Civilisation/Nobel Prizes
Introduction
The Nobel Prizes are prizes awarded annually to people (and, in the case of the Peace Prize, to organizations) who have completed outstanding research, invented ground-breaking techniques or equipment, or made an outstanding contribution to society in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, medicine or physiology and economics.
The Prizes were instituted by the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel through his will. They were first awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel's death. The prize in economics, instituted by the Bank of Sweden, has been awarded since 1969.
Prizes cannot be revoked. Since 1974, no award may be made posthumously.
The Prizes are then awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
A prize may not be shared among more than three people.
The Peace Prize ceremony has been held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (1905–1946); the Aula of the University of Oslo (1947–1990); and most recently at the Oslo City Hall. As of 2005, the other Prize ceremonies have been held at the Stockholm Concert Hall.
Since 1902, the King of Sweden has, with the exception of the Peace Prize, presented all the prizes in Stockholm
The Nobel Prize amount is currently set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 11 million per full Nobel Prize
In the history of the Nobel Prize, there have been only four people to have received two Nobel Prizes. These are:
- Marie Curie – Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911)
- Linus Pauling – Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962)
- John Bardeen – Physics (1956 and 1972)
- Frederick Sanger – Chemistry (1958 and 1980)
- Barry Sharpless - Chemistry (2001 and 2022)
Frederick Sanger is the only Briton to have received two Nobel Prizes
Only two people have the distinction of being an Oscar winner and a Nobel Laureate –
- George Bernard Shaw, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925, won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1938
- Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2000
Marie Curie shared her Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) with her husband Pierre Curie (and with Henri Becquerel). Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, would similarly share a Nobel Prize. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and is the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences
Oldest winner – John Goodenough, for Chemistry in 2019. Aged 97
Youngest winner – Malala Yousafzai. Aged 17
Niels Bohr (Physics, 1922) and his son, Aage (Physics, 1975) won Nobel Prizes
Jan and Niko Tinbergen are the only brothers to win Nobel Prizes
William Bragg and his son, Lawrence Bragg, won the prize for Physics in 1915 for their work on X-ray crystallography’
Husband and wife team, May-Britt and Edvard Moser from Norway, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014
Ronald Ross was the first Briton to win a Nobel Prize (Physiology or Medicine, 1902) for his work on malaria
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was the first woman after Marie Curie to be awarded alone a Nobel Prize in sciences
Hideki Yukawa was the first Japanese to win a Nobel Prize, in 1949
Andre Geim is the only winner of a Nobel Prize and an Ig Nobel prize (for magnetically levitating a frog)
Alfred Michelson was the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in sciences
First Nobel Prize awarded for astronomical research – Ryle and Hewish (Physics) in 1974
Ernest Walton was the first Irishman to win a Nobel Prize in science
Arnold Sommerfeld was nominated for the Nobel Prize 84 times, more than any other physicist (including Otto Stern, who got nominated 82 times), but he never received the award
The husband of Marie Curie's second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on that organisation's behalf
Only two people have been both Nobel laureate and U.S. Vice President – Charles G. Dawes and Al Gore
People who have declined a Nobel Prize –
- John Paul Sartre (Literature, 1964)
- Le Duc Tho (Peace, 1973)
People who were forced to decline a Nobel Prize –
- Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk – by Hitler
- Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) – by the Soviet Union
Nobel Peace Prize
For a list of winners see List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates
Nobel Prize in Literature
For a list of winners see List of Nobel Prize in Literature laureates
Nobel Prize in Physics
Niels Bohr (1922) and his son, Aage (1975) both won the Nobel Prize in Physics
William Bragg and his son, Lawrence Bragg, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 for their work on X-ray crystallography’. Lawrence was 25 at the time
Swedish physicists Manne Siegbahn and his son Kai both received the Nobel Prize in Physics
JJ Thomson and his son George Paget Thomson both won the Nobel Prize in Physics
First Nobel Prize awarded for astronomical research was won by Martin Ryle and Anthony Hewish in 1974
Only three women have won the Nobel Prize in physics – Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018
C.V. Raman was the first Asian person to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science
Notable winners
| 1901 | Wilhelm Rontgen | for the discovery of X-rays |
| 1903 | Antoine Becquerel, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie | for their work on radioactivity |
| 1904 | Lord Rayleigh | for the discovery of argon |
| 1906 | JJ Thomson | for the discovery of the electron |
| 1907 | Alfred Michelson | for The Michelson–Morley experiment which proved that the ether does not exist |
| 1909 | Marconi and Braun | for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy |
| 1910 | Johannes Diderik van der Waals | for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids |
| 1912 | Gustaf Dalen | for the invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys |
| 1913 | Heike Onnes | for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led to the production of liquid helium |
| 1914 | Max von Laue | for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals |
| 1918 | Max Planck | for his discovery of energy quanta |
| 1921 | Albert Einstein | for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect |
| 1922 | Niels Bohr | for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them |
| 1923 | Robert Millikan | for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect |
| 1925 | Franck and Hertz | for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom |
| 1927 | Charles Wilson
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for work on the cloud chamber
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| 1929 | Louis de Broglie | for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons |
| 1930 | C.V. Raman | for his work on the scattering of light |
| 1932 | Werner Heisenberg | for the creation of quantum mechanics |
| 1933 | Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrodinger | for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory |
| 1935 | James Chadwick | for the discovery of the neutron |
| 1936 | Carl Anderson
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for the discovery of the positron
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| 1938 | Enrico Fermi | for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons |
| 1939 | Ernest Lawrence | for the invention of the cyclotron |
| 1945 | Wolfgang Pauli | for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle |
| 1947 | Edward Appleton | for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the Appleton layer |
| 1949 | Hideki Yukawa | for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces |
| 1951 | Cockcroft and Walton | for splitting the atom |
| 1954 | Max Born | for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics |
| 1955 | Willis Lamb | for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum |
| 1956 | Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley | for inventing the transistor |
| 1958 | Pavel Cherenkov | for the discovery of Cherenkov radiation |
| 1959 | Chamberlain and Segre | for their discovery of the antiproton |
| 1960 | Donald Glaser | for the invention of the bubble chamber |
| 1962 | Lev Landau | for work on superfluidity |
| 1963 | Eugene Wigner
Johannes Jensen and Maria Goeppert Mayer |
for laying the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics
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| 1965 | Richard Feynman | for his work on quantum electrodynamics |
| 1966 | Lee, Osheroff and Richardson | for the discovery of superfluidity in helium-3 |
| 1967 | Hans Bethe | for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars |
| 1968 | Luis Walter Alvarez | for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics |
| 1969 | Murray Gell-Mann | for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions |
| 1971 | Dennis Gabor | for his invention and development of the holographic method |
| 1972 | Bardeen, Cooper and Schriffer | for the theory of superconductivity |
| 1973 | Brian Josephson | for his pioneering theoretical work on superconductivity |
| 1974 | Martin Ryle and Anthony Hewish | for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics |
| 1978 | Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson | for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation |
| 1979 | Glashow, Salem and Weinberg | for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles |
| 1983 | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars |
| 1986 | Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer and Ernst Ruska | for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope (Binnig and Rohrer) and the electron microscope (Ruska) |
| 1995 | Martin Perl and Frederick Reines | for the discovery of the tau lepton (Perl) and the neutrino (Reines) |
| 2000 | Jack Kilby | for the invention of the integrated circuit |
| 2006 | John Mather and George Smoot | for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation |
| 2010 | Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov | for groundbreaking experiments regarding graphene |
| 2011 | Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess | for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae |
| 2014 | Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura | for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes |
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Notable Winners
| 1901 | Jacobus H. van ’t Hoff | for his work on osmotic pressure |
| 1902 | Hermann Fischer | for his work on sugar and purine synthesis |
| 1903 | Svante Arrhenius | For his electrolytic theory of dissociation |
| 1904 | William Ramsay | for his discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air |
| 1905 | Adolf von Baeyer | for his work on organic dyes |
| 1906 | Henri Moissan | for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds |
| 1908 | Ernest Rutherford | for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances |
| 1909 | Wilhelm Ostwald | for his work on catalysis |
| 1911 | Marie Curie | for the discovery of radium and polonium |
| 1912 | Victor Grignard | for the discovery of the Grignard reagent |
| 1918 | Fritz Haber | for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements |
| 1921 | Frederick Soddy | for his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes |
| 1935 | Frederic Joliet and Irene Joliet-Curie | for their synthesis of new radioactive elements |
| 1944 | Otto Hahn | for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei |
| 1951 | Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan | for discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements |
| 1958 | Frederick Sanger | for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin |
| 1960 | Willard Libby | for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination |
| 1961 | Melvin Calvin | for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants |
| 1964 | Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin | for the discovery of the structure of vitamin B12 |
| 1965 | Robert Burns Woodward | for the synthesis natural products including vitamin B12 |
| 1980 | Frederick Sanger | for the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids |
| 1993 | Kary Mullis | for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method |
| 1995 | Crutzen, Molina and Rowland | for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone |
| 2020 | Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna | for the development of a method for genome editing |
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute
Husband and wife team Carl and Gerti Cori from Czechoslovakia won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947. Gerti Cori was first female winner of the prize
Husband and wife team, May-Britt and Edvard Moser from Norway, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014
Elizabeth Blackburn became the first Australian woman Nobel laureate in 2009 for her discovery of telomerase
Tu Youyou was the first Chinese woman Nobel laureate
In 2011, Ralph Steinman was awarded the prize; however, unknown to the committee, he had died three days before the announcement
Notable Winners
| 1901 | Emil von Behring | for discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin |
| 1902 | Ronald Ross | For his work on the transmission of malaria |
| 1904 | Ivan Pavlov | for research pertaining to the digestive system |
| 1905 | Robert Koch | for his tuberculosis findings |
| 1906 | Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal | in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system |
| 1908 | Paul Ehrlich | for work on immunity |
| 1923 | Banting and Macleod | for the discovery of insulin. Banting shared the award with Best |
| 1929 | Frederick Hopkins | for the discovery of vitamins |
| 1930 | Karl Landsteiner | for his discovery of human blood groups |
| 1932 | Sherrington and Adrian | for their discoveries regarding the functions of neurons |
| 1933 | Thomas Hunt Morgan | for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity |
| 1936 | Otto Loewi and Henry Dale | for their discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses |
| 1943 | Henrik Dam and Edward Doisy | for the discovery of Vitamin K |
| 1945 | Fleming, Chain and Florey | for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases |
| 1948 | Paul Muller | for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison |
| 1949 | Antonio Moniz | for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses |
| 1952 | Selman Waksman | for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis |
| 1953 | Hans Krebs | for his discovery of the citric acid cycle |
| 1958 | George Beadle and Edward Tatum | for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells |
| 1960 | Peter Medawar and Frank Burnet | for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance |
| 1962 | Crick, Watson, and Wilkins | for discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material |
| 1965 | Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob | their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis |
| 1973 | Niko Tinbergen, Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz | for their discoveries concerning social behaviour patterns in animals |
| 1983 | Barbara McClintock | for the discovery of jumping genes |
| 1988 | James W Black | for the development of beta-blockers |
| 1993 | Richard Roberts and Philip Sharp | for the discovery of split genes |
| 2001 | Hunt, Nurse and Brenner | for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle |
| 2003 | Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur | for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging |
| 2008 | Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier | for the discovery of HIV |
| 2010 | Robert Edwards | for the development of in vitro fertilization |
| 2015 | Tu Youyou | for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria |
| 2022 | Svante Paabo | for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution |
Nobel Prize in Economics
Full name of Nobel Prize in Economics is “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”
Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 awarded to Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who are the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel Prize
Notable Winners
| 1969 | Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen | for work on econometrics |
| 1970 | Paul Samuelson | First American winner |
| 1972 | John Hicks | First British winner |
| 1973 | Wassily Leontief | Identified the paradox that the U.S. (the most capital-abundant country in the world by any criteria) exported labour-intensive commodities and imported capital-intensive commodities |
| 1974 | Friedrich Hayek | for work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations |
| 1976 | Milton Friedman | |
| 1981 | James Tobin | |
| 1994 | John Nash | Game theory |
| 1998 | Amartya Sen | for his contributions to welfare economics |
| 2008 | Paul Krugman | for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography |
| 2009 | Elinor Ostrom | First woman to win |
| 2017 | Richard Thaler | Nudge theory |
| 2019 | Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo | Second woman to win |
| 2020 | Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson | for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats |
| 2022 | Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig | for research on banks and financial crises |
| 2023 | Claudia Goldin | for advancing understanding of women’s labour market outcomes |
Nobel Prize Winners in 2024
| Peace | Nihon Hidankyo (Japan) |
| Literature | Han Kang (South Korea) |
| Physics | John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks” |
| Chemistry | David Baker “for computational protein design” and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for protein structure prediction” |
| Physiology or Medicine | Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation" |
| Economics | Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity" |
