In addition to the medal and diploma, each winner takes home R$4.8 million; the honor has been awarded since 1901
Designed by Swede Alfred NobelTHE Nobel Prize is intended for those “who, in the year preceding the award, have conferred the greatest benefit to Humanity” in the categories of Medicinal, Chemical, Physicist, Literature, Peace and, more recently, Economy. This year’s winners will be announced starting Monday the 7th.
In addition to the medal and diploma, each winner takes home a significant sum of money, 11 million Swedish kronor (about 986 thousand US dollars or R$4.8 million).
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, inventor and philanthropist who lived in the 19th century. He made numerous important contributions to science, owning no fewer than 355 patents.
Nobel’s most important invention, which turned him into a billionaire industrialist, was dynamite. He came to have dozens of dynamite factories in Europe and the United States, accumulating his fortune.
In 1895, a year before he died, Nobel signed his will, leaving much of his fortune to create a series of prizes, in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace, which he called the Nobel Prize.
The Prize for Economics was created only in 1968, by the Swedish central bank, in memory of Alfred Nobel.
Nobel’s will also indicated which scientific institutions would have the task of choosing the winners: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the prizes in chemistry, physics and economics; the Karolinska Institute for Medicine award; the Swedish Academy of Literature; as well as a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian parliament for the Peace Prize.
The affiliates of these institutions themselves nominate the candidates. Prizes can be shared by up to three people and cannot be awarded to a person who has already passed away.
Prizes began to be awarded in 1901. Since then, 621 prizes have been awarded to about a thousand people or organizations, some of whom have already received the Nobel Prize more than once.
Only five people have received the prize twice: Marie Curie (for Physics, in 1903, and for Chemistry, in 1911), Linus Pauling (for Chemistry, in 1954, and for Peace, in 1962), John Bardeen (for Physics, in 1956 and 1972), Frederik Sanger (for Chemistry, in 1958 and 1980) and Barry Sharpless (for Chemistry, in 2001 and 2022).
In recent years, the award has received criticism for its lack of gender and racial inclusion. Of the 954 people honored in more than a century, only 60 were women and only 17 were black, like former US President Barak Obama; former South African president Nélson Mandela and civil rights activist Martin Luther King.
Source: Terra
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