Nobel Prizes

General

Alfred Nobel died		1896
Immanuel Nobel, father of Alfred, invented a rotary lathe that was a crucial factor in the development of		Plywood
Nobel prizes first awarded		1901
Prize instituted in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden, in memory of Alfred Nobel; first awarded in 1969		Economics
The most successful family in Nobel history		Curie
First woman to win a Nobel prize; first person to win two (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911)		Marie Curie
Husband and wife, shared the Physics prize in 1903 (with Becquerel)		Curie (Pierre & Marie)
Won Chemistry in 1954, and Peace in 1962 for work on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty		Linus Pauling
Awarded by the Norwegian parliament (others by Swedish institutions)		Peace
The Peace prize is awarded on 10 December, in		Oslo
The other prizes are awarded, also on 10 December, in		Stockholm

Nationalities

The only person born in Albania ever to win a Nobel prize		Mother Teresa
The only person born in Myanmar (Burma) ever to win a Nobel prize		Aung San Suu Kyi
The only Palestinian ever to win a Nobel prize		Yasser Arafat
The only person from Tibet ever to win a Nobel prize		The 14th Dalai Lama (Tensin Gyatso)

Multiple Winners

Four people (to date) have won two Nobel prizes:

Won Physics in 1903 (shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity), and Chemistry in 1911 for the discovery of radium and polonium		Marie Curie
US chemist, won Chemistry in 1954 for his work on chemical bonds, and Peace in 1962, for his initiative in organising a petition (in 1957) to end nuclear testing, which was signed by over 11,000 prominent figures and was a major precipitant of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 – the only person to win two unshared Nobel prizes		Linus Pauling
US physicist, won Physics in 1956 for the invention of the transistor, (shared with William Shockley and Walter Brattain – both US) and again in 1972 for the BCS theory of superconductivity (shared with Leon Cooper and John Schrieffer – both US)		John Bardeen
English biochemist, born 1918: won Chemistry in 1958 for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin, and in 1980 shared half of the Chemistry prize with Walter Gilbert (USA), for their work on nucleic acids (the other half was awarded to US biochemist Paul Berg)		Frederick Sanger
The largest single contribution to the mapping of the human genome was made by a charitable institute, based near Cambridge – founded in 1992, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and named in his honour

There are also two organisations that have won the Peace prize more than once:

1917 and 1944: for its work during the world wars, and in 1963 in recognition of its centenary: the International Committee of the		Red Cross
1954 and 1981: United Nations programme		UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Peace

1901: Swiss founder of the International Red Cross (shared)			Jean Henri Dunant
1906: first US citizen to win a Nobel prize – after negotiating the peace treaty that ended the Russo–Japanese War			Theodore Roosevelt
1917: international organisation (also won in 1944 and 1963)			Red Cross
1919: "for his crucial role in establishing the League of Nations"			Woodrow Wilson
1922: Norwegian explorer, for his work in aid of Russian famine victims and refugees in Asia Minor			Fridtjof Nansen
1925: British Foreign Secretary, half–brother of a future prime minister – for negotiating the Locarno Pact, aimed at preventing war between France and Germany			Austen Chamberlain
1952: Alsace–born medical missionary			Albert Schweitzer
1957: Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, and future Prime Minister (1963–8), for organising the UN Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Crisis			Lester B. Pearson
1959: Commonwealth Secretary, and later Minister for Fuel and Power, in Atlee's government, for his advocacy of multilateral nuclear disarmament; previously carried the flag for Great Britain in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, and won silver in the 1500m; the only person to win an Olympic medal and a Nobel prize			Philip Noel–Baker
1961: UN Secretary General – the only posthumous winner			Dag Hammarskjold
1964: US civil rights campaigner			Martin Luther King
1965: United Nations organisation			UNICEF
1971: German Chancellor, 1969–74			Willy Brandt
1973	German–born American geopolitical consultant		Henry Kissinger
	North Vietnamese statesman, declined the prize awarded jointly with the above		Le Duc Tho
1975: Soviet physicist and dissident (wasn't allowed to travel to Oslo to accept the prize; his wife, Yelena Bonner, accepted it in his stead)			Andrei Sakharov
1976: Irish peace campaigners			Mairead Corrigan
			Betty Williams
1977: human rights pressure group			Amnesty International
1978	Prime Minister of Israel		Menachim Begin
	President of Egypt		Anwar Sadat
1979: born Agnes Bojaxhiu (1910–1997)			Mother Teresa
1983: Polish activist and statesman (collected by his wife Danuta, as he feared he wouldn't be allowed back into Poland)			Lech Wałesa
1984: Church of England bishop			Desmond Tutu
1989: Religious leader (birth name Lhamo Dhondup, religious name Tenzin Gyatso)			The Dalai Lama
1990: Soviet president			Mikhail Gorbachev
1993	South African anti–apartheid activist		Nelson Mandela
	President of South Africa		F. W. de Klerk
1994	Chairman of the PLO (later President of Palestine)		Yassir Arafat
	Prime Minister of Israel		Yitzhak Rabin
	Israeli Foreign Minister (also former Prime Minister, and future PM and President)		Shimon Peres
1995: British nuclear scientist, for work with the Pugwash Conferences			Joseph Rotblat
1998	Leader of the SDLP		John Hume
	Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party		David Trimble

1999: French humanitarian organisation

Medécin Sans Frontières

2001: shared by the United Nations, and its secretary general ...		Kofi Annan
2002: former US president – "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development"		Jimmy Carter
2005: international peace–keeping organisation (shared)		IAEA
2006: Bangladeshi 'microcredit' banker (Grameen Bank)		Muhammad Yunus
2007: former US vice–president (for disseminating knowledge about climate change) – jointly with a Swiss government panel on the same subject		Al Gore
2009: for strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation, especially in nuclear non–proliferation and in reaching out to the Muslim world		Barack Obama
2014: Pakistani activist for female education; the youngest ever Nobel laureate (aged 17)		Malala Yousafzai
2017: international organisation known as ICAN – the International Campaign to abolish		Nuclear Weapons

Nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 (three times) and 1948 (six times); shortlisted twice (1937 and 1947); but never won

Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi

Medicine and Physiology

1902: Anglo–Indian physician, for discovering the life cycle of the malarial parasite plasmodium – the first British Nobel laureate			Sir Ronald Ross
1904: Russian behavioural psychologist			Ivan Pavlov
1905: German physician, regarded as the founder of modern bacteriology, for his research into tuberculosis			Robert Koch
1913: Austrian immunologist, for the discovery of the ABO system for classification of blood (1900–2)			Karl Landsteiner
1945: Scottish bacteriologist (shared with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain)			Alexander Fleming
1962: for discovering the structure of DNA	British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist		Francis Crick
	US molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist		James Watson (USA)
	New–Zealand born British physicist and molecular biologist		Maurice Wilkins (GB)
1988: ICI researcher (shared)			Sir James Black
2003: for development of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner	British physicist		Sir Peter Mansfield (UK)
	US chemist		Paul Lauterbur (US)

Chemistry

1904: Scottish; involved in the discovery of argon, neon, krypton, xenon		William Ramsay
1908: New Zealand; discovered alpha, beta and gamma rays		Ernest Rutherford
1918: German; for the isolation of ammonia		Fritz Haber
1921: English; researched radioactive decay, coined the term 'isotope'		Frederick Soddy
1958, 1980: English; first person to win the Chemistry prize twice		Frederick Sanger
1964: English; for discovering the structure of Vitamin B12; third woman to win the Chemistry prize		Dorothy Hodgkin

Physics

1901: German – awarded the first Nobel Physics prize for his discovery of X–rays in 1895			Wilhelm Röntgen Rontgen
1903: French, shared Physics with the Curies, for discovering radioactivity			Henri Becquerel
1904: Cambridge professor, involved in the discovery of argon			Lord Rayleigh
1906: English discoverer of the electron			J. J. Thomson
1909: Italian pioneer of wireless telegraphy			Guglielmo Marconi
1915: British father and son, shared the prize for their work in the analysis of crystal structure using X–rays; the Australian–born son – commonly known by his middle name – is still (in 2020) the youngest–ever Physics laureate (he was 25)			William Henry Bragg
			Wm. Lawrence Bragg
1918: German, framed the Quantum Theory 1900			Max Planck
1921: German / Swiss – for his work on the photoelectric effect			Albert Einstein
1922: Danish, proved that electrons move in well–defined orbits			Niels Bohr
1927: Scottish physicist and meteorologist, for inventing the cloud chamber			C. T. R. Wilson
1932: German, for the creation of quantum mechanics, and its application especially to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen – best known for his uncertainty principle (a.k.a. the indeterminancy principle) which is one of the basic principles of quantum mechanics			Werner Heisenberg
1933: British, predicted the existence of the positron, shared the prize			Paul A. M. Dirac
1935: British discoverer of the neutron			James Chadwick
1945: Austrian / US, for his work on atomic structure – the 'exclusion principle' (also known by his name), concerning the quantum states of electrons and other fermions			Wolfgang Pauli
1947: English, for proving the existence of the ionosphere during experiments carried out in 1924			Edward Appleton
1951: (effectively) for splitting an atomic nucleus in 1932	British physicist		John D. Cockcroft
	Irish physicist, working at Cambridge		Ernest T. S. Walton
1956: for their work in developing the transistor	US physicist and electrical engineer		John Bardeen
	US physicist		Walter Brattain
	US physicist and inventor		William Shockley
1965: US – shared with two others, for their work in quantum electrodynamics; also a great populariser of science through books such as Surely You're Joking, Mr. ... (1985 – actually transcribed from interview tapes); died in 1988 aged 69			Richard Feynman
1969: US, formulated the theory of the quark 1964			Murray Gell–Mann
1971: Hungarian–born British engineer, for the invention of holography			Dennis Gabor
1975: son of the 1922 winner, for development of the theory of the atomic nucleus (jointly with Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo James Rainwater)			Aage Niels Bohr
2010: Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, two Russian–born Professors at Manchester University, "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two–dimensional material ... "			Graphene
2013: British theoretical physicist, who proposed a mechanism that predicts the existence of a new particle, which was named after him; awarded a share			Peter Higgs

Literature

1901: French poet – most famous work Le vase brisé (The Broken Vase)		René François Armand (Sully) Prudhomme
1907: first writer in English to win – still the youngest ever recipient (41)		Rudyard Kipling
1913: Bengali poet, Asia's first Nobel laureate		Rabindranath Tagore
1923: Irish poet, and senator 1922–8; the first Irish recipient (in any field)		W. B. Yeats
1925: Irish dramatist, novelist, critic and socialist		George Bernard Shaw
1932: English novelist (The Forsyte Saga)		John Galsworthy
1936: US playwright (Long Day's Journey into Night, etc.)		Eugene O'Neill
1945: Chilean poet (female)		Gabriela Mistral
1946: German – Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game		Herman Hesse
1947: French – The immoralist, Strait is the Gate, The Vatican Cellars		Andre Gide
1948: US–born, British–based poet, playwright and critic		T. S. Eliot
1949: US novelist (The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying)		William Faulkner
1950: British philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner		Bertrand Russell
1953: British statesman		Winston Churchill
1954: US novelist (A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls)		Ernest Hemingway
1957: Algerian–born French writer and journalist (The Plague)		Albert Camus
1958: Russian novelist, declined the prize		Boris Pasternak
1962: US novelist (Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath)		John Steinbeck
1964: French philosopher, declined the prize		Jean–Paul Sartre
1969: Irish novelist and playwright (Waiting for Godot, Endgame); the only Nobel laureate to appear in Wisden Cricketers' Almanac (played two games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in the 1920s)		Samuel Beckett
Lived in Paris for most of his adult life (from 1939); wrote in both French and English; a member of the French Resistance during WWII – awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949
1970: Soviet novelist (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, etc.; didn't feel able to accept the prize immediately, fearing that he wouldn't be let back into the Soviet Union. He accepted it in 1974, after he was expelled from his home country)		Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1971: Chilean poet, diplomat and Communist leader		Pablo Neruda
1982: Columbian–born Mexican novelist (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera)		Gabriel García Márquez
1983: British novelist (Lord of the Flies, The Spire, Rites of Passage)		William Golding
1991: South African novelist		Nadine Gordimer
1992: St. Lucian–born poet and playwright		Derek Walcott
1993: US novelist whose work records black life in the South		Toni Morrison
1995: Irish poet (died 2013)		Seamus Heaney
1997: Italian playwright (Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can't pay? Won't pay!)		Dario Fo
1999: German novelist (died 2015)		Gunther Grass
2001: Trinidad–born British novelist		V. S. Naipaul
2003: South African novelist		J.M. Coetzee
2005: English playwright		Harold Pinter
2007: British novelist – the oldest ever Literature laureate, a few days before her 88th birthday (born in Iran, 1919; died 2013)		Doris Lessing
2015: the second person (after George Bernard Shaw) to win a Nobel Prize and an Oscar		Bob Dylan
2017: Japanese–born British novelist, whose most famous work is The Remains of the Day (1989)		Kazuo Ishiguro

Economics

1976: US monetarist		Milton Friedman
2009: first woman to win (shared with Oliver E. Williamson) – for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons"; died in 2012		Elinor Ostrom
2019: second ditto – shared with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty"		Esther Duflo

© Haydn Thompson 2017–21