Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

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• The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural or scientific advances.

Alfred Nobel

• Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. On 10 December 1896, he died (63 years) in San Remo, Italy.

Nobel Prize

• The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901.

• The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968. It was not part of the original group of awards set out in dynamite tycoon Nobel’s 1895 will.
• In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Swedish National Bank) celebrated its 300th anniversary by donating a large sum of money to the Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a prize in honour of Nobel. The following year, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded for the first time.
• Each recipient, or laureate, receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money that has been decided by the Nobel Foundation. (As of 2017, each prize is worth SEK 9,000,000).
• Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, and later from 18 carat green gold plated with a 24 carat gold coating. Between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 23 organisations, and 881 individuals.

• 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. A prize may not be shared among more than three people, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people.

• The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The Foundation is not involved in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates.
• A Nobel Committee is a working body responsible for most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize.

• Four of these committees (for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature) are working bodies within their prize awarding institutions, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, and the Swedish Academy. These four Nobel Committees only propose laureates, while the final decision is taken in a larger assembly.
• This assembly is composed of the entire academies for the prizes in physics, chemistry, and literature, as well as the 50 members of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for the prize in physiology or medicine.
• The fifth Nobel Committee is the Norwegian Nobel Committee, responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize. This committee has a different status since it is both the working body and the deciding body for its prize.
• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences became responsible for selecting laureates of Economic sciences.
• Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year"

Award ceremony

• Except for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Prizes (each Nobel laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of the King of Sweden) are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, at the annual Prize Award Ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The recipients' lectures (each laureate is required to give a public lecture on a subject related to the topic of their prize) are normally held in the days prior to the award ceremony.
• The peace prize presented on the same day of 10^th December at Oslo, the capital of Norway in the presence of the king of Norway by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Multiple laureates

• Four people have received two Nobel Prizes.

• Four of these committees (for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature) are working bodies within their prize awarding institutions, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, and the Swedish Academy. These four Nobel Committees only propose laureates, while the final decision is taken in a larger assembly.
• This assembly is composed of the entire academies for the prizes in physics, chemistry, and literature, as well as the 50 members of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for the prize in physiology or medicine.
• The fifth Nobel Committee is the Norwegian Nobel Committee, responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize. This committee has a different status since it is both the working body and the deciding body for its prize.
• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences became responsible for selecting laureates of Economic sciences.
• Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year"

Award ceremony

• Except for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Prizes (each Nobel laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of the King of Sweden) are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, at the annual Prize Award Ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The recipients' lectures (each laureate is required to give a public lecture on a subject related to the topic of their prize) are normally held in the days prior to the award ceremony.
• The peace prize presented on the same day of 10^th December at Oslo, the capital of Norway in the presence of the king of Norway by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Multiple laureates

• Four people have received two Nobel Prizes.

• Two organisations have received the Peace Prize multiple times.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross received it three times
  • 1917 and 1944 -work during the world wars
  • 1963 -during the year of its centenary
• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.

Family laureates

• The Curie family has received the most prizes, with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates.

1. Marie Curie shared with her husband Pierre curie in 1903 for Physics and next in 1911 for Chemistry.
2. Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie - Chemistry (1935) together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
3. The Second daughter of Marie Curie's husband, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

• Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates.
• In India, C. V. Raman - Physics (1930) and was the uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar –Physics (1983).

Female laureates

• As of 2017, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 844 men, 48 women (Marie Curie won it twice), and 27 organizations.
• The most Nobel Prizes awarded to women in a single year was in 2009, when five women became laureates.
• The most recent women to be awarded a Nobel Prize were Tu Youyou and Svetlana Alexievich (2015).

Why Nobel Peace prize not given to Mahatma Gandhi?

• 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.Later, members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee expressed regret that he was not given the prize.
• 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.
• 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.

Nobel Winners of 2017

1. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

• The 2017 prize was awarded jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall (University of Maine), Michael Rosbash (Brandeis University) and Michael W. Young (Rockefeller University) "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".

2. Nobel Prize in Physics

• The physics prize was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss , the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne  "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

3. Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• The Chemistry prize was awarded to Jacques Dubochet (R), Richard Henderson (C) and Joachim Frank (L) "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution".

4. Nobel Prize in Literature

• The Literature prize was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro.
• The author of seven novels, a short-story collection and screenplays, Ishiguro was born in bomb-hit Nagasaki in 1954, and moved to England at the age of 5.

5. Nobel Peace Prize

• The Peace Prize 2017 was awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

• The group formed by Geneva-based coalition of disarmament activists is behind the first treaty to prohibit nuclear arms.

6. Nobel Prize in Economics

• The US economist Richard Thaler was awarded the $1.1 million Nobel Economics Prize for his contributions in the field of behavioural economics.
• The award-giving body said that Thaler's contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making.

Nobel Laureates in India

Indian citizens

• The following are the Nobel laureates who were Indian citizens at the time they were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Overseas citizens of Indian origin

• The following are Nobel laureates born in British India or who are of Indian originbut subsequently non-citizens of India; however, they are still often included in lists of Indian Nobel laureates.

Other

• The following are Nobel laureates with Indian linkages – those foreigners who were born in India, those who are of Indian ancestry and those who were residents in India when they became recipients of the Nobel Prize.

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