Civilisation/Nobel Prizes
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 set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 8 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)
Frederick Sanger is the only Briton and the only living person to have received two Nobel Prizes
Only one person has 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
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.
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 science
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 is the only Irishman to win a Nobel Prize in science
Declined –
John Paul Sartre (Literature, 1964)
Le Duc Tho (Peace, 1973)
Forced to decline –
Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk – by Hitler
Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) – by Soviet Union
Economics
Full name of Nobel Prize in Economics is “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”
| 1969 | Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen | First prize. 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 | |
| 2008 | Paul Krugman | for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography |
| 2009 | Elinor Ostrom | First woman to win |
Physiology or Medicine
| 1901 | Emil von Behring | for discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 2010 | Robert Edwards | for the development of in vitro fertilization |
Chemistry
| 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 |
| 1908 | Ernest Rutherford | for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances |
| 1911 | Marie Curie | for the discovery of the elements 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 work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin |
| 1964 | Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin | for the discovery of the structure of vitamin B12 |
| 1980 | Frederick Sanger | for the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids |
| 1993 | Kary Mulis | 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 |
Physics
| 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 and Arthur Compton | for work on the cloud chamber |
| 1929 | Louis de Broglie | for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons |
| 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 | for the discovery of the positron |
| 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 |
| 1963 | Eugene Wigner | for laying the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics |
| 1965 | Richard Feynman | for his work on quantum electrodynamics |
| 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 | Reines and Cowan | for the co-detection of the neutrino |
| 2000 | Jack Kilby | for the invention of the integrated circuit |
| 2006 | Mather and 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 Peace Prize
| 1901 | Henry Dunant and Frederic Passy | Dunant founded the International Red Cross Movement |
| 1903 | Randal Cremer | First British winner |
| 1904 | Institute of International Law | |
| 1905 | Bertha von Suttner | First female winner |
| 1906 | Theodore Roosevelt | for brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth. First American winner |
| 1917 | International Committee of the Red Cross | Also won in 1944 and 1963 |
| 1919 | Woodrow Wilson | for promoting the League of Nations |
| 1922 | Fridtjof Nansen | for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner |
| 1925 | Austen Chamberlain | for the Locarno Treaties |
| 1934 | Arthur Henderson | for his work for the League of Nations in disarmament |
| 1935 | Carl von Ossietzky | for his struggle against Germany's rearmament |
| 1937 | Robert Cecil | for his work with the League of Nations |
| 1950 | Ralph Bunche | First negro to win |
| 1952 | Albert Schweitzer | for founding a hospital in Gabon |
| 1953 | George Marshall | for the European Recovery Program, known at the Marshall Plan |
| 1954 | United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | Also won in 1981 |
| 1957 | Lester B Pearson | for helping to resolve the Suez Crisis |
| 1959 | Dag Hammarskjold | Awarded posthumously |
| 1962 | Linus Pauling | for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing |
| 1964 | Martin Luther King | |
| 1965 | United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) | |
| 1969 | International Labour Organization | |
| 1970 | Norman Borlaug | for developing strains of high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat for developing countries |
| 1971 | Willy Brandt | |
| 1973 | Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho | Le Duc Tho declined the award |
| 1975 | Andrei Sakharov | |
| 1976 | Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan | Founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement |
| 1977 | Amnesty International | |
| 1978 | Anwar Sadat and Menchem Begin | |
| 1979 | Mother Teresa | Founder of Missionaries of Charity |
| 1983 | Lech Walesa | Founder of Solidarity |
| 1984 | Desmond Tutu | |
| 1987 | Oscar Arias | President of Costa Rica |
| 1988 | United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces | |
| 1898 | Dalai Lama | |
| 1990 | Mikhail Gorbachev | |
| 1991 | Aung San Suu Kyi | |
| 1993 | Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk | |
| 1994 | Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres | |
| 1995 | Joseph Rotblat and Pugwash Conferences | Pugwash is a village in Nova Scotia |
| 1996 | Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta | East Timor |
| 1997 | International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Jody Williams | |
| 1998 | John Hume and David Trimble | |
| 1999 | Medicins Sans Frontieres | |
| 2000 | Kim Dae Jung | for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea |
| 2001 | United Nations and Kofi Annan | |
| 2002 | Jimmy Carter | |
| 2003 | Shirin Ebadi | Iran. First Muslim female winner |
| 2004 | Wangari Maathai | Kenya |
| 2005 | International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei | for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes |
| 2006 | Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank | for microcredit work in Bangladesh |
| 2007 | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore | |
| 2008 | Martti Ahtisaari | Former President of Finland |
| 2009 | Barack Obama | |
| 2010 | Liu Xiaobo | for his struggle for fundamental human rights in China |
| 2011 | Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia), Leymah Gbowee (Liberia) and Tawakkul Karman (Yemen) | for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights |
| 2012 | European Union | |
| 2013 | Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons | |
| 2014 | Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi | Aged 17, Malala Yousafzai is the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize |
Nobel Prize in Literature
Most laureates by country –
France 15
USA 10
UK 10
| 1901 | Sully Prudhomme | French poet and essayist |
| 1907 | Rudyard Kipling | First British winner |
| 1907 | Selma Lagerlof | Sweden. First female winner |
| 1911 | Maurice Maeterlinck | Belgium |
| 1913 | Rabindranath Tagore | India. First non-European winner |
| 1921 | Anatole France | |
| 1923 | WB Yeats | First Irish winner |
| 1925 | George Bernard Shaw | |
| 1927 | Henri Bergson | |
| 1929 | Thomas Mann | principally for Buddenbrooks |
| 1930 | Sincair Lewis | First American winner |
| 1932 | John Galsworthy | principally for The Forsyte Saga. Second British winner |
| 1933 | Ivan Bunin | First Russian winner |
| 1934 | Luigi Pirandello | |
| 1936 | Eugene O’Neill | |
| 1938 | Pearl Buck | First female American winner |
| 1945 | Gabriela Mistral | Chile. First Latin American winner |
| 1946 | Hermann Hesse | |
| 1948 | TS Eliot | |
| 1949 | William Faulkner | |
| 1950 | Bertrand Russell | |
| 1953 | Winston Churchill | |
| 1954 | Ernest Hemingway | principally for The Old Man and the Sea |
| 1957 | Albert Camus | |
| 1958 | Boris Pasternak | Declined |
| 1962 | John Steinbeck | |
| 1964 | John-Paul Sartre | Declined |
| 1965 | Mikhail Sholokhov | |
| 1967 | Miguel Asturias | Guatemala |
| 1969 | Samuel Beckett | |
| 1970 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn | |
| 1971 | Pablo Neruda | Chile |
| 1973 | Patrick White | First Australian winner |
| 1976 | Saul Bellow | |
| 1982 | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | |
| 1983 | William Golding | |
| 1986 | Wole Soyinka | First African winner. Born in Nigeria |
| 1990 | Octavio Paz | |
| 1991 | Nadime Gordimer | First South African winner |
| 1992 | Derek Walcott | Saint Lucia |
| 1993 | Toni Morrison | First Afro-American winner |
| 1995 | Seamus Heaney | |
| 1997 | Dario Fo | |
| 1999 | Gunter Grass | Born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland |
| 2001 | VS Naipaul | Born in Trinidad |
| 2002 | Imre Kertesz | Hungary |
| 2003 | J.M. Coetzee | South Africa |
| 2004 | Elfriede Jelinek | Austria |
| 2005 | Harold Pinter | |
| 2006 | Orhan Pamuk | Turkey |
| 2007 | Doris Lessing | |
| 2008 | J.M.G. Le Clezio | France |
| 2009 | Herta Muller | Germany. Born in Romania |
| 2010 | Mario Vargas Llosa | Peru |
| 2011 | Tomas Transtromer | Sweden |
| 2012 | Mo Yan | China |
| 2013 | Alice Munro | Canada |
| 2014 | Patrick Modiano | France |
