60 Fun Facts About Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes were first awarded in which year, the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death?

Nobel died on 10 December 1896 at his villa in San Remo, Italy, and the prizes are still presented on that date.

Which of these was NOT one of the five prize fields named in Alfred Nobel's will?

Economics was added in 1968 by Sweden's central bank; the Nobel Foundation has said no further prizes will be created.

Which institution established the economics prize in memory of Alfred Nobel in 1968?

Sweden's central bank was celebrating its 300th anniversary; the first economics award went to Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch in 1969.

Which Nobel Prize is presented in Oslo rather than Stockholm?

Nobel's will gave the job to a Norwegian committee; the ceremony has been held at Oslo City Hall since 1990.

What is the maximum number of individuals who may share a single Nobel Prize?

The Peace Prize can also go to organisations of any size, which is how the Red Cross and the EU have won.

Which body chooses the laureates for physics, chemistry and economics?

The Karolinska Institute's Nobel Assembly picks medicine, and the Swedish Academy picks literature.

What percentage of his total assets did Alfred Nobel leave to fund the prizes?

That was 31 million kronor; his relatives were so unhappy that Norway's parliament did not approve the will until April 1897.

On what date each year are the Nobel Prizes presented?

It is the anniversary of Nobel's death; the winners are announced in the first two weeks of October.

After the Stockholm ceremony, roughly 1,300 guests sit down to the Nobel banquet in which room?

It is in Stockholm City Hall; the flowers on the table of honour come from Sanremo, where Nobel died, and dancing follows in the Golden Hall.

Roughly how many guests attend the Peace Prize banquet at Oslo's Grand Hotel?

Guests include the president of the Storting and, since 2006, the King and Queen of Norway.

Since 1980 Nobel medals have been struck in 18-carat green gold plated with 24-carat gold. Roughly how much does one weigh?

Earlier medals were solid 23-carat gold, which is why two German laureates' medals were dissolved in acid to hide them from the Nazis.

The Latin inscription on the Nobel physics, chemistry, medicine and literature medals is adapted from whom?

'Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes' comes from book 6 of the Aeneid.

The Peace Prize medal was designed in 1901 by which Norwegian sculptor?

He was not an engraver, so the dies were cut by Erik Lindberg, who designed the Swedish medals.

How much money came with each Nobel Prize awarded in 2025?

That is roughly one million US dollars, presented as a document confirming the amount.

Who received the first Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1901?

He was honoured for discovering the rays that many languages still name after him.

Emil von Behring won the first Nobel Prize in Medicine for serum therapy against which disease?

His work also underpinned the tetanus vaccine.

Which Dutch chemist won the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1901?

He was cited for the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions.

Which author did 42 Swedish writers expect to win the first literature Nobel, which went to Sully Prudhomme?

Tolstoy never won; neither did Chekhov, Joyce or Proust.

Which Red Cross founder shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 with Frédéric Passy?

Dunant was also honoured for initiating the Geneva Convention.

Who is the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize?

She shared the 2014 Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi at age 17.

Who, at 97, became the oldest Nobel laureate with the 2019 chemistry prize for batteries?

He shared it with Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino.

Who is the youngest science laureate, sharing the 1915 physics prize with his father at 25?

He and William Henry Bragg were honoured for analysing crystal structure with X-rays.

The youngest Nobel laureate in Literature was 41 when he won in 1907. Who?

The oldest was Doris Lessing at 88.

Who is the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences?

Physics in 1903 for radioactivity, chemistry in 1911 for isolating radium; she was also the first woman laureate.

Who is the only laureate to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes?

Chemistry in 1954 for the chemical bond, and the 1962 Peace Prize for campaigning against nuclear weapons.

John Bardeen won the physics prize twice, in 1956 and 1972. His first was for inventing what?

The second was for the theory of superconductivity.

Frederick Sanger's second chemistry Nobel, in 1980, was for a method of doing what?

Karl Barry Sharpless later matched him with chemistry prizes in 2001 and 2022.

Which organisation is the only laureate to have won three Nobel Prizes?

It won the Peace Prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963; UNHCR has won twice.

Which family has received the most Nobel Prizes, four awards to five people?

Marie won two, Pierre one, and their daughter Irène shared one with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1935.

Who received the second posthumous Nobel Prize under the old rules, in 1961?

The UN Secretary-General had died in a plane crash during the Congo Crisis; since 1974 laureates must be alive at the October announcement.

Why was Ralph Steinman's 2011 medicine prize upheld though he had died three days before the announcement?

The rule since 1974 says laureates must be thought alive at the announcement; nobody on the committee had known he had died.

Which writer refused the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, saying a writer must not become 'an institution'?

George Bernard Shaw had earlier tried to refuse the money but not the prize; the cash founded the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.

Which Soviet writer was forced by his government to decline the 1958 Literature Prize?

The Swedish Academy 'refused his refusal', and his son finally accepted the medal in 1989.

Which Vietnamese negotiator declined to share the 1973 Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger?

Two members of the Norwegian committee resigned in protest at the award; Tom Lehrer said political satire had become obsolete.

Hitler barred three German laureates from accepting Nobel Prizes: Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and whom?

Domagk had won the 1939 medicine prize for the first sulfa antibacterial drug; all three later received their diplomas and medals.

In 1948 the Peace Prize was not awarded on the grounds that there was 'no suitable living candidate'. Whose death that year is that widely taken to refer to?

When the Dalai Lama won in 1989 the committee chairman called it partly a tribute to Gandhi's memory.

No Nobel Prizes at all were awarded in 1940, 1941 or 1942. Why?

Three members of the Norwegian committee fled into exile, and the Peace Prize resumed in 1944.

Albert Einstein's 1921 physics prize cited his discovery of the law of what?

Relativity was never explicitly rewarded; the photoelectric paper was one of four he published in his 'miracle year' of 1905.

Which Bengali poet became in 1913 the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize in any category?

He was cited for the poems of Gitanjali, which he had translated into English himself; his medal was later stolen.

Who was the first Black Nobel laureate, winning the 1950 Peace Prize for Arab–Israeli mediation?

An American diplomat, he was one of the architects of the 1949 armistice agreements.

Which singer-songwriter won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature?

He had first been nominated in 1996 by a professor at the Virginia Military Institute.

Toni Morrison, the 1993 Literature laureate, was the first what?

Her novel Beloved had won the Pulitzer in 1988.

Which US president's 2009 Peace Prize was controversial because nominations closed 11 days into his term?

He said himself that he did not feel deserving of the award; Carter and Al Gore's prizes had already drawn accusations of liberal bias.

Who was the first woman to win the economics prize, in 2009, for her work on governing the commons?

Only two other women have won it: Esther Duflo in 2019 and Claudia Goldin, the first solo female winner, in 2023.

Frederick Banting, the youngest medicine laureate at 32, won in 1923 for co-discovering what?

He shared his prize money with his student Charles Best, whom the committee had overlooked.

Which economist's 1994 prize was so contentious that the award was redefined as a social-sciences prize?

The change opened the door to political scientists and psychologists.

In Stockholm, laureates receive their diploma directly from whose hands?

In Oslo the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee does the honours; each diploma is uniquely designed for its recipient.

Where was the Peace Prize ceremony held from 1901 to 1904?

It later moved to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, then the university, and since 1990 to City Hall.

How many women had won the Nobel Peace Prize by the end of 2023?

More than in any other category; by the end of 2023, 111 individuals and 27 organisations had received the Peace Prize in total.

Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 1947?

By 2024 the prize had gone to 232 laureates, only 14 of them women.

Every laureate is required by the Nobel Foundation's statutes to do what?

The lectures normally happen during Nobel Week, and since 2004 the BBC has co-produced a discussion programme called Nobel Minds.

Which satirical prize, given since 1991, honours achievements that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'?

Real Nobel laureates hand out the ten awards each year.

Which economics laureate died in 1996 after his prize was announced but before it could be presented?

Under the rules his award stood, since he had been alive at the announcement.

Alfred Nobel signed his final will in November 1895 at which venue?

He had written several wills; this one, drafted over a year before his death, stunned his family.

Arafat, Rabin and Peres shared the 1994 Peace Prize a year after which agreement?

Prizes are usually awarded long after the achievement; Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar waited half a century for his 1983 physics prize.

In which Italian town did Alfred Nobel die of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1896?

He was 63 and died in his own villa there, a little over a year after signing his final will in Paris.

Whose death prompted the premature 1888 obituary 'The Merchant of Death Is Dead'?

The French newspaper's mix-up reportedly made Nobel worry about how he would be remembered, eight years before his actual death.

Which iron and steel mill did Nobel buy in 1894 and turn into a major armaments maker?

Alongside dynamite he also invented ballistite, a smokeless powder that became a precursor of many military explosives.

Who physically hands the laureate the prize at the Oslo ceremony?

The King of Norway and the Norwegian government attend, but the committee chair does the presenting.

Roughly how many people are sent Nobel nomination forms each September?

For the Peace Prize, governments, former laureates and current committee members are canvassed too.