General Awareness – Nobel prizes Facts
1- The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards given in a number of categories. The awards are given by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of excellence in academic, cultural and scientific developments.
2- The Nobel prizes are given in accordance with the will of Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel.
3- The first Nobel prize was awarded in the year 1901.
4- The Nobel Prize award ceremonies are held on December 10 every year, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
5- All the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden except for the Nobel Peace Prize which is awarded in Oslo, Norway.
6- The Nobel Prizes were initially given in FIVE fields viz. Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Peace and Literature.
7- Nobel Prize in the field of Economic Sciences were instituted in the year 1969 with Ragnar Frisch of Norway and Jan Tinbergen of The Netherlands being the first recipients.
8- The first person and only woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different fields Marie Curie for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911.
9-The first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize is Marie Curie for Physics in 1903.
Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie
10- The first man to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different fields is Linus Pauling for Chemistry in 1954 and for Peace in 1962.
Linus Carl Pauling
11- The first Asian (also first Indian) to be awarded the Nobel Prize is Rabindranath Tagore for literature in 1913.
12- The first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize is Wangari Maathai from Kenya for peace in 2004
Wangari Maathai
13- The first person to be awarded Nobel Prize in the field of Physics is Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays.
14- The first person to be awarded Nobel Prize in the field of Literature in English language is Rudyard Kipling (of Jungle Book fame) in 1907.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling
15- The first woman to be awarded Nobel Prize for Peace is Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner of Austria in 1905.
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner
16- The youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is Tawakkol Karman of Yemen at the age of 31 years in 2011 (jointly with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee)
Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Karman
17- The first person to be awarded Nobel Prize for Peace is Jean Henry Dunant, founder of International Red Cross in 1901, jointly with Frederic Passy, founder,President of first French peace society.
. Jean Henri Dunant
18-The youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Prize is William Lawrence Bragg for Physics in 1915 at the age of 25 years (jointly with his father, Sir William Henry Bragg)
19- The only organisation to be awarded the Nobel Prize thrice is International Committee of the Red Cross in the years 1917, 1944 and 1963.
India-Lists of Nobel Prize Winners
1. Rabindranath Tagore – Literature, 1913 for his book Gitanjali.
2. C.V. Raman- Physics 1930 for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
3. Har Gobind Khorana – Medicine 1968 for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
4. Mother Teresa Peace -1979 Humanitarian work.
5. Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar -Physics 1983 for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.
6. Amartya Sen -Economic Sciences 1998 for his contributions to welfare economics.
7. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan -Chemistry 2009 for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.
