Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which suggests Nobel Prize season is right here.
The begin of October is when the Nobel committees get collectively in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.
First up, as regular, is the Nobel Prize in medication or physiology, which shall be introduced Monday by a panel of judges on the Karolinska Institute within the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will observe, with one announcement each weekday till Oct. 9.
Here are some issues to know concerning the Nobel Prizes:
An thought extra highly effective than dynamite
The Nobel Prizes had been created by Alfred Nobel, a Nineteenth-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held greater than 300 patents however his declare to fame earlier than the Nobel Prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive extra secure.
Dynamite quickly turned fashionable in development and mining in addition to within the weapons trade. It made Nobel a really wealthy man. Perhaps it additionally made him take into consideration his legacy, as a result of towards the tip of his life he determined to make use of his huge fortune to fund annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
The first Nobel Prizes had been introduced in 1901, 5 years after his demise. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden’s central financial institution. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it’s all the time introduced along with the others.
Peace in Norway
For causes that aren’t completely clear, Nobel determined that the peace prize needs to be awarded in Norway and the opposite prizes in Sweden. Nobel historians suspect Sweden’s historical past of militarism could have been an element.
During Nobel’s lifetime, Sweden and Norway had been in a union, which the Norwegians reluctantly joined after the Swedes invaded their nation in 1814. It’s potential that Nobel thought Norway could be a extra appropriate location for a prize meant to encourage “fellowship among nations.”
To this present day, the Nobel Peace Prize is a very Norwegian affair, with the winners chosen and introduced by a Norwegian committee. The peace prize even has its personal ceremony within the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s demise — whereas the opposite prizes are introduced in Stockholm.
What’s politics obtained to do with it?
The Nobel Prizes challenge an aura of being above the political fray, targeted solely on the advantage of humanity. But the peace and literature awards, specifically, are generally accused of being politicized. Critics query whether or not winners are chosen as a result of their work is actually excellent or as a result of it aligns with the political preferences of the judges.
The scrutiny can get intense for high-profile awards, resembling in 2009, when President Barack Obama gained the peace prize lower than a 12 months after taking workplace.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is an unbiased physique that insists its solely mission is to hold out the desire of Alfred Nobel. However, it does have hyperlinks to Norway’s political system. The 5 members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, so the panel’s composition displays the ability steadiness within the legislature.
To keep away from the notion that the prizes are influenced by Norway’s political leaders, sitting members of the Norwegian authorities or Parliament are barred from serving on the committee. Even so, the panel isn’t all the time considered as unbiased by international nations. When imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo gained the peace prize in 2010, Beijing responded by freezing commerce talks with Norway. It took years for Norway-China relations to be restored.
Gold and glory
One motive the prizes are so well-known is they arrive with a beneficiant amount of money. The Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, raised the prize cash by 10% this 12 months to about $1 million. In addition to the cash, the winners obtain an 18-carat gold medal and diploma after they gather their Nobel Prizes on the award ceremonies in December.
Most winners are proud and humbled by becoming a member of the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. But two winners refused their Nobel Prizes: French author Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the literature prize in 1964, and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, who declined the peace prize that he was meant to share with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973.
Several others weren’t in a position to obtain their awards as a result of they had been imprisoned, resembling Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, who shared final 12 months’s peace prize with human rights teams in Ukraine and Russia.
Lack of range
Historically, the overwhelming majority of Nobel Prize winners have been white males. Though that’s began to vary, there’s nonetheless little range amongst Nobel winners, significantly within the science classes.
To date, 60 ladies have gained Nobel Prizes, together with 25 within the scientific classes. Only 4 ladies have gained the Nobel Prize in physics and simply two have gained the economics prize.
In the early days of the Nobel Prizes, the shortage of range amongst winners could possibly be defined by the shortage of range amongst scientists generally. But at the moment critics say the judges must do a greater job at highlighting discoveries made by ladies and scientists exterior Europe and North America.
The prize committees say their selections are primarily based on scientific advantage, not gender, nationality or race. However, they don’t seem to be deaf to the criticism. Five years in the past, the top of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences mentioned it had began to ask nominating our bodies to verify they don’t overlook “women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”