Nobel Prize Day

On December 10th every year Nobel Prize Day is celebrated to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and businessman who created the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize award ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden. Each Nobel Prize comes with SEK 9,000,000 (Swedish Krona) or around Rs 7 crore 22 lakh rupees.

The Nobel Prize is granted annually to persons or institutions for outstanding contributions made during the previous year in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and economic sciences. The awards were started by Alfred Nobel with the intention to acknowledge a person’s contribution in different fields.

History

The day honors the achievements of Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur Alfred Bernhard Nobel. On 27 November 1895, Alfred Nobel signed a new last will and testament in a bid to reinvent his image establishing the Nobel Prizes. He establishes five prizes, awarded for Physics, Medicine, Chemistry, Literature, and Peace.

In his last will, he left most of his vast wealth to fund annual prizes. His family opposed the creation of the Nobel Prize, and the prize awarders he named refused to do what he had requested in his will. It was five years before the first Nobel Prize could be awarded. The first Nobel prizes were handed out at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 1901, the fifth anniversary of his death. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established the associated Prize for Economic Sciences, in Alfred Nobel’s memory.

Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm and died on December 10, 1896, in San Remo. He dedicated his life to explosives, and his inventions include a blasting cap, dynamite, and smokeless gunpowder. Nobel became famous across the world in 1882 when dynamite was used for the first time on a large scale when building a tunnel. At the time of his death, Nobel held 355 patents in different countries and was a very wealthy man.

The Nobel Prize is probably the most prestigious award in the world and is awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”. Prize-winning discoveries include X-rays, radioactivity, and penicillin.

The Nobel Prize has been awarded to people and organizations every year since 1901 for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Today, on Nobel Day, the prize winners receive their prizes and the big gala afterward marks the end of a week filled with speeches, conferences, and receptions.

The Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm, Sweden, every year. The Peace Prize is not awarded at this Stockholm ceremony but presented annually in Oslo, Norway, in the presence of the King of Norway, on the same day.

9 Nobel Prize Winners from India

Rabindranath Tagore, in the year 1913 – field of Literature.
C.V. Raman, in the year 1930 – field of Physics.
Har Gobind Khorana jointly with Robert W. Holley and Marshall W. Nirenberg, in the year 1968 – field of Medicine.
Mother Teresa, in the year 1979 – field of Peace.
Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar, in the year 1983 – field of Physics.
Amartya Sen, in the year 1998 – field of Economic Sciences.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan jointly with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath, in the year 2009 – field of Chemistry.
Kailash Satyarthi jointly with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, in the year 2014 – field of Peace.
Abhijit Banerjee jointly with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. in the year 2019 – field of Economic Sciences.