The final Nobel Prize for the year 2005 in the field of literature was awarded to the playwright and author Harold Pinter from England. However, we know little about the secrets of the prize and its founder, the prestigious award.
“Father” of the award is the Swedish scientist Alfred Bernard Nobel (1833 – 1896), who was fluent in four languages (English, French, German, Russian) and had a deep passion for research and invention. He received 355 patents related to 150 inventions surrounding explosives. He established 90 factories in 20 countries and founded two major federations consisting of 60 companies. His inventions made significant contributions to the construction of roads, bridges, harbors, canals, tunnels through mountains or seas, and mining…
The Nobel Foundation and the Nobel Prize
Nobel was very wealthy. He left behind 33,200,000 Swedish crowns, equivalent to 160 million euros. Upon his death, he bequeathed a Nobel Fund consisting of almost all that money converted into safe stocks generating profit.
The profits are divided into five equal parts, creating five awards named after Nobel to honor five individuals (or more) who have made significant contributions in five fields: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine (or Physiology), Literature, and Peace. Since 1969, the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been established at the initiative of the Swedish Bank. Each prize is awarded to an individual or a group (no more than three people). The five Nobel prizes stipulated by Nobel have been awarded since 1901.
Prize Regulations
Information related to the Nobel selection process must remain confidential for 50 years. The term of the judges is four years. The Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry is decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Medicine or Physiology: the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute (established in 1810). Literature: the Swedish Academy. Peace: the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament. Economics: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Award (for each prize)
A diploma, the Nobel Medal designed by Erik Lindberg in 1902: featuring a portrait of Nobel against a backdrop of Nature and Science, and a monetary award (which varies depending on the fund’s profit). According to Nobel’s calculations, in the early years, each award was equivalent to 15 years of a university professor’s salary. In 1948, each prize was worth 32,000 USD. In 1980, it rose to 210,000 USD. By the late 1990s, it reached 1 million USD. And this year, it stands at 1.36 million USD.
Controversies Surrounding the Nobel Prize
There is a legend that Alfred Nobel, who remained single throughout his life, refused to honor mathematicians, fearing that one day the award would go to Gösta Magnus Mittag-Leffler, a Swedish mathematician who had stolen the heart of Sophie Hess, his lover.
To restore fairness to a fundamental science, the most prestigious award for mathematics, the Fields Medal, was established in 1936 in Toronto, Canada, at the initiative of Professor John Charles Fields. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years and carries a modest prize of 1,500 euros.
Has the Nobel Prize been precise and fair? One might regret that in over 700 individuals who have received the Nobel Prize in over 100 years, figures like Freud, Proust, or Gandhi were absent. Freud’s influence has been enormous not only in medicine and society but also in culture, particularly literature. Gandhi was a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize five times but never won. Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity in 1905, yet it wasn’t until 1921 that he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for a less significant work. Not to mention the towering figure of Leo Tolstoy…
