The Nobel Prizes regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual achievement in the world .It is announced every year for excellence in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Economics, and a distinguished achievement towards humanity (Peace).

NOBEL PRIZE – AN OVERVIEW

On 27 November 1895, a year before his death, Alfred Nobel signed the famous will that most of his estate, more than SEK 31 million should be converted into a fund and invested in “safe securities.”

The income from the investments was to be “distributed annually in the form of prizes to those who during the preceding year have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

As per Nobel’ s will , the award was given since 1901 in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Literature. In 1968 ,Economics was included by a donation from Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank to commemorate the bank’s 300th anniversary 

INSTITUTIONS THAT CHOOSE WINNERS

The Nobel Committees of the prize-awarding institutions are responsible for the selection of the candidates

  1. Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  2. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: The Karolinska Institutet
  3. Nobel Prize in Literature: The Swedish Academy
  4. Nobel Prize in Peace: A five-member Committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament
  5. Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

PRIZE AMOUNT

  • The Nobel Prize consists of a Nobel Gold Medal and a document confirming the prize amount
  • The Nobel Prize amount for 2020 is set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 10.0 million per full Nobel Prize.
  • Between 1901 and 2020, the Prizes have been awarded 603 times, the recipients during this period being 934 Laureates and 28 organizations.

INDIANS HONOURED WITH NOBEL PRIZE

  • Rabindranath Tagore (Literature, 1913)
  • C V Raman (Physics, 1930)
  • Hargobind Khorana (Medicine, 1968)
  • Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979)
  • Subramanian Chandrashekhar (Physics, 1983)
  • Dalai Lama (Peace, 1989)
  • Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998)
  • Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (2009)
  • Kailash Satyarthi (Peace, 2014).

NOBEL PRIZE 2020

PHYSIOLOGY / MEDICINE

  • The Nobel Prize has been awarded to American medical researchers and virologists Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice, and British scientist Michael Houghton for the discovery of Hepatitis C which was discovered in 1982 by screening millions of DNA samples.
  • The discovery of Hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.

PHYSICS

  • The Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 2020 was awarded to three astrophysicists Roger Penrose from the UK, Reinhard Genzel from Germany, and Andrea Ghez from the USA.
  • Roger Penrose received half of this year’s prize for the discovery that a black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.
  • Genzel and Ghez received the second half of the prize for the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milkyway galaxy, now known to be the Sagittarius A.

CHEMISTRY

  • Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer A Doudna of the USA have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, one of gene technology’s sharpest tool.
  • It is for the first time a Nobel science prize has gone to a women-only team.
  • The CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors can be used to change the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.

PEACE

  • The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations (UN) agency, for its efforts to combat hunger, bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.
  • The WPF is the UN’s primary agency that works upon Eradicating Hunger which is one the UN’s Sustainable development.

ECONOMICS

  • American Economists, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson have been awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, 2020 for their work on commercial auctions.
  • Their work will benefit sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world.
  •  It will help in auctioning goods and services, such as radio frequencies, which are difficult to sell in traditional ways.

LITERATURE

  • The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 has been awarded to the USA poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
  • Her poetry focuses on the painful reality of being human, dealing with themes such as death, childhood, and family life.
  • She is the fourth woman to win the prize for literature since 2010

BY

Boopathi A,

III B.Sc(Hons.)Agriculture,

Kumaraguru Institute of Agriculture

E mail

Boopathi.17ag@kia.ac.in