UN Secretary-General U Thant was informed by the Norwegian Permanent Representative to the UN that he would be awarded that year's prize and asked whether or not he would accept. He consulted staff and later replied that he would. At the same time, Chairman Gunnar Jahn of the Nobel Peace prize committee, lobbied heavily against giving U Thant the prize and the prize was at the last minute awarded to UNICEF. The rest of the committee all wanted the prize to go to U Thant, for his work in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending the war in the Congo, and his ongoing work to mediate an end to the Vietnam War. The disagreement lasted three years and in 1966 and 1967 no prize was given, with Gunnar Jahn effectively vetoing an award to U Thant.[131][132]

James Joyce, one of the controversial omissions of the Literature 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.[133][134] 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.[135] This tendency towards European authors still leaves some European writers on a list of notable writers that have been overlooked for the Literature Prize, including Europe's Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, J. R. R. Tolkien, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, August Strindberg, Simon Vestdijk, Karel Čapek, the New World's Jorge Luis Borges, Ezra Pound, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, and Africa's Chinua Achebe.[136]

Candidates can receive multiple nominations the same year. Gaston Ramon received a total of 155[137] nominations in physiology or medicine from 1930 to 1953, the last year with public nomination data for that award as of 2016. He died in 1963 without being awarded. Pierre Paul Émile Roux received 115[138] nominations in physiology or medicine, and Arnold Sommerfeld received 84[139] in physics. These are the three most nominated scientists without awards in the data published as of 2016.[140] Otto Stern received 79[141] nominations in physics 1925–43 before being awarded in 1943.[142]

The strict rule against awarding a prize to more than three people is also controversial.[143] 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.[144][145] According to one of the nominees for the prize in physics, the three person limit deprived him and two other members of his team of the honor in 2013: the team of Carl Hagen, Gerald Guralnik, and Tom Kibble published a paper in 1964 that gave answers to how the cosmos began, but did not share the 2013 Physics Prize awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert, who had also published papers in 1964 concerning the subject. All five physicists arrived at the same conclusion, albeit from different angles. Hagen contends that an equitable solution is to either abandon the three limit restriction, or expand the time period of recognition for a given achievement to two years.[146]

Similarly, the prohibition of posthumous awards fails to recognise achievements by an individual or collaborator who dies before the prize is awarded. The Economics Prize was not awarded to Fischer Black, who died in 1995, when his co-author Myron Scholes received the honor in 1997 for their landmark work on option pricing along with Robert C. Merton, another pioneer in the development of valuation of stock options. In the announcement of the award that year, the Nobel committee prominently mentioned Black's key role.

Political subterfuge may also deny proper recognition. Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, who co-discovered nuclear fission along with Otto Hahn, may have been denied a share of Hahn's 1944 Nobel Chemistry Award due to having fled Germany when the Nazis came to power.[147] The Meitner and Strassmann roles in the research was not fully recognised until years later, when they joined Hahn in receiving the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award.

Emphasis on discoveries over inventions

Alfred Nobel left his fortune to finance annual prizes to be awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind".[148] He stated that the Nobel Prizes in Physics should be given "to the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics". Nobel did not emphasise discoveries, but they have historically been held in higher respect by the Nobel Prize Committee than inventions: 77% of the Physics Prizes have been given to discoveries, compared with only 23% to inventions. Christoph Bartneck and Matthias Rauterberg, in papers published in Nature and Technoetic Arts, have argued this emphasis on discoveries has moved the Nobel Prize away from its original intention of rewarding the greatest contribution to society.[149][150]

Gender disparity

See also: List of female Nobel laureates

In terms of the most prestigious awards in STEM fields, only a small proportion have been awarded to women. Out of 210 laureates in Physics, 181 in Chemistry and 216 in Medicine between 1901 and 2018, there were only three female laureates in physics, five in chemistry and 12 in medicine.[151][152][153][154] Factors proposed to contribute to the discrepancy between this and the roughly equal human sex ratio include biased nominations, fewer women than men being active in the relevant fields, Nobel Prizes typically being awarded decades after the research was done (reflecting a time when gender bias in the relevant fields was greater), a greater delay in awarding Nobel Prizes for women's achievements making longevity a more important factor for women (Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously), and a tendency to omit women from jointly awarded Nobel Prizes.[155][156][157][158][159][160] Despite these factors, Marie Curie is to date the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (Physics in 1903, Chemistry in 1911); she is one of only three people who have received two Nobel Prizes in sciences (see Multiple laureates below).

Specially distinguished laureates

Multiple laureates

A black and white portrait of a woman in profile.
Marie Curie, one of four people who have received the Nobel Prize twice (Physics and Chemistry)

Four people have received two Nobel Prizes. Marie Curie received the Physics Prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for the isolation of pure radium,[161] making her the only person to be awarded a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. Linus Pauling was awarded the 1954 Chemistry Prize for his research into the chemical bond and its application to the structure of complex substances. Pauling was also awarded the Peace Prize in 1962 for his activism against nuclear weapons, making him the only laureate of two unshared prizes. John Bardeen received the Physics Prize twice: in 1956 for the invention of the transistor and in 1972 for the theory of superconductivity.[162] Frederick Sanger received the prize twice in Chemistry: in 1958 for determining the structure of the insulin molecule and in 1980 for inventing a method of determining base sequences in DNA.[163][164]

Two organizations 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.[165][166][167] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Peace Prize twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.[168]

Family laureates

The Curie family has received the most prizes, with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates. Marie Curie received the prizes in Physics (in 1903) and Chemistry (in 1911). Her husband, Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 Physics prize with her.[169] Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In addition, the husband of Marie Curie's second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on that organisation's behalf.[170]

Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates. The husband-and-wife team of Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori shared the 1947 Prize in Physiology or Medicine[171] as did the husband-and-wife team of May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser in 2014 (along with John O'Keefe).[172] 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.[173] William Henry Bragg and his son, William Lawrence Bragg, shared the Physics Prize in 1915 for inventing the X-ray crystallography.[174] Niels Bohr was awarded the Physics prize in 1922, as was his son, Aage Bohr, in 1975.[170][175] Manne Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1924, was the father of Kai Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1981.[170][176] 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.[170] C. V. Raman was awarded the Physics Prize in 1930 and was the uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was awarded the same prize in 1983.[177][178] Arthur Kornberg received the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1959; Kornberg's son, Roger later received the Chemistry Prize in 2006.[179] Jan Tinbergen, who was awarded the first Economics Prize in 1969, was the brother of Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the 1973 Physiology or Medicine Prize.[170] Alva Myrdal, Peace Prize laureate in 1982, was the wife of Gunnar Myrdal who was awarded the Economics Prize in 1974.[170] Economics laureates Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow were brothers-in-law. Frits Zernike, who was awarded the 1953 Physics Prize, is the great-uncle of 1999 Physics laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[180] In 2019, married couple Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.[181]

Refusals and constraints

A black and white portrait of a man in a suit and tie. Half of his face is in a shadow.
Richard Kuhn, who was forced to decline his Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Two laureates have voluntarily declined the Nobel Prize. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Literature Prize but refused, stating, "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form."[182] Lê Đức Thọ, chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize for his role in the Paris Peace Accords, declined, stating that there was no actual peace in Vietnam.[183] George Bernard Shaw attempted to decline the prize money while accepting the 1925 Literature Prize; eventually it was agreed to use it to found the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.[184]

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 might 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."[183] The Academy announced with regret that the presentation of the Literature Prize could not take place that year, holding it back until 1989 when Pasternak's son accepted the prize on his behalf.[185][186]

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but her children accepted the prize because she had been placed under house arrest in Burma; Suu Kyi delivered her speech two decades later, in 2012.[187] Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while he and his wife were under house arrest in China as political prisoners, and he was unable to accept the prize in his lifetime.

Cultural impact

Being a symbol of scientific or literary achievement that is recognisable worldwide, the Nobel Prize is often depicted in fiction. This includes films like The Prize and Nobel Son about fictional Nobel laureates as well as fictionalised accounts of stories surrounding real prizes such as Nobel Chor, a film based on the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's prize.[188][189]

The memorial symbol "Planet of Alfred Nobel" was opened in Dnipropetrovsk University of Economics and Law in 2008. On the globe, there are 802 Nobel laureates' reliefs made of a composite alloy obtained when disposing of military strategic missiles.[190][191]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e "Nobel Prize facts". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  2. ^ sold for up to US$4.76 million (see Palermo, Elizabeth. Nobel Prize Medal Fetches Record-Breaking $4.76 Million Live Science, December 5, 2014.)
  3. ^ "Nobel Prizes and Laureates". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  4. ^ "Which country has the best brains?". BBC News. 8 October 2010. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
  5. ^ "Top Award, ShanghaiRanking Academic Excellence Survey 2018". Shanghai Ranking. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  6. ^ "IREG List of International Academic Awards" (PDF). IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 March 2019.
  7. ^ Shalev, p. 8
  8. ^ "The Noble Prize - Did You Know?". Nobel Prize. Retrieved 31 July 2019. The Noble Prize - Did You Know?
  9. ^ "Not a Nobel Prize". Nomination and selection of Laureates in Economic Sciences. Stockholm: The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  10. ^ "All Nobel Prizes". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  11. ^ "Nobel Prize amount is raised by SEK 1 million". Nobel Foundation.
  12. ^ a b "Montreal-born doctor gets posthumous Nobel honour". CBC News. 3 October 2011. Retrieved 3 October 2011.
  13. ^ Schmidhuber, Jürgen (2010). "Evolution of National Nobel Prize Shares in the 20th century".
  14. ^ Levinovitz, p. 5
  15. ^ Levinovitz, p. 11
  16. ^ Golden, Frederic (16 October 2000). "The Worst And The Brightest". Time. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  17. ^ Sohlman, p. 13
  18. ^ Sohlman, p. 7
  19. ^ von Euler, U. S. (6 June 1981). "The Nobel Foundation and its Role for Modern Day Science". Die Naturwissenschaften. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2011. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  20. ^ a b "Full text of Alfred Nobel's Will". Nobel Foundation.
  21. ^ Abrams, p. 7
  22. ^ "The Nobel Prize Amounts". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 7 December 2015.
  23. ^ Levinovitz, pp. 13–25
  24. ^ Abrams, pp. 7–8
  25. ^ Crawford, p. 1
  26. ^ Levinovitz, p. 14
  27. ^ "Nobel Prize Funded from Baku". Azerbaijan International. 30 April 1996. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  28. ^ Levinovitz, p. 15
  29. ^ Feldman, p. 16
  30. ^ Levinovitz, pp. 17–18
  31. ^ a b Levinovitz, pp. 15–17
  32. ^ a b Sjöholm/Tt, Gustav (2 December 2012). "Rabatter räddar Nobelfesten" [Discounts Save the Nobel Party]. Dagens Nyheter (in Norwegian). Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  33. ^ "Nobel-Stiftung: Noble Sorgen" [Nobel Foundation: Noble Worries]. Handelsblatt (in German). Archived from the original on 4 July 2009. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  34. ^ Feldman, p. 134
  35. ^ Leroy, pp. 117–118
  36. ^ Levinovitz, p. 77
  37. ^ Crawford, p. 118
  38. ^ Levinovitz, p. 81
  39. ^ Feldman, p. 205
  40. ^ Levinovitz, p. 144
  41. ^ Feldman, p. 69
  42. ^ Feldman, pp. 242–244
  43. ^ Leroy, p. 233
  44. ^ a b Levinovitz, p. 23
  45. ^ Wilhelm, p. 85
  46. ^ "All Nobel Laureates". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  47. ^ Abrams, p. 23
  48. ^ Feldman, p. 343
  49. ^ Levinovitz, p. 207
  50. ^ Levinovitz, p. 20
  51. ^ a b Feldman, pp. 16–17
  52. ^ Levinovitz, p. 26
  53. ^ Abrams, p. 15
  54. ^ a b c Feldman, p. 315
  55. ^ "Nomination Facts". Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 9 January 2010. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  56. ^ Feldman, p. 52
  57. ^ Levinovitz, pp. 25–28
  58. ^ Abrams, p. 8
  59. ^ Abrams, p. 9
  60. ^ "Ralph Steinman Remains Nobel Laureate". The Nobel Foundation. 3 October 2011. Retrieved 8 October 2012.
  61. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature". Nobel Foundation. 3 December 1999. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
  62. ^ Levinovitz, p. 125
  63. ^ Abrams, p. 25
  64. ^ a b Breithaupt, Holger (2001). "The Nobel Prizes in the new century: An interview with Ralf Pettersson, Director of the Stockholm Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the Karolinska Institute, and former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology/Medicine". EMBO Reports. 2 (2): 83–5. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve034. PMC 1083830. PMID 11258715.
  65. ^ "Nobel Prize in Physics Honors "Masters of Light"". Scienceline. 7 October 2009. Retrieved 19 February 2010.
  66. ^ "All Nobel Laureates in Literature". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  67. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  68. ^ "Peace 2008". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  69. ^ Bryant, Lisa (10 October 2008). "Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize". Voice of America. International Broadcasting Bureau. Archived from the original on 17 November 2008. Retrieved 27 December 2008.
  70. ^ "All Nobel Peace Prize Laureates". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  71. ^ Abrams, p. 330
  72. ^ Abrams, p. 27
  73. ^ Vishveshwara, S. (25 April 2000). "Leaves from an unwritten diary: S. Chandrasekhar, Reminiscences and Reflections" (PDF). Current Science. 78 (8): 1025–1033. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 February 2008. Retrieved 27 February 2008.
  74. ^ "Subramanyan Chandrasekhar – Autobiography". The Nobel Foundation. 1983. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  75. ^ "Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott's Contribution to Dynamic Macroeconomics" (PDF). Nobel Foundation. 11 October 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 June 2009. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  76. ^ Gingras, Yves; Wallace, Matthew L. (2010). "Why it has become more difficult to predict Nobel Prize winners: a bibliometric analysis of nominees and winners of the chemistry and physics prizes (1901–2007)". Scientometrics. 82 (2): 401. arXiv:0808.2517. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.604.9844. doi:10.1007/s11192-009-0035-9.
  77. ^ Editorial (2009). "Access : A nobel prize : Nature Chemistry". Nature Chemistry. 1 (7): 509. Bibcode:2009NatCh...1..509.. doi:10.1038/nchem.372. PMID 21378920.
  78. ^ "2009 Nobel Prize award ceremony live online | IT | ICM Commercial & Business News". Institute of Commercial Management. 10 December 2009. Archived from the original on 9 February 2010. Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  79. ^ a b "Pomp aplenty as winners gather for Nobel gala". The Local. 10 December 2009. Archived from the original on 15 December 2009. Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  80. ^ Levinovitz, pp. 21–23
  81. ^ Froman, Ingmarie (4 December 2007). "The Nobel Week — a celebration of science". Swedish Institute. Archived from the original on 14 October 2009. Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  82. ^ "Alfred Nobel's last will and testament". The Local. 5 December 2009. Archived from the original on 9 October 2009. Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  83. ^ "The Nobel Foundation - Statutes". The Nobel Foundation.
  84. ^ Philippe-Joseph Salazar,"Nobel Rhetoric, Or Petrarch's Pendulum", in the journal Rhetoric and Philosophy 42(4), 373–400, 2009 ISSN 0031-8213
  85. ^ Abrams, pp. 18–19
  86. ^ Lea, Richard (8 December 2008). "Le Clézio uses Nobel lecture to attack information poverty". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
  87. ^ "Medalj – ett traditionellt hantverk" [Medals: A traditional Craft]. Myntverket (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 18 December 2007. Retrieved 15 December 2007.
  88. ^ a b c Feldman, p. 2
  89. ^ "Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Front and back images of the medal. 1954", "Source: Photo by Eric Arnold. Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. Honors and Awards, 1954h2.1", "All Documents and Media: Pictures and Illustrations", Linus Pauling and The Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History, the Valley Library, Oregon State University. Retrieved 7 December 2007.
  90. ^ Lemmel, Birgitta. "The Nobel Prize Medals and the Medal for the Prize in Economics". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  91. ^ "Nobel Prize medal stolen from Lawrence Hall of Science is found, student arrested" (Press release). University of California. Archived from the original on 11 January 2009. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  92. ^ Kumar, Hari (26 March 2004). "Poet's Nobel Medal Stolen". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  93. ^ "Police hand back Tutu's stolen Nobel medal". Reuters. 16 June 2007. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  94. ^ Feldman, p. 397
  95. ^ Abrams, p. 18
  96. ^ Lemmel, Birgitta (2009). "The Nobel Prize Diplomas". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2010.
  97. ^ "Prize Amount and Market Value" (PDF). Nobel Foundation. 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  98. ^ "Video – Breaking News Videos from CNN.com". CNN. 11 October 2009. Archived from the original on 31 August 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  99. ^ "Committee lowers Nobel Prize by 2 million kronor". The Local. 11 June 2012. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  100. ^ Abrams, pp. 8–10
  101. ^ Sample, Ian (5 October 2009). "Nobel prize for medicine shared by scientists for work on ageing and cancer". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  102. ^ Sample, Ian (7 October 2008). "Three share Nobel prize for physics". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
  103. ^ Locke, Michelle. "Berkeley Nobel laureates donate prize money to charity" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
  104. ^ Pederson, T. (2006). "Reflections on the prize of prizes: Alfred Nobel". The FASEB Journal. 20 (13): 2186–9. doi:10.1096/fj.06-1102ufm. PMID 17077294.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  105. ^ Abrams, p. xiv
  106. ^ Feldman, p. 65
  107. ^ Tuohy, William (20 September 1981). "Literature Award Hardest for Nobel Prize Panel". Sarasota Herald Tribune. p. 58. Retrieved 9 March 2010.
  108. ^ de Sousa, Ana Naomi (9 October 2009). "Top ten Nobel Prize rows". The Times. London. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  109. ^ Abrams, p. 219
  110. ^ Abrams, p. 315
  111. ^ Levinovitz, p. 183
  112. ^ Feldman, pp. 15–16
  113. ^ Abrams, pp. 302–306
  114. ^ Erlanger, Steven; Stolberg, Sheryl Gay (9 October 2009). "Surprise Nobel for Obama Stirs Praise and Doubts". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  115. ^ Philp, Catherine (10 October 2009). "How the Nobel Peace Prize winner is decided". The Times. London. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  116. ^ "Obama is surprise winner of Nobel Peace Prize". Reuters. 9 October 2009. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
  117. ^ "Remarks by the President on winning the Nobel Peace Prize". The White House. 9 October 2009. Archived from the original on 14 October 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  118. ^ Naughton, Philippe (9 October 2009). "President Obama humbled: I do not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize". The Times. London. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  119. ^ "Who deserves Nobel prize? Judges don't agree". Today. Associated Press. 11 October 2005. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  120. ^ "Nobel judge steps down in protest". BBC News. 11 October 2005. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  121. ^ Jordan, Mary (9 October 2009). "Author's Nobel Stirs Shock-and-'Bah'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  122. ^ "NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: Herta Muller". The Huffington Post. 8 October 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
  123. ^ Feldman, pp. 286–289
  124. ^ Day, Elizabeth (12 January 2008). "He was bad, so they put an ice pick in his brain..." The Guardian. London. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
  125. ^ Levinovitz, pp. 181–186
  126. ^ a b Tønnesson, Øyvind (1 December 1999). "Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
  127. ^ Relevance of Gandhian Philosophy in the 21st century. icrs.ugm.ac.id
  128. ^ Abrams, pp. 147–148
  129. ^ Aarvik, Egil. "The Nobel Prize in Peace 1989 – Presentation Speech". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
  130. ^ Kenner, David (7 October 2009). "Nobel Peace Prize Also-Rans". Foreign Policy. pp. 1–7. Archived from the original on 25 January 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  131. ^ "The Nobel Peace Prize 1901–2000". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
  132. ^ Nassif, Rames (31 December 1988). U Thant in New York: A Portrait of the Third Secretary-General of the United Nations. Hurst. ISBN 978-1850650454.
  133. ^ Kirsch, Adam (3 October 2008). "The Nobel Committee has no clue about American literature". Slate. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
  134. ^ Fristorp, Mimmi (8 October 2008). "Akademien väljer helst en europé". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 18 February 2010. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  135. ^ "Judge: Nobel literature prizes 'too Eurocentric'". The Guardian. London. 6 October 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  136. ^ Feldman, pp. 56–57
  137. ^ "Nomination Database: Gaston Ramon". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  138. ^ "Nomination Database: Emile P Roux". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  139. ^ "Nomination Database: Arnold Sommerfeld". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  140. ^ Butler, Declan (11 October 2016). "Close but no Nobel: the scientists who never won". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.20781. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  141. ^ "Nomination Database: Otto Stern". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  142. ^ Crawford, Elisabeth (November 2001). "Nobel population 1901–50: anatomy of a scientific elite". Physics World. Archived from the original on 3 February 2006.
  143. ^ Levinovitz, p. 61
  144. ^ Spinney, Laura (4 December 2001). "News Analysis: Nobel Prize Controversy". The Scientist. Retrieved 28 October 2006.
  145. ^ Dawidoff, Nicholas (25 April 2009). "The Civil Heretic". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  146. ^ Goodman, James. "UR prof disappointed in Nobel Prize decision". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, New York. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  147. ^ Crawford, Elisabeth; et al. (1997). "A Nobel Tale of Postwar Injustice". Physics Today. 50 (9): 26–32. Bibcode:1997PhT....50i..26C. doi:10.1063/1.881933.
  148. ^ Excerpt from the Will of Alfred Nobel. nobelprize.org
  149. ^ Bartneck, Christoph; Rauterberg, Matthias (9 August 2007). "Physics Nobels should favour inventions". Nature. 448 (7154): 644. Bibcode:2007Natur.448..644B. doi:10.1038/448644c. PMID 17687300.
  150. ^ Bartneck, Christoph; Rauterberg, Matthias (2008). "The asymmetry between discoveries and inventions in the Nobel Prize in Physics" (PDF). Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research. 6: 73. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.145.8130. doi:10.1386/tear.6.1.73_1.
  151. ^ Nobel Prize Facts, Nobel Foundation, 2014. (accessed 29 October 2014)
  152. ^ A Complex Formula: Girls and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Asia (PDF). Paris: UNESCO. 2015. p. 23. ISBN 978-92-9223-492-8.
  153. ^ Nobel Prize in Chemistry Nobel Foundation 2018 (accessed 3 October 2018)
  154. ^ Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Nobel Foundation 2018. (accessed 3 October 2018)
  155. ^ "Nobel Prizes still struggle with wide gender disparity". CBC News. Associated Press. 1 October 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  156. ^ Feeney, Mary K. "Why more women don't win science Nobels". The Conversation. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  157. ^ Rathi, Akshat; Rathi, Akshat. "The Nobel Prize committee explains why women win so few prizes". Quartz. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  158. ^ Devlin, Hannah (6 October 2017). "Why don't women win Nobel science prizes?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  159. ^ Rose, Hilary (1994). Love, Power, and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences. Indiana University Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0253209078.
  160. ^ Siegel, Ethan (18 October 2018). "These 5 Women Deserved, And Were Unjustly Denied, A Nobel Prize In Physics". Medium. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  161. ^ "Marie Curie voted greatest female scientist". The Daily Telegraph. London. 2 July 2009. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
  162. ^ Feldman, p. 180
  163. ^ Shalev, p. 78
  164. ^ Feldman, p. 222
  165. ^ Abrams, p. 84
  166. ^ Abrams, p. 149
  167. ^ Abrams, pp. 199–200
  168. ^ Feldman, p. 313
  169. ^ "Marie Curie (1867–1934)". BBC News. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  170. ^ a b c d e f Feldman, p. 405
  171. ^ Grinstein, Louise S.; Biermann, Carol A.; Rose, Rose K. (1997). Women in the Biological Sciences: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 108–110. ISBN 978-0-313-29180-7. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
  172. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014". Nobel Fondation. Retrieved 28 January 2015.
  173. ^ Gribbin, p. 91
  174. ^ Hargittai, István (28 August 2003). The Road to Stockholm:Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists: Nobel Prizes, Science, and Scientists. Oxford University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-19-860785-4. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
  175. ^ "Professor Aage Bohr: Nobel prize-winning physicist". The Times. London: Times Newspapers Limited. 11 September 2009. Retrieved 24 January 2010.
  176. ^ Maugh, Thomas H., II (8 August 2007). "Kai Siegbahn, 89; Nobel-winning physicist invented electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 24 January 2010.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  177. ^ "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar" (Press release). University of Chicago. 22 August 1995. Retrieved 24 January 2010.
  178. ^ Feldman, p. 406
  179. ^ Conger, Krista (4 October 2006). "Roger Kornberg wins the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry". Stanford Report. Retrieved 24 January 2010.
  180. ^ "Gerardus 't Hooft - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
  181. ^ "Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo Winning the Nobel Prize Together is #CoupleGoals". News18. 15 October 2019. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  182. ^ Holt, Jim (22 September 2003). "Exit, Pursued by a Lobster". Slate. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  183. ^ a b English, Jason (6 October 2009). "Odd facts about Nobel Prize winners". CNN. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  184. ^ Weintraub, Stanley (3 October 2013). "Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950), playwright and polemicist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36047. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  185. ^ Franchetti, Mark (14 January 2007). "How the CIA won Zhivago a Nobel". The Times. London. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  186. ^ Finn, Peter (27 January 2007). "The Plot Thickens". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  187. ^ "Aung San Suu Kyi – Biographical". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
  188. ^ "The Nobel Prize: On the film screen" (Press release). Stockholm Business Region. 5 December 2013. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  189. ^ Brodesco, Alberto (2018). "Nobel laureates in fiction: From La fin du monde to The Big Bang Theory". Public Understanding of Science. 27 (4): 458–470. doi:10.1177/0963662518766476. ISSN 0963-6625. PMID 29720058.
  190. ^ Monument of the Planet of Alfred Nobel Archived 9 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Panoramio.com. Retrieved on 28 July 2013.
  191. ^ Memorial symbol "Alfred Nobel Planet". Nobelplanet.org. Retrieved on 28 July 2013.

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from A Complex Formula: Girls and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Asia​, 23, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO.

Books

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nobel Prize.
Listen to this article
(2 parts, 30 minutes)
  2. Part 2
Spoken Wikipedia icon
These audio files were created from a revision of this article dated
Error: no date provided
, and do not reflect subsequent edits.
(Audio help · More spoken articles)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nobel_Prize&oldid=965826964"