Active Listening Day October 21, 2016

Topic: Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, and/or scientific advances.

Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, and later from 18 carat green gold plated with a 24 carat gold coating. 

Founder-

The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895.

Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.

He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor.

The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. 

Award money-

The laureates are given a sum of money when they receive their prizes, in the form of a document confirming the amount awarded.

The amount of prize money depends upon how much money the Nobel Foundation can award each year.The purse has increased since the 1980s, when the prize money was  2.6 million SEK US$350 000 today) per prize.

Nobel Foundation -

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June 1900. 

Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.

First prizes -

i. Name - Wilhelm Röntgen

   Subject - Physics 

   Facts - For his discovery of X-rays.

ii. Name - Jacobus van't Hoff

    Subject - Chemistry

    Facts - For his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.

iii. Name - Sully Prudhomme (poet)

     Subject - Literature

     Facts - The Swedish Academy chose the Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. 

iv. Name - Emil von Behring

    Subject - Physiology or Medicine

    Facts -The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then was causing thousands of deaths each year.

v. Name - Swiss Jean Henri Dunant

    Subject - Peace 

    Facts - The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention and jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization.

vi. Name - Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch 

     Subject - Economic Sciences
     Year - 1968
     Facts - The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded for the first time "for  having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes.

Between 1901 and 2015, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 573 times to 900 people and organisations. 

Nobel Prize Facts -
a. Between 1901 to 2016, the Nobel Prizes were awarded 579 times.

911 Nobel Laureates! 885 Laureates* and 26 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2016. Of them, 78 are Laureates in Economic Sciences. A small number of individuals and organizations have been honored more than once, which means that 881 individuals and 23 unique organizations have received the Nobel Prize in total. 

b. Years without Nobel Prizes-

Since the start, in 1901, there are some years when the Nobel Prizes have not been awarded. 

The total number of times are 49. Most of them during World War I (1914-1918) and II (1939-1945). 

In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: "If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation's restricted funds.".

c. The Youngest Nobel Laureates-
The Malala Yousafzai is the youngest person whose got the Nobel prize in 2014 for peace and her date of birth is 12 july 1997.

d. Woman also got the Nobel prizes -

Between 1901 to 2016 the Nobel Prize and Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded 49 times to women and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel. Curie is also the only woman to have won multiple Nobel Prizes, in 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

e. In Nobel prize history we have Two Nobel Laureates who Declined the Prize.

 i. Jean-Paul Sartre. 
    He awarded in 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature and declined the prize because he had consistently         declined all official honors.
ii. Le Duc Tho.
   He awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.They        were awarded the Prize for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. Le Doc Tho said that he was not      in a position to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the situation  in Vietnam as his reason.

Indian citizens who got the Nobel prize -
i. Name -  Rabindranath Tagore
   Subject - Literature 
   Year -  1913 
   Facts - Profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill. He has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.

ii. Name - C. V. Raman
    Subject - Physics 
    Year - 1930
    Facts - For his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.

iii. Name - Mother Teresa
     Subject - Peace 
     Year - 1979 
     Facts -For work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace.

iv. Name - Amartya Sen
     Subject - Economic studies
     Year - 1998
     Facts - For his contributions to welfare economics.

v. Name - Kailash Satyarthi
    Subject - Peace 
    Year - 2014

     Facts - Awarded jointly to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai – for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.

QA Round-
01. What is Nobel Prize?
02. In which year established the Nobel prize and by whom?
03. Which country gives Nobel prize for peace?
04. Who got the first physics Nobel prize?
05. Who got the first prize in literature?
06. Who got the first Nobel peace prize and why?
07. When and who got the first economic prize?
08. How many Nobel prize got by Indian?
09. Who was first Indian who got the prize and in which subject and year?
10. Who was the first woman who got the Nobel prize?
11. Amartya Sen got the Nobel in 1998 in which subject?
12. Between 1901 to 2016, how many time Nobel Prize has been awarded?
13. The name of the woman who won multiple Nobel Prizes and in which year? 

Click Time-

Superb Prathvee : Rajeev

Winner's Click: Ankur, Chetan