Breezy Explainer: Interesting facts about the Nobel prize

Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish entrepreneur and the creator of dynamite, founded the prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace through his will. Five years after Alfred’s passing, the first prizes were given out in 1901.

The Nobel season is here

The beginning of October means Nobel Prize season. Six days, six awards and six new names from around the world have been added to the most illustrious group of scientists, authors, economists, and champions of human rights in the world.

The season of Nobel Prize announcements for this year begins on Monday with the prize for medicine. Thereafter, prizes for physics, chemistry, and literature will be announced each day through Thursday. The economics prize will be awarded on October 10, while the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday.

Interesting facts about the Nobel prize

1. On December 10, the day of Alfred’s passing in 1896, each prize, which is worth 10 million kronor (almost $900,000), is presented along with a certificate and a gold medal.
2. The economics prize, which is officially named the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was not established by Alfred but by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
3. The Nobel Prizes including the prize for economic sciences have been given out 609 times between 1901 and 2021.
4. The judges are not allowed to discuss their decisions for 50 years, according to the Nobel laws. Therefore, it will probably take some time before we are certain how the judges chose the contestants for 2022 and who made it onto their shortlists.
5. The judges make every effort to avoid giving away the winners before the announcements, but occasionally information does leak. European bookmakers occasionally give odds on potential Nobel laureates in literature and the peace prize.
6. Thousands of people around the world are eligible to submit nominations for the Prizes. They include university professors, lawmakers, previous Nobel laureates, and the committee members themselves.
7. Despite the nominations being kept a secret for 50 years, especially for the Nobel Peace Prize, the proposers sporadically make their proposals public.
8. The other prizes are given out in Sweden, but the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Norway. Alfred desired it that way. His specific reasons are unknown, but during his lifetime, Sweden and Norway came together to form a union that eventually disintegrated in 1905. The Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation, which administers the award money, and the fiercely autonomous Oslo-based peace prize committee occasionally have strained relations.