Nobel laureate

The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: Nobelpriset, Norwegian: Nobelprisen) are prizes awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.^[1] They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. Each recipient, or "laureate", receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money, which is decided by the Nobel Foundation, yearly. Another prize, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributors to the field of economics.^[2]

Prize

Each prize is awarded by a separate committee; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics, the Karolinska Institute awards the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Prize in Peace.^[3] Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award that has varied throughout the years.^[2] In 1901, the recipients of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. In 2008, the laureates were awarded a prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK.^[4] The awards are presented in Stockholm in an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.^[5]

In years in which the Nobel Prize is not awarded due to external events or a lack of nominations, the prize money is returned to the funds delegated to the relevant prize.^[6] The Nobel Prize was not awarded between 1940 and 1942 due to the outbreak of World War II.^[7]

Laureates

Between 1901 and 2012, the Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 555 times to 863 people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 835 individuals and 21 organizations. Four Nobel laureates were not permitted by their governments to accept the Nobel Prize. Adolf Hitler forbade three Germans, Richard Kuhn (Chemistry, 1938), Adolf Butenandt (Chemistry, 1939), and Gerhard Domagk (Physiology or Medicine, 1939), from accepting their Nobel Prizes, and the government of the Soviet Union pressured Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) to decline his award. Two Nobel laureates, Jean-Paul Sartre (Literature, 1964) and Lê Ðức Thọ (Peace, 1973), declined the award; Sartre declined the award as he declined all official honors, and Lê declined the award due to the situation Vietnam was in at the time.

Six laureates have received more than one prize; of the six, the International Committee of the Red Cross has received the Nobel Peace Prize three times, more than any other.^[8] UNHCR has been awarded twice with Nobel Peace Prize. Also the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Bardeen twice, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Frederick Sanger. Two of laureats has been awarded twice but not on the same field: Marie Curie (Physics and Chemistry) and Linus Pauling (Chemistry and Peace). Among the 826 Nobel laureates, 43 have been women; the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.^[9] She was also the first person (male or female) to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, the second award being the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, given in 1911.^[8]

List of laureates

Notes

• ^A In 1938 and 1939, the government of Germany did not allow three German Nobel nominees to accept their Nobel Prizes. The three were Richard Kuhn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1938; Adolf Butenandt, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1939; and Gerhard Domagk, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1939. They were later awarded the Nobel Prize diploma and medal, but not the money.^[8]
• ^B In 1948, the Nobel Prize in Peace was not awarded. The Nobel Foundation's website suggests that it would have been awarded to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, however, due to his assassination earlier that year, it was left unassigned in his honor.^[10]
• ^C In 1958, Russian-born Boris Pasternak, under pressure from the government of the Soviet Union, was forced to decline the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[8]
• ^D In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre refused to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, as he had consistently refused all official honors in the past.^[8]
• ^E In 1973, Lê Ðức Thọ declined the Nobel Peace Prize. His reason was that he felt he did not deserve it because although he helped negotiate the Paris Peace Accords (a cease-fire in the Vietnam War), there had been no actual peace agreement.^[8][7]
• ^F In 2010, Liu Xiaobo was unable to receive the Nobel Peace Prize as he was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment by the Chinese authorities.^[11]

See also

• List of Nobel laureates by country
• List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation
• Nobel Prize laureates by secondary school affiliation

References

General

Specific

External links

Commons has media related to Nobel laureates.

• Official website of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Official website of the Nobel Foundation
• Downloadable Database of Nobel Laureates