INTRODUCTION
Nobel
Prizes,
annual monetary awards granted to individuals or institutions for
outstanding contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry,
physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and economic
sciences. The Nobel prizes are internationally recognized as the most
prestigious awards in each of these fields. The prizes were
established by Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard
Nobel, who set up a fund for them in his will. The first Nobel prizes
were awarded on December 10, 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel’s
death.
In
his will, Nobel directed that most of his fortune be invested to form
a fund, the interest of which was to be distributed annually "in
the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall
have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." He stipulated
that the interest be divided into five equal parts, each to be
awarded to the person who made the most important contribution in one
of five different fields. In addition to the three scientific awards
and the literature award, a prize would go to the person who had 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 also specified certain
institutions that would select the prizewinners. The will indicated
that “no consideration whatever shall be given to the
nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive
the prize.”
Alfred
NobelAfter
his own experiments led him to the lucrative invention of dynamite,
Alfred Nobel established a fund to reward other innovators
“contributing most materially to the benefit of mankind.”
The Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of chemistry, physics,
physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and economic
sciences. The awards reflect Nobel’s interests; in addition to
performing valuable chemical research, he spoke several languages,
traveled widely, and wrote poetry.
In
1968 the Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, created an economics
prize to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. This prize, called
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, was first awarded in
1969. The bank provides a cash award equal to the other Nobel prizes.
II NOBEL
FOUNDATION In 1900 the Nobel Foundation was established
to manage the fund and to administer the activities of the
institutions charged with selecting winners. The fund is controlled
by a board of directors, which serves for two-year periods and
consists of six members: five elected by the trustees of the awarding
bodies mentioned in the will, and the sixth appointed by the Swedish
government. All six members are either Swedish or Norwegian citizens.
In
his will, Nobel stated that the prizes for physics and chemistry
would be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the prize for
physiology or medicine by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the
literature prize by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, and the peace
prize by a five-person committee elected by the Norwegian Storting
(Parliament). After the economics prize was created in 1968, the
Swedish Academy of Sciences has held the responsibility of selecting
the winners of that award.
All
the prize-awarding bodies have set up Nobel committees consisting of
three to five people who make recommendations in the selection
process. Additional specialists with expertise in relevant fields
assist the committees. The Nobel committees examine nominations and
make recommendations to the prize-awarding institutions. After
deliberating various opinions and recommendations, the prize-awarding
bodies vote on the final selection, and then they announce the
winner. The deliberations and voting are secret, and prize decisions
cannot be appealed.
III PRIZES
A
prize for achievement in a particular field may be awarded to an
individual, divided equally between two people, or awarded jointly
among two or three people. According to the Nobel Foundation’s
statutes, the prize cannot be divided among more than three people,
but it can go to an institution. A prize may go unawarded if no
candidate is chosen for the year under consideration, but each of the
prizes must be awarded at least once every five years. If the Nobel
Foundation does not award a prize in a given year, the prize money
remains in the trust. Likewise, if a prize is declined or not
accepted before a specified date, the Nobel Foundation retains the
prize money in its trust.
The
prize amounts are based on the annual yield of the fund capital. In
1948 Nobel prizes were about $32,000 each; in 1997 they were about $1
million each. In addition to a cash award, each prizewinner also
receives a gold medal and a diploma bearing the winner's name and
field of achievement. Prizewinners are known as Nobel
laureates.
IV SELECTION
OF PRIZEWINNERS
Nominations
of candidates for the prizes can be made only by those who have
received invitations to do so. In the fall of the year preceding the
award, Nobel committees distribute invitations to members of the
prize-awarding bodies, to previous Nobel prize winners, and to
professors in relevant fields at certain colleges and universities.
In addition, candidates for the prize in literature may be proposed
by invited members of various literary academies, institutions, and
societies. Upon invitation, members of governments or certain
international organizations may nominate candidates for the peace
prize. The Nobel Foundation’s statutes do not allow individuals
to nominate themselves. Invitations to nominate candidates and the
nominations themselves are both confidential.
Nominations
of candidates are due on February 1 of the award year. Then, Nobel
committee members and consultants meet several times to evaluate the
qualifications of the nominees. The various committees cast their
final votes in October and immediately notify the laureates that they
have won.
V PRIZE
CEREMONIES The
prizes are presented annually at ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden, and
in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. In
Stockholm, the king of Sweden presents the awards in physics,
chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and economic sciences.
The peace prize ceremony takes place at the University of Oslo in the
presence of the king of Norway. After the ceremonies, Nobel Prize
winners give a lecture on a subject connected with their
prize-winning work. The winner of t
the others in Stockholm. The lectures are later printed in the Nobel
Foundation's annual publication, Les
Prix Nobel
(The Nobel Prizes)Some of the recipients
Recipent of the Nobel prize for chemistry
Marie
Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and also the first
person to win the Nobel Prize twice. Curie coined the term
“radioactive” to describe the uranium emissions she
observed in early experiments. With her husband, she later discovered
the elements polonium and radium. A dedicated and respected
physicist, her brilliant work with radioactivity eventually cost her
her life; she died from overexposure to radiation.
Recipient
of the Nobel Prize for economics
Hayek,
Friedrich August von
(1899-1992), Austrian-born economist and Nobel laureate. Born in
Vienna, von Hayek earned a doctorate at Vienna University in 1927 and
spent some years in public service. He began a long academic career
by holding the post of professor of economics and statistics at the
University of London (1931-50); subsequently he was professor of
moral and economic science at the University of Chicago (1950-62). An
economic traditionalist, von Hayek won a wide reputation with The
Road to Serfdom
(1944), in which he argued that governments should not intervene in
the control of inflation or other economic matters. He retired in
1962 but was later appointed professor of economics at the University
of Freiburg, in West Germany (now part of Germany). Returning to
Austria in 1969, he became visiting professor at the University of
Salzburg. In 1974 he and the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal received
the Nobel Prize in economic science for their “pioneering work
in the theory of money and economic luctuations
and for their pioneering analysis of the interdependence of economic,
social, and institutional phenomena.
The
Recipient
of the Nobel Prize for literature
Galsworthy,
John
(1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was one of the most
popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century.
He was born in Kingston Hills, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School
and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890 but
soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early works
under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned principally
with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently find
their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal,
sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and
with questions of social justice. Most of his novels deal with the
history, from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th
century, of an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The
principal member of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the
drive of his class for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive
that often conflicts with human values. The Forsyte series includes
The
Man of Property
(1906), the novelette “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (pub.
in the collection Five
Tales,1918),
In
Chancery
(1920), Awakening
(1920), and To
Let
(1921). These five titles were published as The
Forsyte Saga
(1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The
White Monkey
(1924), The
Silver Spoon
(1926), and Swan
Song
(1928), which were published together under the title A
Modern Comedy
(1929). These were followed in turn by Maid
in Waiting
(1931), Flowering
Wilderness
(1932), and Over
the River
(1933), published together posthumously as End
of the Chapter
(1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife
(1909), Justice
(1910), The
Pigeon
(1912), Old
English
(1924), and The
Roof
(1929). Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in literature.
The
Recipient
of the Nobel Prize for physics
Landau,
Lev Davidovich
(1908-68), Soviet theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, noted
chiefly for his pioneer work in low-temperature physics (cryogenics).
He was born in Baku, and educated at the universities of Baku and
Leningrad. In 1937 Landau became professor of theoretical physics at
the S. I. Vavilov Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. His
development of the mathematical theories that explain how superfluid
helium behaves at temperatures near absolute zero earned him the 1962
Nobel Prize in physics. His writings on a wide variety of subjects
relating to physical phenomena include some 100 papers and many
books, among which is the widely known nine-volume Course
of Theoretical Physics,
published in 1943 with Y. M. Lifshitz. In January 1962, he was
gravely injured in an automobile accident; he was several times
considered near death and suffered a severe impairment of memory. By
the time of his death he had been able to make only a partial
recovery.
The
recipient
of the Nobel Prize for peace
Dalai
Lama,
spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and formerly the ruler of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When
he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who,
after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai
Lama.
The first to bear
the title of Dalai Lama was Sonam Gyatso, grand lama of the Drepung
monastery and leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect, who received
it in 1578 from the Mongol chief Altan Khan; it was then applied
retroactively to the previous leaders of the sect. In 1642 another
Mongol chief, Gushri Khan, installed the fifth Dalai Lama as Tibet's
spiritual and temporal ruler. His successors governed Tibet—first
as tributaries of the Mongols, but from 1720 to 1911 as vassals of
the emperor of China.
When
the Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950, they came into
increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. He left
the country after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1959 and thereafter
lived in India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading
the nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese rule in Tibet. In 1995
the Dalai Lama came into conflict with Chinese authorities over the
identification of a new Panchen Lama (the second most senior Tibetan
religious authority). In 1996 he published Violence
and Compassion,
in which he and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriиre
consider topics of political and spiritual interest.