The Nobel Prize

On the 10th of December every year, a number of internationally prominent scientists and one literary author shake hands with the king of Sweden. They also receive the Nobel Prize, which consists of a diploma, a medal and a large amount of money. In the year 2000 the sum was nine million Swedish crowns, which is about one million Euro. At the same time, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. It is awarded in Norway because Sweden and Norway were joined in a union when Alfred Nobel founded the prize in 1895.

Alfred Nobel was born in Sweden in 1833. When he was young, he dreamt about being a writer, but his father wouldn't allow it. Instead he became a chemist and an inventor. For a long time Nobel worked on finding a safe way to handle the explosive nitroglycerine. That work finally led to an invention which he called Dynamite. That invention enabled him to build a world business empire that made him a very wealthy man.

Nobel decided that his money, after his death, should be used to award prominent persons in science, literature, and persons working to promote peace. The interest from his money is annually divided into five equal parts. One part each goes to the people who have made the most important discoveries in the fields of physics, chemistry and medicine. One part goes to the person who has produced the most outstanding work in the field of literature, and the last part to the person who has done the best work for world peace. In 1969 a prize in economics was added in memory of Alfred Nobel.

Between 1901 and 2000, more than seven hundred Nobel Prizes were awarded. Many famous men can be mentioned, but only thirty women. The most famous among the women is perhaps the Frenchwoman Marie Curie who received the Nobel Prize twice. Both prizes were awarded for her work with radioactivity and radioactive elements. That work led to her death, from leukemia, in 1934. Other famous women are found especially among the laureates in literature, e.g. the Swede Selma Lagerlöf (1909), the Norwegian Sigrid Undset (1928) and the American Toni Morrison (1993).

German Wilhelm Röntgen received the very first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901. He discovered X-rays, and for that the German emperor granted him a knighthood. Other famous physics laureates are the Dane Niels Bohr (1922) and not least the German-born Albert Einstein (1921). Einstein didn't get the prize for his theory of relativity, but for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Among the recipients of the prize in medicine we find the Scotsman Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered that penicillin could cure infectious diseases (1945), and the Austrian Konrad Lorenz, who laid down the foundations of ethology, the scientific study of animal behavior (1973).

The laureates in literature are perhaps best known to the public. The British statesman Sir Winston Churchill (1953), the Icelander Halldór Laxness (1955) and the Irishman Samuel Beckett (1969) hardly need further introduction. Nobel's Peace Prize, finally, is the only prize that can be awarded to organisations. In 1999, for example, the French organisation "Doctors Without Frontiers" received the prize. But the prize is often awarded to individuals as well, for example Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Mother Teresa (1979) and Nelson Mandela, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with Frederik Willem de Klerk.

To select laureates is no easy task, and the different Nobel committees are often criticised in the media. The prize in literature is frequently discussed, but it is the Nobel Peace Prize that creates the most heated debate. When the South African Reverend Desmond Tutu received the prize in 1984, the whole Nobel ceremony in Oslo was subject to a bomb threat.

The Nobel Prize ceremony isn't just of concern to scientistsit has also become a great public event. In Sweden, millions of television viewers follow the solemn ceremony and the grand royal banquet with more than 1200 guests.