Nobel Prize

The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.

The Nobel Prizes are prizes instituted by the Will law of Alfred Nobel, awarded to people, and some organizations, who have done outstanding research, invented groundbreaking techniques or equipment, or made outstanding contributions to society. The Nobel Prizes, which are generally awarded annually in the categories of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economics, are widely regarded as the supreme commendation in the world today.

As of November 2005, a total of 776 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. 758 of the prizes awarded to individuals and 18 to organizations, though a few prize winners have declined the award. There are years in which one or more prizes are not awarded; however, the prizes must be awarded at least once every five years. During World War II no prizes were awarded in any category from 1940 through 1942. The selection of the peace prize in particular was greatly hampered by Nazi Germany's occupation of Norway. The prize cannot be revoked and nominees must be living at the time of their nomination. Since 1974, the award cannot be given out posthumously.

Prize Categories

Nobel Prize in Physics

Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics".

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to "the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement".

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Awarded by the Karolinska Institute to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine".

Nobel Prize in Literature

Awarded by the Swedish Academy to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency".

Nobel Prize in Peace

Awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

Also known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, it was instituted in 1969 by Sveriges Riksbank, the Bank of Sweden. Although it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with the official Nobel prizes, it is not paid for by his money, and is technically not a Nobel Prize.

Nobel's Will

Alfred Nobel

The prizes were instituted by the final will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, industrialist, and the inventor of dynamite. Alfred Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last one written on November 27, 1895, more than a year before he died. He signed it at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on November 27, 1895. Nobel's work had directly involved the creation of explosives, and he became increasingly uneasy with the military usage of his inventions. It is said that this was motivated in part by his reading of a premature obituary of himself, published in error by a French newspaper on the occasion of the death of Nobel's brother Ludvig, and which condemned Alfred as a "merchant of death." After his death, Alfred left 94% of his worth to the establishment of five prizes:

The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:

The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical works by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.

Although Nobel's will established the prizes, his plan was incomplete and took five years before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes awarded on December 10, 1901.

Nomination and Selection

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Nobel Prize Medals

As compared with some other prizes, the Nobel prize nomination and selection process is long and rigorous. This is an important reason why the Prizes have grown in importance and prestige over the years to become the most important prizes in their field.

Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about 3000 selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations. In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Foundation states that nominees may include:

• Members of National Assemblies and Governments of States
• Members of International Courts
• University Rectors
• Professors of Social Sciences, History, Philosophy, Law and Theology
• Directors of Peace Research Institutes and Foreign Policy Institutes
• Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Board Members of Organisations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Active and Former Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
• Former Advisers Appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute

Similar nominee requirements are in place for the remaining prizes. The strictly enforced submission deadline for nominations is January 31. Self-nominations are automatically disqualified and only living persons are eligible for the Nobel Prize. Unlike many other awards, the Nobel Prize nominees are never publicly announced, and they are not supposed to be told that they were ever considered for the prize. These records are sealed for 50 years.

After the nomination deadline, a committee compiles and reduces the amount of nominations to a list of 200 preliminary candidates. The list is sent to selected experts in the field of each nominee's work and the list is further shortened to around 15 final candidates. The Committee then writes a report with recommendations and sends it to the Academy or other corresponding institution, depending on the category of the prize. As an example of institute size, the Assembly for the Prize for Medicine has 50 members. The members of the institution then vote to select the winner.

This process varies slightly between the different disciplines. Though literature is rarely awarded to a collaborative group, other prizes often involve multiple awardees.

Posthumous nominations for the Prize have been disallowed since 1974. This has sometimes sparked criticism that people deserving of a Nobel Prize did not receive the award because they died before being nominated. In two cases the Prize has been awarded posthumously to people who were nominated when they were still alive. This was the case with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (1961, Peace Prize) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931, Literature); both of whom were awarded the prize in the years they died. William Vickrey (1996, Economics) died before he could receive the prize, but after it was announced.

Awarding Ceremonies

Stockholm Concert Hall, where the awarding ceremonies for the Nobel Prizes are held annually

The committees and institutions that serve as selection boards for the prizes typically announce the names of the laureates in October. The prizes are awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

The first peace prize ceremonies were held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute from 1905 until 1946, later relocated to the Aula of the University of Oslo. In 1990 the award ceremony was held at the Oslo City Hall and as of 2005 the prize was awarded at the Stockholm Concert Hall.

Each award can be given to a maximum of three recipients per year. Each prize constitutes a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money. The monetary award is currently about 10 million Swedish Kronor, which is slightly more than one million Euros or about 1.3 million US dollars. This was originally intended to allow laureates to continue working or researching without the pressures of raising money. In actual fact, many prize winners have retired before winning. If there are two winners in one category, the award money is split equally between them. If there are three winners, the awarding committee has the option of splitting the prize money equally among all three, or awarding half of the prize money to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the other recipients. It is common for the winners to donate the prize money to benefit scientific, cultural or humanitarian causes.

Since 1902, the King of Sweden has formally awarded all the prizes, except the Nobel Peace Prize, in Stockholm. King Oscar II of Sweden initially disapproved of awarding grand national prizes to foreigners, but changed his mind after realizing the publicity value of the prizes for the country.

The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, given by the President of Norwegian Parliament until the establishment of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 1904. Its five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, or the Stortinget, and it is entrusted both with the preparatory work related to prize adjudication and with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Its members are independent and do not answer to lawmakers. Members of the Norwegian government are not allowed to take any part in it.

Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, produced "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency". The work in this case generally refers to an author's collection as a whole, not to any individual work, though individual works are sometimes cited in the awards. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year and announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October.

The original citation of this Nobel Prize has led to much controversy. In the original Swedish translation, the word idealisk can mean either "idealistic" or "ideal". In earlier years the Nobel Committee stuck closely to the intent of the will, and left out certain world-renowned writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Henrik Ibsen for the Prize because their works were not deemed "idealistic" enough. In later years the wording has been interpreted more liberally, and the Prize has been awarded for lasting literary merit. The choice of the Academy can still generate controversy, particularly for the selection of lesser-known writers or for writers working in avant garde forms such as Dario Fo in 1997 and Elfriede Jelinek in 2004. Critics of the prize point out that many prominent writers have failed to be cited or even nominated for the award.

Each year the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organizations are all allowed to nominate a candidate.

The prize money of the Nobel Prize has fluctuated since its inauguration but at present stands at 10 million Swedish krona. The winner also wins a gold medal and a Nobel diploma.

The oldest person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature was Theodor Mommsen, who was 85 when he received the Prize in 1902. The youngest was Rudyard Kipling, who was 42 when he won the Prize in 1907.

Controversies

This history of the Nobel Prize in Literature has been marked in controversy. During World War I and its immediate aftermath, the Nobel committee was criticized for adopting a policy of neutrality, and favored writers from non-combatant countries.

In 1974 Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Saul Bellow were considered for the award but passed over for a joint award to Swedish authors, Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both Nobel judges themselves. Bellow would win the prize in 1976; neither Greene nor Nabokov were honored.

The award to Dario Fo in 1997 was initially considered "rather lightweight" by some critics, as he was seen primarily as a performer and had previously been censured by the Roman Catholic Church. According to Fo's London publisher, Salman Rushdie and Arthur Miller were favorites to win that year, but the organizers stated that the authors would have been "too predictable, too popular".

The choice of the 2004 winner, Elfriede Jelinek, drew criticism from within the academy itself. Knut Ahnlund, who had not played an active role in the academy since 1996, resigned after Jelinek received the award, saying that picking the author had caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.

TV and radio personality Gert Fylking started the tradition of shouting 'Äntligen!', Swedish for 'At last!', at the announcing of the award winner, as a protest to the academies constant nomination of "authors more or less unknown to the general public". Fylking later agreed to stop his outburst, though the tradition has been carried on by others.

Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel Prize in Economics is a prize awarded each year for outstanding intellectual contributions in the field of economics. The award was instituted by the Bank of Sweden, the world's oldest central bank, at its 300th anniversary in 1968. Although it was not one of the awards established in the will of Alfred Nobel, economics laureates receive their diploma and gold medal from the Swedish monarch at the same December 10 Stockholm ceremony as the other Nobel laureates. The amount of money awarded to the economics laureates is also equal to that of the other prizes.

The prestige of the prize derives in part from its association with the awards created by Alfred Nobel's will, an association which has often been a source of controversy. The prize is commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics or, more correctly, as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

In February 1995, it was decided that the economics prize be essentially defined as a prize in social sciences, opening the Nobel Prize to great contributions in fields like political science, psychology, and sociology. The Economics Prize Committee has also undergone changes to require two non-economists to decide the prize each year, whereas previously the prize committee had consisted of five economists.

The economics laureates, like the Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics, are chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Nominations of about one hundred living persons are made each year by qualified nominators and are received by a five to eight member committee, which then submits its choice of winners to the Nobel Assembly for its final approval. As with the other prizes, no more than three people can share the prize for a given year and they must be living at the time the prize is awarded. The final award is made in Stockholm and is accompanied by a sum of money.

Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize Winners the Dalai Lama & Bishop Tutu. Vancouver, Canada, 2004. Photo by Carey Linde

According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Norway’s capital city of Oslo, unlike the Nobel prizes in economics, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature which are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. For the past decade, the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony at the Oslo City Hall has been followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is broadcast to more than 150 countries and more than 450 million households worldwide. The Concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers.

The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize. The Committee chairman, currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs, awards the Prize itself. At the time of Alfred Nobel's death Sweden and Norway were in a personal union in which the Swedish government was solely responsible for foreign policy, and the Norwegian Parliament responsible only for Norwegian domestic policy. Alfred Nobel never why he wanted a Norwegian rather than Swedish body to award the Peace Prize, and many have speculated about Nobel's intentions. Some believe Nobel may have wanted to prevent the manipulation of the selection process by foreign powers, and as Norway did not have any foreign policy, the Norwegian government could avoid influence.

Nommination Process

Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors, international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee. Over time many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing. Nominations from 1901 to 1951, however, have been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939, though the nomination was retracted in February of the same year. Other infamous nominees included Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize may be awarded to persons or organizations that are in the process of resolving an issue, or creating world peace rather than upon the resolution of the issue. Since the Prize can be given to individuals involved in ongoing peace processes, some of the awards now appear, with hindsight, questionable, particularly when those processes failed to bear lasting fruit. For example, the awards given to Theodore Roosevelt, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Lê Ðức Thọ, and Henry Kissinger were particularly controversial and criticized; the latter prompted two dissenting Committee members to resign. Right-leaning groups have also criticized the Nobel Committee for a perceived left-leaning bias in its decisions.

In 2005, the Nobel Peace Center opened. It serves to present the Laureates, their work for peace, and the ongoing problems of war and conflict around the world.

Controversies

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Lester B. Pearson after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize has throughout its history sparked controversy. The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued partisan military aims by ratifying membership in NATO in 1949, by hosting NATO troops, and by leasing ports and territorial waters to US ballistic missile submarines in 1983. However, the Parliament has no say in the award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO membership.

A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the intellectual achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers. The 20th Century fight against Communism is one example that stands out most noticeably in this regard. This situation may be said to have deprived the 'real' peace makers, who may not have been recognized for their long-term or subtle approaches. Others maintain the uniqueness of the Peace Prize in that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves.

On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964 laureate); Catholic missionary Mother Teresa; and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990 laureate) or Yasser Arafat (1994 laureate) whose Fatah movement began, and still serves, as a terrorist organization. Finally, the Peace Prize draws criticism for candidates whom it overlooks, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, Steve Biko, Hélder Câmara, Raphael Lemkin and Oscar Romero.

Criticisms of the Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Prizes have been criticized over the years, with people suggesting that formal agreements and name recognition are more important than actual achievements in the process of deciding who is awarded a Prize. Perhaps the most infamous case of this was in 1973 when Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam, even though the War in Vietnam was ongoing at the time. Le Duc Tho declined the award, for the stated reason that peace had not been achieved.

It is said that Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times in between 1937 to 1948 but indeed never won it. Research indicates that the Authority was probably planning to give him the award in 1948; however, he was assassinated in that year. The committee reportedly considered a posthumous award but ultimately decided against it, instead choosing not to award the Nobel Peace Prize to anybody for that particular year.

The strict rules against a Nobel Prize being awarded to more than three people at once is also a cause for controversy. Where a prize is awarded to recognize an achievement by a team of more than three collaborators, inevitably one or more will miss out. For example, in 2002, a Prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, failing to recognize the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt.

Similarly, the rule against posthumous prizes often fails to recognize important achievements by a collaborator who happens to have died before the prize is awarded. For example, Rosalind Franklin made some of the key developments into the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, but she died of ovarian cancer in 1958 and the Prize was awarded to Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins, one of Franklin's collaborators, in 1962.

Criticism was levied towards the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, specifically the recognition of Roy Glauber and not George Sudarshan for the award. Arguably, Sudarshan's work is the more accepted of the two. Though Glauber did publish his work first in 1963, Sudarshan's work later that same year is the work upon which most of quantum optics is based.

The Nobel Prizes are also criticized for their lack of a mathematics award. There are several possible reasons why Nobel created no Prize for mathematics. Nobel's will speaks of prizes for those inventions or discoveries of greatest practical benefit to mankind, possibly having in mind practical rather than theoretical works. Mathematics was not considered a practical science from which humanity could benefit, a key purpose for the Nobel Foundation.

One other possible reason was that there was already a well known Scandinavian prize for mathematicians. The existing mathematical awards at the time were mainly due to the work of Gösta Mittag-Leffler, who founded the Acta Mathematica, a century later still one of the world's leading mathematical journals. Through his influence in Stockholm he persuaded King Oscar II to endow prize competitions and honor distinguished mathematicians all over Europe, including Hermite, Joseph Louis François Bertrand, Weierstrass, and Henri Poincaré.

In 2001, the government of Norway began awarding the Abel Prize, specifically with the intention of being a substitute for the missing mathematics Nobel. Beginning in 2004, the Shaw Prize, which resembles the Nobel Prize, included an award in mathematical sciences. The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics", but the comparison is not very apt because the Fields is limited to mathematicians not over forty years old.

Repeat Recipients

Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the first two-time Nobel laureate in history

In the history of the Nobel Prize, there have been only four people to have received two Nobel Prizes; Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger.

Curie was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics after discovering radioactivity. She was later awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry after her isolation of radium.

Linus Pauling received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for construction of the Hybridized Orbital Theory, and later the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for activism in regards to the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

John Bardeen was awarded both the 1956 and 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of transistor, and later his Theory of Superconductivity.

Frederick Sanger was awarded both the 1958 and 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for identifying the structure of the insulin molecule, and later for his virus nucleotide sequencing.

Additionally, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944, and 1963. The first two prizes were specifically in recognition of the group's work during the world wars.

External links

• Nobelprize.org — Official site
• The Nobel Prize Internet Archive
• The Nobel Committees of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• The Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute
• The Swedish Academy
• The Norwegian Nobel Committee
• Britannica Spotlight: Guide to the Nobel Prizes
• CNN: Nobel Centennial

• Norwegian Nobel Committee
• The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Peace, 1901-1951
• Nobel Prize for Peace Better World Links
• Laureates at the Nobel foundation
• Winners of the Prize in Economics
• History of the prize and its controversy
• The Nobel Prize in Literature - Laureates
• Nobel Prize Winners in Literature
• The Nobel Prize
• Written in Stone - Burial locations of literary figures.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Nobel Foundation. Nobel Prize Facts. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• Øyvind Tønnesson. With Fascism on the Doorstep: The Nobel Institution in Norway, 1940-1945. Retrieved on September 4, 2006.
• The History Channel, This Day in History. First Nobel Prizes: December 10, 1901. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• Nobel Foundation. Nomination and Selection Process. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• The Scientist, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 20021211-03. Nobel Prize controversy. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• Nobel Foundation. The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• The Nobel Prize Internet Archive. Why is there no Nobel Prize in Mathematics?. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
• Public Broadcasting Service. The Prize: Controversy and Landmarks. Retrieved on July 30, 2006.

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