Nobel Prize 2021: Awarded for “the greatest benefit to mankind”
About Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize is one of the most distinguished awards in the world. Accorded in six different fields, namely Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace and Economics. The winner of the prize known as laureate takes home a gold medal, diploma and 10 million Swedish Kronor.
Sir Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 instructs the creation of the Nobel Prize to be presented to people who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind during the preceding year. The prize money comes from a legacy left by Alfred Nobel who is the creator of the Prize.
Selection criteria
The eligible candidates are shortlisted by the nominators. These nominators are prominent academics working in the relevant areas and have received invitations from the Nobel Committee to submit names for consideration.
Nobel Prize 2021 schedule
Nobel Prizes to be announced from 4 October to 11 October 2021. Check the complete schedule below:
| 4 October 2021 | Medicine |
| 5 October 2021 | Physics |
| 6 October 2021 | Chemistry |
| 7 October 2021 | Literature |
| 8 October 2021 | Peace |
| 11 October 2021 | Economics |
Nobel Peace Prize:
2021 Nobel Peace Prize has been jointly awarded to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to highlight the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.
Maria Ressa exposes abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines, by exercising freedom of expression. A journalist and CEO of Rappler, she exercises her freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in the Philippines.
Her company focuses on the Rodrigo Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign.Her company documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse.
Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov is the editor-in-chief of Novaja Gazeta, a newspaper he co-founded in 1993. He has been defending the freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly adverse conditions.
Quick facts about Nobel Peace Prize
- 102 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded 1901–2020.
- 25 organizations have been awarded.
- 2 peace prizes have been divided between three persons.
- 18 women have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize so far.
- 1 peace prize laureate, Le Duc Tho, has declined the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Malala Yousafzai is the youngest Peace Prize laureate.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Award was jointly conferred to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. Both have identified the missing links to help us understand the complex interplay between our senses and the environment. Their discoveries are being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases such as chronic pain.
David Julius utilized capsaicin, a pungent compound from chilli peppers that induces a burning sensation to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat.
Ardem Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs.
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics has been jointly awarded to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi for their groundbreaking contributions to help us understand complex physical systems.
One half of the prize has been awarded to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.
The other half has been awarded to Giorgio Parisi for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.
1- Syukuro Manabe
Born in 1931 in Shingu, Japan, Syukuro Manabe received a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
2- Klaus Hasselmann
Born in 1931 in Hamburg, Germany, Klaus Hasselmann received a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Göttingen, Germany.
3- Giorgio Parisi
Born in 1948 in Rome, Italy, Giorgio Parisi received a Ph.D. in 1970 from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been jointly awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.
Catalysts are essential for their progression as they control and accelerate chemical reactions, without being a part of the final product. Human bodies also contain thousands of catalysts in the form of enzymes that chisel out the molecules essential for life. The researchers for long believed that there were only two types of catalysts– metals and enzymes, but in 2000, Benjamin List and David MacMillan, independent of each other, developed a third type– asymmetric organocatalysis.
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.
Born in 1948, Abdulrazak Gurnah grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee in the 1960’s.
He came to Britain as a student in 1968 and now teaches literature at the University of Kent. He is associate editor of the journal Wasafiri.
His first three novels, Memory of Departure (1987), Pilgrims Way (1988) and Dottie (1990), document the immigrant experience in contemporary Britain from different perspectives. His fourth novel, Paradise (1994), is set in colonial East Africa during the First World War and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Admiring Silence (1996) tells the story of a young man who leaves Zanzibar and emigrates to England where he marries and becomes a teacher.
Until his recent retirement, Gurnah was serving as the Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
Nobel Prize in Economics
Three US-based economists won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics for pioneering research on the labour market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to allow conclusions to be drawn from such studies that can’t use traditional methodology.
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