Important information on the coming Nobel Prizes

 Important information on the coming Nobel Prizes

The Nobel committees meet in Stockholm and Oslo at the beginning of October to decide who will receive this year's awards.

Information on the Nobel Prizes

In Scandinavia, fall has arrived, which signals the start of the Nobel Prize season.

The Nobel committees meet in Stockholm and Oslo at the beginning of October to decide who will receive this year's awards.

The Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology will once again be the first to be announced on Monday at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. There will be one announcement for the prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and economics every workday until October 9.

What you should know about the Nobel Prizes is as follows:

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and businessman in the 19th century, founded the Nobel Prizes. His claim to fame prior to receiving the Nobel Prizes was creating dynamite by combining nitroglycerine with a substance that made the explosive more stable. He possessed more than 300 patents.

In addition to the weapons business, dynamite quickly gained popularity in the fields of mining and building. It made Nobel extremely wealthy. Perhaps it also caused him to consider his legacy because, toward the end of his life, he took the decision to utilize his enormous wealth to support annual awards given to people who, the previous year, had bested humanity.

Five years after his passing, in 1901, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded. The Swedish central bank established a sixth award for economics in 1968. Although the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, according to Nobel purists, it is always awarded with the others.

Nobel made the decision that the peace prize would be given in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden, for reasons that are not totally known. According to Nobel historians, Sweden's long history of militarism may have played a role.

The union between Sweden and Norway, which the Norwegians grudgingly joined when the Swedes conquered their nation in 1814, existed during Nobel's lifetime. Perhaps Nobel believed that Norway would be a better choice for a prize intended to promote "fellowship among nations."

The Nobel Peace Prize is still entirely a Norwegian endeavor, with a Norwegian committee choosing and announcing the winners. On December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's passing, the peace prize even gets its own ceremony in Oslo, the capital of Norway, while the other awards are given out in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prizes give off the impression that they are above the political fray and are just concerned with what is best for humanity. But some people have accused the peace and literature awards in particular of becoming political. Critics wonder whether winners are chosen because of their work's actual excellence or because it fits the judges' political viewpoints.

For high-profile honors, such as the Nobel Peace Prize that President Barack Obama received in 2009 less than a year after taking office, the scrutiny can become severe.

The sole purpose of the independent Norwegian Nobel Committee, according to its members, is to carry out Alfred Nobel's wishes. It is nevertheless connected to the political structure of Norway. Since the panel's five members are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, its membership reflects the balance of power in the legislature.

Members of the Norwegian government or Parliament in office are prohibited from serving on the committee in order to dispel any notion that the awards are influenced by Norway's political leaders. Even so, other nations don't always consider the panel to be impartial. Beijing halted trade negotiations with Norway after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was imprisoned, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Years passed before relations between China and Norway were repaired.

The prizes' large monetary value is one factor in their notoriety. The Nobel Foundation, the organization in charge of award administration, increased the prize money this year by 10% to 11 million kronor ($1 million). When the recipients receive their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December, they also get a diploma and an 18-carat gold medal.

The majority of winners feel both honored and humbled to join the ranks of Nobel laureates, including Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein. However, two Nobel Prize winners rejected to accept them: Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho turned down the peace prize in 1973 that he was supposed to share with American diplomat Henry Kissinger, and French writer Jean-Paul Sartre withdrew the literary prize in 1964.

Others, like the pro-democracy activist from Belarus Ales Bialiatski, who received the peace prize with organizations from Russia and Ukraine last year, were unable to accept their honors because they were detained.

The vast majority of Nobel Prize recipients throughout history have been white men. There is still minimal variety among Nobel laureates, especially in the science categories, despite the fact that this is beginning to change.

There have been 60 female Nobel laureates to date, 25 of whom were in the scientific fields. Only four and two women, respectively, have received the physics and economics Nobel Prizes.

The dearth of variety among winners in the early years of the Nobel Prizes could be attributed to the general lack of diversity among scientists. Today's detractors contend that the judges must do a better job of emphasizing discoveries made by women and scientists from countries other than Europe and North America.

The award committees claim that they focus their selections on scientific quality rather than factors like gender, ethnicity, or nationality. They do not, however, ignore the criticism. In 2005, the president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that the academy had begun to request that nominating organizations make sure to include "women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations."