htmlOctober 4th to 11th is the day when the list of winners of this year's Nobel Prize 3 awards was announced. Media around the world are focusing on Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . Up to now, the winners of physics, chemistry, medicine, etc. have been issued. They are all people who have made great contributions to human society. Since 1901, Swedish and Norwegian in tuxedo have awarded awards every year at solemn ceremonies, presenting awards to those who have made the most outstanding contributions in the fields of science, medicine, literature, economy (from 1968) and peace.
But do you know how Nobel Prize winners are nominated and selected? First of all, we need to understand the origin of the Nobel Prize.
. Alfred Nobel - the pacifist who invented explosives
Nobel Prize is named after its patron Alfred Nobel. Alfred Nobel is a Swedish-born scientist and inventor who has more than 300 patents in his lifetime, but his most famous invention is explosives.
Nobel and his father Emanuel are both engineers. During their work, they found that nitrified glycerol can explode, but it is very unstable, and a slight vibration may cause it to explode. Therefore, in the following time, they kept trying to stabilize nitroglycerin. He made various attempts, and even though Nobel's brother died in the experiment, they did not give up. Eventually, he found that it would become stable after mixing nitrifying glycerin into a paste, and would explode only after it was ignited with black gunpowder and detonator. He named the invention explosives and sold it to mining companies for mining.
Soon after, explosives were widely used in wars. In his career, Nobel has become the driving force behind the development of deadly weapons such as rockets, cannons and new gunpowder by selling gunpowder. Nobel may be regarded as the earliest arms dealer.
Nobel's explosives and weapons factory brought him huge wealth, but ironically, the arms dealer was a pacifist. In his later years, he communicated with Satner, the leader of the international peace movement. Nobel's letter read: Maybe my factory can end the war earlier than your parliament. If weapons are developed to the peak, one day, both armies can destroy each other in one second, then all countries will be afraid of war, will disband their army, and the world will be peaceful. "
However, it would be great if Nobel's prophecy was true. The inventor died in 1896 at the age of 63. He did not see the horror of World War I . The weapons he created killed millions of people in this war; he did not know that World War II developed a weapon that could make a final decision in the war - nuclear weapon , but the world still has no peace.
2. "The greatest contribution of mankind" award
a year before his death , he signed his third and last will. In his will, he donated his huge property, about $200 million (equivalent to $176 billion now), and established a fund to distribute the annual interest earned by the foundation to those who made the greatest contribution to human progress in the previous year.
Nobel identified five areas of awarding the prize in his will: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, or Medicine, Literature, Peace. Nobel wrote that the Peace Prize should be awarded to “people who have made great contributions to promoting friendship among countries, abolishing or deregulating standing troops, or to successfully hold a peace conference. "
968, due to the donation of Swedish Central Bank "Commemorating Alfred Nobel", economic science added the sixth category. Strictly speaking, this is not the Nobel Prize (because the original intention of the Nobel Prize did not have this prize), but it is still called the Nobel Prize.
3. How to nominate someone to win the Nobel Prize
First of all, we cannot nominate ourselves to win the Nobel Prize.If everyone can nominate , then all the Nobel Prizes may be won by China, after all, we are so powerful.
Nobel for the four most technical awards, namely Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economic Sciences, can only be awarded through invitations. Each award has its own permanent Nobel Committee , which sends nomination invitations to about 3,000 people, all top scholars and former Nobel Prize winners in the field. After
, each Nobel Committee, after consulting experts and thinking deeply, selects the Nobel Prize winners in their minds from these candidates and then sends them to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Finally, the Academy of Sciences counts the number of votes, and the one with the most votes will be elected as the winner of the year.
The nomination procedures for the other two awards, "Literary Award" and "Peace Award", are slightly different. For example, the Literature Committee itself issued an invitation to nomination, but also welcomed recommendations from other "qualified persons". "qualified persons" include professors of literature or linguistics from famous colleges and universities, and presidents of the National Literary Society. 18 members of the Swedish Academy of Sciences will select the final Nobel Prize in Literature winners, all of which are famous writers, literary scholars and historians.
Nobel Peace Prize has no nomination invitation, it only relies on "qualified persons" to recommend . "Qualified Persons" include members of the Hague, government ministers or former Nobel Peace Prize winners, as well as university professors in the fields of social sciences, law, philosophy and religion, and directors of the Institute of Peace.
The Nobel Peace Prize is no longer the Royal Academy of Sweden, but the Norwegian Parliament. Nobel clearly stated in his will that the Peace Prize was selected by five members elected by the Norwegian Parliament. This is why the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economic Sciences and Literature was awarded at Stockholm (Swedish capital) and the Nobel Prize in Peace was awarded at Oslo ( Norway capital).
In order to reduce the impact on the judges, the entire selection process is strictly confidential, and the complete list proposed by the judges will not be made public after 50 years.
4. Nobel Prize selection time
—— From September to January 31 of the following year, there are usually 1,000-2,000 candidates who accept various Nobel Prize recommendations.
—From February 1, the Nobel Prize jury will screen and approve the recommended candidates, and the work situation will be kept strictly confidential.
—In mid-October, the list of winners of various Nobel Prizes will be announced. ——December 10th of each year is the anniversary of the death of Nobel. The Nobel Prize award ceremony is held in Stockholm and Oslo respectively. The Swedish king and queen attended and awarded the prize.
. How much is the Nobel Prize bonus?
Nobel Prize was an international prize from the beginning, thanks mainly to its huge prize money. The Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901, and the prize was converted to about 900,000 US dollars. Later, in the mid-20th century, the World War broke out, and the foundation's income decreased, so the prize was reduced; In the 1990s, the Nobel Prize's prize rebounded, with the prize of about 1.16 million US dollars .
Nobel's will clearly stipulate that the amount of bonuses for the first five categories must be equal. In 1968, with the addition of the Economic Science Awards, five categories increased to six. In the Nobel Prize awarding charter, can award two prizes in each category each year, with the prizes evenly divided among these two prizes; up to three people can jointly win a Nobel Prize, in which case the prizes are divided equally into three copies.
In addition to the prize money, all Nobel Prize winners will also receive an 18-carat Nobel Gold Medal and a Nobel Diploma printed by Swedish and Norwegian artists and calligraphers.
6. The shortcomings of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize is now the most famous award in the world and is very authoritative. However, many people also believe that the Nobel Prize, which has been going through more than 100 years, needs some improvement, which is mainly reflected in two aspects:
First of all, many researchers believe that Nobel Foundation should increase the number of winners, and three should not be the limit. The essence of modern research is teamwork, and large-scale international cooperation has become the norm, so the Nobel Prize should be awarded to the entire team, not just a few top figures (this is just a problem that Nobel Prize in Science currently exists, and the Peace Prize has been awarded to institutions, such as ICRC ).
Secondly, there are too few categories of Nobel Prizes. When Nobel first founded these awards, he included the most important areas of the time, but times have changed. Where are the categories for mathematics, computer science, biology and genetics or environmental science? If the Nobel Foundation added economic science in the 1960s, it should now add more other influential fields that can represent the study of the twenty-first century.
Nobel Prize is generally considered to be the highest honor that can be achieved in all award fields worldwide (physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, literature and economics). In 2015, Tu Youyou became the first scientist in China to win the Nobel Prize. This is a supreme honor and the pride of us Chinese.
