What are the Nobel Prizes? And why are they controversial?
If it's October, it must be time for the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners – the world-famous academic awards nicknamed 'the eggheads' Oscars.' The winners may not necessarily be on the cover of popular magazines, but they will earn the respect of their peers, and join a select bunch of winners representing the pride of their professions.
But what's the story of the Nobel Prizes? Why is one handed over in a different country to the others? Who are the only two winners to turn it down? What's it got to do with dynamite? And who was this Nobel anyway?
How many Nobel Prizes are there?
Five. Or six. Depends how picky you are.
Technically, there are five Nobel Prizes, as decreed by their originator Alfred Nobel (more later on this fascinating chap): Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. However, since 1969 there has been a sixth gong, for Economics.
This last award, clunkily entitled the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and paid for by Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank, is discounted by pedants as separate – even though it's administered by the Nobel Foundation.
There's also another exception among the six, and that's the Peace prize. The other five are announced in Sweden, but Peace is conferred in a different country. Why? We'll come back to that after meeting the man behind the name.
Who was Alfred Nobel?
Alfred Bernhard Nobel packed a lot into his time on Earth. Born in Stockholm in 1833, he died 63 years later in Liguria, Italy; in between those two notable events he was a chemist, engineer, businessman, polyglot (he could speak six languages by the age of 24), philanthropist and inventor who held 355 patents during his lifetime.
It's a well-known irony that the man behind the Nobel Peace Prize invented dynamite – which he named after the Greek concept dunamis, meaning power, potential or ability, after initially considering the brand name Nobel's Safety Powder. Less well-known is that his family owned an iron and steel firm which he helped to grow into a major manufacturer of armaments including cannon.
He spent time living in Stockholm, St Petersburg, Hamburg, Paris and Liguria, while traveling far and wide. He never married, although he did write a prose tragedy (in English) about an Italian noblewoman which was considered so scandalous it was destroyed after publication. An agnostic in his youth, Nobel attended Lutheran church in Paris but became an atheist in later years.
Oh, and at the time of his death he was accused by France of high treason – for selling a patented gunpowder to Italy. He had offered it to France first, but they rejected it – and business is business.
How did he set up the prizes?
Secretly. Nobel died unmarried and without children, but his birth family were still surprised to hear that the previous year he had signed a will leaving the bulk of his considerable wealth to fund annual prizes given "to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind."
A bust of Alfred Nobel at the announcement of the prizes that bear his surname. /CFP
To pay for it, he left 94 percent of his assets – 31 million Swedish kronor, which might be around $350 million today – to establish those first five prizes: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. (Sveriges Riksbank has paid for the Economics gong since its inception in 1968, the bank's tricentenary year.)
They should, he stipulated, be awarded annually without distinction of nationality… but there is a split between nations for the Peace Prize – perhaps ironically, perhaps purposefully.
Why is the Peace Prize decided by a different country?
Whereas the other five prizes are administered by Sweden, the Peace Prize is selected and organized by a Norwegian committee. Why? The answer is war… and peace.
Until 1814, Norway was in union with Denmark, and they sided with France during the Napoleonic wars. After Napoleon's defeat, the UK and Russia handed Norway into joint sovereignty with Sweden, partly as compensation for Russia's 1809 annexation of Finland from Sweden. The Sweden-Norway union lasted from 1814 to 1905 – thus entirely encapsulating Alfred Nobel's lifespan.
Nobel didn't explain why the Peace Prize should be a Norwegian affair. Some historians have suggested he was wary of Sweden's somewhat more militaristic history. (A probably apocryphal story arose that he decided to set up the prizes after premature reports of his death led to him reading newspaper obituaries calling him 'the merchant of death'; no such obituary has actually been found.)
It's possible Nobel wanted a more arm's-length connection. Perhaps, with Swedish academies responsible for selecting four winners, he simply felt it made sense to 'give' Norway the chance to decide who had "done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses."
Interestingly, he left the election of the five-person selection committee to the Norwegian parliament - although sitting MPs are disbarred.
Who nominates candidates – and who selects the winners?
Firstly, you can't nominate yourself. Sorry.
Instead, nominations come from thousands of academy members, professors, scientists, previous winners and members of parliamentary assemblies, who are specifically asked to submit candidates.
Then, the nominations are sifted by the four prize-awarding institutions specifically designated by Alfred Nobel. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses the winners for Physics, Chemistry and Economics; the Karolinska Institutet decides on Physiology/Medicine; the Swedish Academy decides the Literature winner; and the five-person Norwegian committee awards the Peace Prize.
Who has won?
The first Nobel Prizes were presented in 1901, five years after Alfred's death. Since then, more than 600 have been given to around 1,000 winners (or 'laureates' as they are known).
The oldest recipient was the 2019 Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough, at the age of 97; the youngest was 2014 Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, at 17.
Two people have won Nobels in two different fields – Marie Curie (Physics in 1903, shared; Chemistry in 1911) and Linus Pauling (Chemistry in 1954, Peace in 1962), with Pauling being the only person to win two unshared awards.
Three other people have won the same award twice – John Bardeen (Physics in 1956 and 1972), Frederick Sanger (Chemistry in 1958 and 1980) and Karl Sharpless (2001 and 2022). The Red Cross won the Peace Prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees won the Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981.
Winners are generously endowed: as of 2023, each receives around $1 million, not to mention an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma for the office wall. These are handed out at the December prizegivings: until the laureates are announced in October, nobody outside the Nobel organization knows who is shortlisted – and furthermore, names who are shortlisted without winning remain unrevealed for 50 years afterwards.
Has anyone turned down a Nobel Prize?
Laureates join a historic roll-call including Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa and Barack Obama – but not everybody has accepted.
The 1964 jury gave the Literature award to French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, but he refused it, saying "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form."
Another refusenik was Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho: chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize alongside U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger, he refused on the grounds there was no peace in Vietnam.
Others have tried to turn down a prize. The 1925 Literature laureate George Bernard Shaw tried to refuse the money but agreed it could be used to found the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.
And in 1958, Literature laureate Boris Pasternak turned it down, but the Swedish Academy insisted "this refusal in no way alters the validity of the award."
Have there been any controversies?
The overwhelming majority of winners have been white men. To some extent that reflects the barriers that have historically prevented women and non-white people reaching the top in science and literature. However, some critics still say the Nobel judges tend to overlook women and those outside Europe and North America.
In 2018, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences head made it publicly known that nominating bodies should not overlook "women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations."
That same year, the Literature Prize was suspended after a #MeToo scandal hit the Academy, with several members resigning in disgust after allegations of sexual misconduct and subsequent closing of ranks. The Academy has undergone major reforms since then – and the Nobel Prize remains one of the most famous and sought-after awards that humans can win.
Originally published by CGTN Europe, 5 Oct 2023
