All you wanted to know about the Nobel Prizes

Hello & welcome to this weekend’s GK Nugget. The Nobel prizes have been announced this week and no prizes for guessing, but that’s the subject of this weekend’s nugget.

Now we’ve all stayed abreast of the news and know that the Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine & the Nobel Peace Prize have been announced. The Nobel Prize for Economics will be announced on Monday while the prize for Literature will be announced later.

Here’s some trivia that you might not have been aware of, about these prestigious awards.

The Nobel Prizes are named after Alfred Nobel, a Swedish entrepreneur, who was famous for inventing dynamite. As per his will, after his death in 1896, his fortune was used to annually award individuals who have bestowed the greatest benefit on mankind.

The Nobel Prizes were originally handed out in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Physiology, Literature & Peace but in 1968 Sweden's central bank (Sveriges Riksbank) established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences – which is referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The prizes are handed out every year on 10^th December (death anniversary of Alfred Nobel) in a grand ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden (Except the Peace Prize which is handed out in Oslo, Norway since it is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee). In his will, Alfred Nobel didn't explain as to why the Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded by a Norwegian committee while the other four prizes were to be handled by Swedish committees.

Between 1901 and 2015, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 573 times to 874 Laureates and 26 organizations (A Nobel Prize can be awarded to a maximum of 3 recipients).

Only 4 individuals (including Marie Curie, the 1^st female Nobel Laureate – Physics Prize in 1903 & Chemistry Prize in 1911) & 2 organisations have received the prize twice, while the International Committee of the Red Cross has been honoured by the Nobel Peace Prize thrice (1917, 1944 & 1963).

Since inception in 1901, the Nobel Prizes have not been handed out 49 times (out of the 6 prizes handed out every year), most of them during World War 1 & 2.

The youngest Nobel Laureate is Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2014 at the age of 17 years, while the oldest recipient is American Leonid Hurwicz who won the Economics Science prize in 2007 at eh age of 90.

From 1974, the Nobel Foundation decided that a Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement of the prize had been made.

Each Nobel Laureate (the word is derived from the laurel wreaths of Greek mythology, which were awarded to winners in athletic competitions & poetic meets) receives a diploma, a handmade gold medal (Made of 18 carat green gold & plated with 24 carat gold) & a monetary prize (currently 8 million Swedish Kronor, which is approx US $0.9 million)

5 Indians have won the Nobel Prizes – Rabindranath Tagore (1913, Literature), C. V. Raman (1930, Physics), Mother Teresa (1979, Peace), Amartya Sen (1998, Economics) & Kailash Satyarthi (2014, Peace).

The Norwegian Nobel Committee confirmed that Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Peace Prize in 1937–39, 1947, and a few days before he was assassinated in January 1948. Later, members of the Committee expressed regret that he was not given the prize.

Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006, said, "The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize. Whether the Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question".

That’s all for this weekend.