Their signatures on petitions and newspaper advertisements supporting political and social policy positions will be given weighty consideration. The laureates will be honored by political leaders. The science laureates will attract the most promising students to their laboratories. 1, 2 The recipients will be hailed in their institutes, communities, and countries. No other prize for contributions to humankind holds the same prestige. Simultaneously, the Peace Prize is awarded by the Royal Norwegian Academy in Oslo, according to the directives of Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s will. After the awards ceremony they participate in a lavish banquet hosted by the Swedish royal family. In December, the prize winners in the categories of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, and literature are honored at a ceremony in Stockholm where they receive their diploma and medal, and a document indicating the value of their share of that year’s monetary award and deliver a lecture describing the significance of the work leading to the prize. Since the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, the recipients have captured the interest of the world’s scientific, literary, and political communities. This review describes the man, his foundation, and the prizes with a special commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Prizes after 115 years remain the most prestigious of awards. After some controversy, including Nobel’s citizenship, the mechanisms to choose the laureates and make four of the awards were developed by a foundation established in Stockholm the choice of the laureate for promoting harmony among nations was assigned to the Norwegian Storting, another controversy. His interest in harmony among nations may have derived from the effects of the applications of his inventions in warfare (“merchant of death”) and his friendship with a leader in the movement to bring peace to nations of Europe.
In considering his choice of prizes, it may be pertinent that he used the principles of chemistry and physics in his inventions and he had a lifelong devotion to science, he suffered and died from severe coronary and cerebral atherosclerosis, and he was a bibliophile, an author, and mingled with the literati of Paris. The prizes were first awarded in 1901, five years after his death. In a decision later in life, he rewrote his will to leave virtually all his fortune to establish prizes for persons of any nationality who made the most compelling achievement for the benefit of mankind in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace among nations. Alfred Nobel was one of the most successful chemists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and businessmen of the late nineteenth century.
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