Nobel Prize
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Nobel Prize (
Swedish pronunciation: [noˈbɛl],
Swedish definite form, singular:
Nobelpriset,
Norwegian:
Nobelprisen)
is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of
categories by Scandinavian committees in recognition of 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.
[1] Nobel prizewinners are often referred to as
Nobel laureates.
The Peace Prize is awarded in
Oslo, Norway, while the other prizes are awarded in
Stockholm,
Sweden. The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious
award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics,
chemistry, peace and economics.
[2]
In 1968,
Sveriges Riksbank instituted an award that is often associated with the Nobel prizes, the
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
The first such prize was awarded in 1969. Although it is not an
official Nobel Prize, its announcements and presentations are made along
with the other prizes.
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, receives a gold medal, a
diploma, and a sum of money which depends on the
Nobel Foundation's income that year. As of 2012, each prize was worth kr8 million (c.
US$1.1 million,
€1.16 million). 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."
[3]
A prize may not be shared among more than three people. The average
number of laureates per prize has increased substantially over the 20th
century.
[4]
History
Alfred Nobel had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, titled
The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper.
Alfred Nobel (
listen (help·info)) was born on 21 October 1833 in
Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.
[5] 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, a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder
cordite.
Nobel was even involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite.
Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime. Most of his wealth was from
his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.
[6]
In 1888, Alfred was astonished to read 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. The article
disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be
remembered. This inspired him to change his will.
[7] On 10 December 1896 Alfred Nobel died in his villa in
San Remo, Italy, from a
cerebral haemorrhage. He was 63 years old.
[8]
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,
peace,
physiology or
medicine, and
literature.
[9]
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.
[10][11]
Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186
million, €150 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes.
[12] Because of scepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the
Storting in Norway.
[13] The executors of Nobel's will,
Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organise the award of prizes.
[14]
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. These were the Karolinska
Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June.
[15]
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.
[9] In 1905, the
Union between Sweden and Norway
was dissolved. Thereafter Norway's Nobel Committee was responsible for
awarding the Nobel Peace Prize and the Swedish institutions retained
responsibility for the other prizes.
[13]
Nobel Foundation
Alfred Nobel's will stated that 94% of his total assets should be used to establish the Nobel Prizes.
The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June
1900, to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.
[16] In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left.
Robert and
Ludwig Nobel
were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan and according to
Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archives,
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".
[17]
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.
[18][19] 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).
[20]
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).
[21]
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.
[21]
First prizes
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. Originally, the Norwegian Nobel Committee appointed
prominent figures including
Jørgen Løvland,
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and
Johannes Steen to give the Nobel Peace Prize credibility.
[22]
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.
[23][24][25]
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.
[26][27]
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."
[28] The Academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for
Jacobus van't Hoff.
[29] Van't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in
chemical thermodynamics.
[30][31]
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.
[32]
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.
[33] 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.
[34][35]
World War II
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.
[36] Each man was later able to receive the diploma and medal.
[37]
Even though Sweden was officially neutral during World War II, the
prizes were awarded irregularly. In 1939, the Peace Prize was not
awarded. No prize was awarded in any category from 1940–42, due to the
occupation of Norway by Germany. In the subsequent year, all prizes were awarded except those for literature and peace.
[38]
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.
[39]
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.
[36]
Map of Nobel laureates by country.
Prize in Economic Sciences
In 1968,
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 Nobel. The
following year, the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
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."
[40][41]
Although not a Nobel Prize, it is intimately identified with the other
awards; the laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize recipients, and
the Prize in Economic Sciences is presented at the Swedish Nobel Prize
Award Ceremony.
[42] The Board of the Nobel Foundation decided that after this addition, it would allow no further new prizes.
[43]
Award process
The award process is similar for all of the Nobel Prizes; the main difference is in who can make nominations for each of them.
[44]
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 3000
individuals, usually in September the year before the prizes are
awarded. These individuals are often academics working in a relevant
area. For the Peace Prize, inquiries are sent to governments, members of
international courts,
professors and rectors, 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.
[44][45] The Nobel Committee nominates about 300 potential laureates from these forms and additional names.
[46]
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.
[47][48]
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.
[49]
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.
[50]
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.
[51] If the Peace Prize is not awarded, the money is split among the scientific prizes. This has happened 19 times so far.
[52]
Posthumous nominations
Although posthumous nominations are not permitted, individuals who
die 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 died after the prize was announced but before it could be presented.
[53] 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.
[3]
The committee later decided that as the decision to award Steinman the
prize "was made in good faith," it would remain unchanged.
[54]
Recognition time lag
Nobel's will provides for prizes to be awarded in recognition of
discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the awards
usually recognised recent discoveries.
[55] However, some of these early discoveries were later discredited. For example,
Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize for
Physiology or Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused cancer.
[56] To avoid this embarrassment, the awards increasingly recognised scientific discoveries that had withstood the test of time.
[57][58][59]
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."
[58]
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.
[60][61]
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.
[62][63] However, they can also be awarded for specific recent events.
[64] For instance,
Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
[65] Similarly
Yasser Arafat,
Yitzhak Rabin, and
Shimon Peres received the 1994 award, about a year after they successfully concluded the
Oslo Accords.
[66]
Although Nobel's will stated that prizes should be awarded for
contributions made "during the preceding year", 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.
[67][68]
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.
[69][70][71]
Award ceremonies
Left: Barack Obama after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall from the hands of Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman
Thorbjorn Jagland; 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.
[72][73] 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).
[74]
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.
[73][75]
At first King Oscar II did not approve of awarding grand prizes to
foreigners. It is said that his mind changed once his attention had been
drawn to the publicity value of the prizes for Sweden.
[76]
Nobel banquet
Table at the 2005 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm
After the award ceremony in Sweden, a banquet is held at the
Stockholm City Hall, which is attended by the Swedish Royal Family and
around 1,300 guests. The banquet features a three-course dinner,
entertainment and dancing and is covered by local media. Before 1930,
the banquet in Sweden was held in the ballroom of Stockholm's Grand
Hotel.
[74]
The Nobel Peace Prize banquet is held in Oslo at the Grand Hotel
after the award ceremony. Apart from the laureate, guests include the
President of the Storting, the Prime Minister and (since 2006) the King
and Queen of Norway. In total about 250 guests attend for a five-course
meal.
[77] For the first time in its history, the banquet was cancelled in Oslo in 1979 because the laureate
Mother Teresa
refused to attend, saying the money would be better spent on the poor.
Mother Teresa used the US$7,000 that was to be spent on the banquet to
hold a dinner for 2,000 homeless people on Christmas Day.
[78][79]
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.
[80][81] The Nobel lecture as a rhetorical genre took decades to reach its current format.
[82]
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. Some have happened even later.
For example, US president
Theodore Roosevelt won the Peace Prize in 1906 but gave his lecture in 1910, after his term in office.
[83] The lectures are organized by the same association which selected the laureates.
[84]
Prizes
Medals
It was announced on 30th May 2012 that the Nobel Foundation had
awarded the contract for the production of the five (Swedish) Nobel
Prize medals to Svenska Medalj AB. Formerly, the Nobel Prize medals were
minted by
Myntverket
(the Swedish Mint) in between 1902-2010. Myntverket, Swedens´s oldest
company, ceased operations in 2011 after 1017 years. In 2011 the Mint of
Norway, located in Kongsberg, made the medals. The Nobel Prize medals
are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation.
[85] 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.
[86]
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.
[87]
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 (0.39 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).
[88] Because of the high value of their gold content and tendency to be on public display, Nobel medals are subject to medal theft.
[89][90][91] 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, chemist
George de Hevesy dissolved them in
aqua regia, 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.
[92]
Diplomas
Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the hands of the King
of Sweden or the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Each
diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the
laureates that receive them.
[86]
The diploma contains a picture and text 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.
[93][94]
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.
[86]
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 (c. 2.6 million SEK, US$350 000 or
€295,000 today). In 2009, the monetary award was 10 million SEK (US$1.4
million, €950,000).
[95][96] In June 2012, it was lowered to 8 million SEK.
[97]
If there are two laureates in a particular 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.
[98][99][100] It is not uncommon for recipients to donate prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes.
[101][102]
Controversies and criticisms
Controversial recipients
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.
[103][104][105]
When it was announced that
Henry Kissinger was to be awarded the Peace Prize two of the Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest.
- Peace Prize
Among the most criticised Nobel Peace Prizes was the one awarded to
Henry Kissinger and
Lê Ðức Thọ. Lê Ðức Thọ later declined the prize.
[106]
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, both sides were still engaging in hostilities.
[107] Many critics were of the opinion that Kissinger was not a peace-maker but the opposite; responsible for widening the war.
[47][108]
Yasser Arafat,
Shimon Peres, and
Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine.
[47][109] However, many issues, such as the plight of Palestinian refugees, had not been addressed on the negotiations,
[110] and no final status agreement was reached.
[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, but the actual evaluation occurred over the next eight
months.
[52] Obama himself stated that he did not feel deserving of the award,
[115][116] or worthy of the company it would place him in.
[117]
Past Peace Prize laureates were divided, some saying that Obama
deserved the award, and others saying he had not yet earned it. 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 had never previously heard of her.
[121] This made many feel that the prizes were too Eurocentric.
[122]
- Science prizes
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,
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."
James Joyce, one of the controversial omissions of the Literature Prize
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
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]
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.
[131][132] 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.
[133] Notable writers that have been overlooked for the Literature Prize include
Leo Tolstoy,
Anton Chekhov,
Émile Zola,
Jorge Luis Borges,
Marcel Proust,
Ezra Pound,
James Joyce,
August Strindberg,
Simon Vestdijk,
John Updike,
Arthur Miller,
Chinua Achebe and
Mark Twain.
[134]
The strict rule against awarding a prize to more than three people is also controversial.
[135]
When a prize is awarded to recognize 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 recognize the achievements of
Franz Hillenkamp and
Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the
University of Frankfurt.
[136][137]
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.
[138] Lise Meitner, a physicist who co-discovered nuclear fission along with
Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann, was also denied the award
[says who?]
due to having to flee Germany when the Nazis came to power. Her role in
the research was not fully understood until years later, when the team
was awarded the U.S.'s
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." 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.
[139][140]
Specially distinguished[says who?] laureates
Multiple laureates
Four people have received two Nobel Prizes.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie received the Physics Prize in 1903 for the discovery of
radioactivity and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for the isolation of pure
radium,
[141] making her the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.
Linus Pauling won the 1954 Chemistry Prize for his research into the
chemical bond and its application to the
structure
of complex substances. Pauling also won the Peace Prize in 1962 for his
anti-nuclear activism, 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.
[142] 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.
[143][144]
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.
[145][146][147] The
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has won the Peace Prize twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.
[148]
Family laureates
The
Curie family has received the most prizes, with five.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie received the prizes in Physics (in 1903) and Chemistry (in 1911). Her husband,
Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 Physics prize with her.
[149] 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 it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.
[150]
Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates. The husband-and-wife team of
Gerty Radnitz Cori and
Carl Ferdinand Cori shared the 1947 Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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.
[151] 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.
[152] Manne Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1924, was the father of
Kai Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1981.
[153] 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.
[154][155] Arthur Kornberg received the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1959. Kornberg's son,
Roger later received the Chemistry Prize in 2006.
[156] Jan Tinbergen, who won the first Economics Prize in 1969, was the brother of
Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the 1973 Physiology or Medicine Prize.
[150]
Refusals and constraints
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."
[157] The other is
Lê Ðức Thọ, chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize for his role in the
Paris Peace Accords. He declined, stating that there was no actual peace in Vietnam.
[158]
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."
[158]
The Academy announced with regret that the presentation of the
Literature Prize could not take place that year, holding it until 1989
when Pasternak's son accepted the prize on his behalf.
[159][160]
Monument to Nobel Prize
The memorial symbol
"Planet of Alfred Nobel"
was opened in Dnipropetrovsk University of Economics and Law at
September 13, 2008. It is a granite monument on which the hand supports
the globe.
[161] Around the globe is the trace of
flying figure of a woman – the goddess of science, reason and intellect.
On the globe there are 802 Nobel laureates' reliefs made of a
composite alloy obtained when disposing of military strategic missiles.
[162]
See also
References
Notes
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