Nobel Prize: history, winners, trivia

O AwardNobel is a worldwide recognition, organized by the foundation of the same name and given every year by Swedish and Norwegian institutions to people or organizations that carried out, in the previous year, researches and discoveries beneficial to humanity.

THE ceremony Nobel Prize takes place every year on the day December 10th, in Stockholm, in the Sweden, and in Oslo, in the Norway. The personalities that win the award become notables in the world in front of their areas of expertise.

Check out the five categories in which the Nobel Prize is divided:

Chemistry
Physics
Medicine
Literature
Peace

History

The history of the Nobel Prize is linked to Alfred Nobel, who was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden. he was considered self-taught and was fluent in several languages. The Swede acted as a chemist and invented explosives: dynamite and ballistite.

According to research, in 1888, when Alfred's brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper erroneously illustrated a note on the subject with a photo of the chemist, even calling him "dealer of death".

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The episode made Alfred think about how he wanted to be remembered when he died and, in particular, how his own would be recognized. legacy. With that in mind, he conceived the Nobel Prize — a ceremony that honored people who had collaborated with the welfare of humanity.

Nobel's testament

To help the prize take shape, Nobel put in his will that, approximately, 94% of your fortune should be destined for the prize and nominated groups of people to choose the winners.

Alfred Nobel he died in December 10, 1896, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. When the will was opened, his family was impressed by what he read and even contested the document, which lacked information.

1st Nobel Prize

It took five years, after the death of its founder, for the Nobel Foundation to be created. The first prizes were delivered at December 10, 1901, at the Royal Conservatory of Stockholm.

Meet the winners of the first Nobel Prize in 1901:

Chemistry: Jacobus H. Van't Hoff;
Physics: Wilhelm C. Rontgen;
Medicine: Emil A. von Behring;
Literature: Rene A. F. Sully Prudhomme;
Peace: Jean H. Dunant and Frédéric Passy.

Appointments

According to research, the Nobel Prize committee usually sends, in September of the year before the awards are given, appointment forms about three thousand people what work in the five areas into which the categories are divided.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, forms are also sent to governments, former winners of the award and for the old or current Norwegian committee members.

The Nobel Prize committee set the day December 31th like deadline for return of the nomination forms. After receiving the answers, pre-select about 300 people/organizations and sends the works to the institutions that deliver the awards.

It is important to highlight that the indicated are not informed that they have been selected.. As per the history of the Nobel Prize, nominations are held in secrecy for 50 years.

Ceremony

According to the rules of the Nobel Prize ceremony, at most three people and two different jobs can be selected in each category.

Nobel Prize winners win:

A diploma;
An 18-carat gold medal;
An amount, determined by the Nobel Foundation, which is around 1 million dollars.

According to the Nobel Foundation, laureates need to carry out a public lecture within a period of six months afteraccept O recognition. However, most winners do the exhibition during the Nobel Week, in Stockholm. On the occasion, a party is held in full dress.

Curiosities

Although the Nobel Prize has five categories, it is not necessarily awarded in all areas every year. Overall, the most frequently awarded prize is Peace.
The posthumous award is only given if the person is announced as the winner but dies before the December 10 ceremony.
Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in 1903. In 1911, she became the first person to win two copies of the prize in different areas (Physics and Chemistry) due to her discovery and research on two chemical elements: o radio and polonium.

Marie Curie has twice won the Nobel Prize, one in Physics and the other in Chemistry.

Before Malala, 25-year-old Australian physicist Lawrence Bragg had been the youngest person to win a Nobel Prize in 1915.
Mahatma Gandhi he nearly won the prize when he was nominated three days before his assassination in 1948.
James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins were the three scientists who won the Physiology or Medicine prize in 1962 for the discovery of the double strand of the DNA.
Martin Luther King Jr. was also one of the youngest to be recognized by the Nobel Foundation. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at age 35.
Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, writer and literary critic, was the first person to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1964. Anyway, the writer is recognized for having taken the award.
Alexander Fleming shared the 1945 Physiology or Medicine Prize with Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect on infectious diseases.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for writing books that revealed the brutality of labor camps in the Soviet Union.
O International Committee of the Red Cross he was the biggest Nobel Prize winner. He was awarded in 1917, in 1944 and in 1963, when he turned 100 years old.

Controversies

- Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974. There were criticisms because, despite being members of the Swedish Academy, they were not well known outside the country.

- Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for contributing to peace in Israel. A year later, the last of them was murdered by an Israeli. Later, accusations against Arafat also surfaced.

-barack obama, former president of the United States, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to maintain diplomacy among peoples. However, despite having led the nuclear agreement with Iran and the resumption of relations with Cuba, many did not agree with the award for judging the content of his policy more bellicose than pacifist.

There was controversy surrounding the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama in 2009.[2]

- In 2014, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, aged 17, was the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Some criticized the title for judging it too young and inexperienced.

- The award given to American Bob Dylan, one of the most representative folk musicians rock, in 2016, in the Literature category, also generated controversy because he is not considered a writer.

Brazil in the Nobel Prize

Although Brazil has already been nominated for the Nobel Prize, was never graced. Check out, below, some personalities that were close to be laureates:

Carlos Chagas: nominated for the Medicine Prize, in 1913 and 1921;
Adolfo Lutz: nominated in the Medicine category in 1938;
Manoel de Abreu: also indicated in Medicine, in 1946;
Cesar Lattes: nominated for the prize for Physics, in 1950;
Jorge Amado: nominated in the Literature category in 1967;
Carlos Drummond de Andrade: also nominated for the literary prize in 1967
Sérgio Henrique Ferreira: he competed for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, in 1982;
Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns: he ran, in 1990, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Know more: Arthur Ávila, Brazilian Fields Medal winner
*Image credits:
[1] Credit: jstone / Shutterstock
[2] Credit: Credit: Everett Collection / Shutterstock
By Silvia Tancredi
Journalist

Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/curiosidades/premio-nobel.htm