Five key facts about the Nobel Prize ahead of 2024 announcements

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A photo taken on September 25, 2024 shows portraits of individual laureates and the logos of prize-winning institutions and organisations on a wall of the committee meeting room at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. — AFP pic

STOCKHOLM, Oct 3 — Since 1901, the Nobel Prizes have been awarded to individuals and organisations for work leading to great advances for humanity, in line with the wishes of inventor Alfred Nobel.

Ahead of the announcement of the 2024 Nobel winners between October 7 and 14, here are five things to know about the prizes and their creator.

In detention

Since 1901, five Nobel Peace Prize laureates have been prevented from attending the awards ceremony in Oslo.

In 1936, German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was detained in a Nazi concentration camp.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest when she won the prize in 1991. Given permission by the junta to travel, she declined due to fears of potentially not being able to return to her country.

In 2010, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was in prison. His chair remained empty, where the prize was placed.

In 2022, Belarusian human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski was in jail. He was represented by his wife Natalia Pinchuk.

Last year, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi had to celebrate her Nobel Prize from her cell in Iran’s Evin prison.

Young and old

In 2014, Pakistani human rights activist Malala Yousafzai became the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize at the age of 17.

Another unusually young laureate was Australia’s Lawrence Bragg who won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with his father in 1915 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 on behalf of the Yazidi minority.

In contrast, American John Goodenough was the oldest to become a Nobel laureate when he won the Prize in Chemistry in 2019, at the age of 97, for his work on the lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones and electric cars.

The year before, his compatriot Arthur Ashkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 96.

Posthumous awards

Since 1974, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that the prize may not be given posthumously. But a person may be awarded if they die between the time of the announcement in October and the formal prize ceremony in December.

Before the change, only two people had won a Nobel posthumously.

One was Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish secretary-general of the United Nations who died in a plane crash in 1961 but was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later the same year.

And in 1931, the Nobel Literature Prize was awarded posthumously to another Swede, poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt.

In 2011, the Prize in Physiology or Medicine committee selected Ralph Steinman of Canada, unaware that he had passed away just three days before the announcement.

Nevertheless, the foundation decided to give him the award.

Nobel the poet

Nobel went down in history as the inventor of dynamite, but he was also keen on English poetry and a fan of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Byron.

He wrote poetry his entire life, sometimes in his native Swedish but mostly in the language of Shakespeare.

In a letter to a friend, he wrote: “I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression, or to improve my English.”

In 1862, at the age of 29 and questioning his literary talent, he sent a letter in French to a young woman that said: “Physics is my field, not writing.”

In 1896, the year of his death, he wrote a scandalous tragedy in four acts titled “Nemesis”, inspired by Shelley’s play “The Cenci” about a woman in 16th-century Rome who murders her incestuous father.

300 nominations per year

Every year, the Swedish Academy—which awards the Prize in Literature—receives about 300 written nominations from former prize-winners, academics, organisations and other professors from the literary and linguistic world.

Each submission highlights the strengths of its proposed author and in a few instances slips in a gift for the jury—though their inclusion is often considered poor taste.

It is not possible to nominate oneself for the prize and to be valid, nominations must be renewed every year and received by January 31. Candidates must also still be alive. — AFP