Five things to know about the Nobel Prizes

The kick-off is in Sweden. The Nobel Prizes will be awarded by October 14 in Stockholm and Oslo. On Monday, medicine got the ball rolling by honoring Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA. Here are five things to know about these awards, given to those who have worked to « the benefit of humanity »according to the wish of their creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

Winners in prison

Since 1901, five Nobel Peace laureates were in detention when the prize was awarded to them. In 1936, German journalist and pacifist Carl Von Ossietzky languished in a Nazi concentration camp. Under house arrest, the Burmese opponent Aung San Suu Kyi, awarded in 1991, was authorized by the military junta to go to Oslo, but gave up for fear of not being able to return.

In 2010, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned. His chair, on which the prize is placed, is symbolically left empty. In 2022, Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatski (also spelled Beliatski) is incarcerated and his wife Natalia Pintchouk represents him at the ceremony. Last year, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi celebrated her Nobel Prize from her cell in Evin prison.

Also readJon Fosse, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

From 17 to 97 years old

« For well-born souls, value does not wait for the number of years » : in 2014, Pakistani human rights activist Malala Yousafzaï became the youngest winner of a Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17. The Australian Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1915, jointly with his father, at the age of 25, for work carried out at the age of 21. Iraqi Nadia Murad was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 25, in 2018 for her efforts in favor of the Yazidi minority.

Conversely, the American John B. Goodenough remains the oldest laureate, winning the Nobel in Chemistry at the age of 97 in 2019 for his work on the lithium-ion battery. His compatriot Arthur Ashkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics a year earlier at the age of 96.

No posthumous award

Since 1974, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation have stipulated that a prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death occurs after the announcement of the name of the laureate. Until the customary rule was written in black and white, only two deceased personalities, Swedes, had been rewarded: the poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt (literature in 1931) and the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (peace in 1961), probably murdered. It has also happened that a prize is not awarded, in the form of tribute to a deceased winner, as in 1948, after the death of Gandhi. In 2011, shock: after the award of the medicine prize, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute learned of the death three days previously of a laureate, the Canadian Ralph Steinman. The foundation nevertheless decides to engrave its name in its prestigious list.

Nobel, the poet

Passionate about English poetry, a great fan of Shelley and Byron, Alfred Nobel went down in history as the inventor of dynamite but he never stopped versifying, in Swedish or in the language of Shakespeare. In a letter to a friend he wrote: « I do not have the slightest pretension to qualify my verses as poetry. I write from time to time for the sole purpose of relieving depression, or improving my English ». In 1862, the 29-year-old young man, doubting his talent, wrote to a young woman in French: « Physics is my domain, not the pen ». In the year of his death, 1896, he wrote a scandalous tragedy, Nemesison the execution in the 16th^e century in Rome of a woman who murdered her incestuous father-in-law. Nemesis appears but all copies are burned after his death. Except three.

Three hundred proposals per year

The archives of the Swedish Academy are full of letters from the biggest names in letters and publishing attracting the attention of academicians for the Literature prize.

Each year, it receives some 300 written nominations from former laureates, academicians, organizations and other professors in the literary and linguistic world. Everyone highlights the strengths of their favorite. Please note, it is not possible to nominate yourself as a candidate.

To be valid, applications must be renewed every year and received before January 31. Candidates must – in principle – have published within the year.