Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his “remaining realisable assets” to be used to establish awards which are known as “Nobel Prizes.” Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.
Alfred’s varied interests are reflected in the prize he established and which he lay the foundation for in 1895 when he wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the prize.
Nobel Prize 2022 Winners
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022
Awarded to: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger
Awarded For: Experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.
Awarded by: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Key Points:
- These three scientists worked independently, to establish the quantum property of entanglement, a property that has an important role in quantum computers.
- Quantum Computers: Computers fast enough to manage many tasks much more efficiently than conventional machines.
- Quantum mechanics: Describes the behavior of particles – atoms, electrons, photons and almost everything in the molecular and sub molecular realm.
- Quantum entanglement is a process by which a pair of subatomic particles are allowed to exist in a shared state where they have complementary properties, such that by measuring the properties of one particle, one can automatically know the properties of the other particle.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022
Awarded to: Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless
Awarded For: The development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry
Awarded by: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Key Points:
- K Barry Sharpless has won the Nobel Prize second time. In 2001- Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions.
- Click Chemistry: Term coined by Sharpless. It is a form of simple and reliable chemistry, where reactions occur quickly, and unwanted by-products are avoided.
- Dr Pääbo’s research has resulted in the rise of a new scientific disciple called Paleogenomics.
- Paleogenomics: It is the study and analysis of genes of ancient or extinct organisms.
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021: Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, Giorgio Parisi- for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021: Benjamin List, David MacMillan- for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.
- The Nobel Peace Prize 2021: Maria Ressa, Dmitry Muratov- for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.
- The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah- for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021: American scientists David Julius, Ardem Patapoutian- for their discovery of the receptors that allow humans to feel temperature and touch.
- The Nobel Prize in Economic Science 2021: David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens- for new insights about the labour market.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2022
Awarded to: one individual and two organisations
Individual: Ales Bialiatski from Belarus
The Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.
Awarded For: They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.
Awarded by: Norwegian Nobel Committee
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Read more about Nobel Peace Prize 2022, click here.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022
Awarded to: Annie Ernaux
Awarded For: for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Key Points:
First French woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.
Her other major work includes “A Women’s Story”, “Happening”, “A Girl’s Story”, “Getting Lost”.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022
Awarded to: Svante Pääbo
Awarded For: for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution
Awarded by: The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Key Points:
The Nobel Prize in Economic Science 2022
Awarded to: Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig
Awarded for: for research on banks and financial crises
Awarded by: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Prize Money: 10 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates
Key Points:
The Nobel announcement read, “Modern banking research clarifies why we have banks, how to make them less vulnerable in crises and how bank collapses exacerbate financial crises. The foundations of this research were laid by Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig in the early 1980s. Their analyses have been of great practical importance in regulating financial markets and dealing with financial crises.”
Nobel Prize Winners 2021
List of Nobel Prize Winners from India till 2022
- 1913- Rabindranath Tagore-Nobel Prize for Literature – for his collection of poems, Gitanjali
- 1930- CV Raman- Nobel Prize for Physics- for his exemplary work in the field of light scattering (Raman Effect)
- 1968- Har Gobind Khurana– Nobel Prize for Medicine- for his work in genetic research
- 1979- Mother Teresa- Nobel Peace Prize- for helping and uplifting the poor and needy
- 1983- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar– Nobel Prize for Physics- for the work relating to the structure and evolution of stars
- 1998- Amartya Sen– Nobel Prize for Economics- for his work on welfare economics
- 2009- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan– Nobel Prize in Chemistry- groundbreaking scientific papers on the RNA structure of ribosomal unit
- 2014- Kailash Satyarthi– Nobel Peace Prize – for his work towards eradicating child labour and child trafficking
- 2019- Abhijit Banerjee– Nobel Prize for Economics- experimental approach to alleviating global poverty
