The Nobel Prizes are given every year in October to those who have most benefited mankind in one of six fields: peace, literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics. For each prize, 9 million Swedish kronas (equal to US $900,000 or 61 talents of silver) is split among the winners.
The winners for 2019:
Medicine or Physiology:
Sir Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how oxygen levels affect cells. It is done through a protein called hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF). Knowing this will help to fight anaemia, lung disease, heart failure and cancer.
Physics:
James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Mayor and Queloz for discovering 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet (a planet that goes round another star). That was back in 1995, but exoplanets are hot now. Peebles for his theoretical work on galaxy formation, dark matter, dark energy, and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Peebles said that there would be static coming from every direction in the Universe, the CMB (discovered in 1965), that it was left over from the Big Bang (the beginning of the Universe) and that by studying it you could tell the age, shape and contents of the Universe.
Chemistry:
John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the invention of the lithium-ion battery, starting in the 1970s. That made possible a powerful, lightweight, rechargeable battery, which in turn has made possible mobile phones, laptop computers, electric cars and so on.
Literature:
Peter Handke of Austria whom the Nobel committee says is “one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War.” His two greatest works: his novel “Die Hornissen” (1966) and his play ‘Publikumsbeschimpfung” (“Offending the Audience”, 1969). They like his “extraordinary attention to landscapes and the material presence of the world, which has made cinema and painting two of his greatest sources of inspiration.” Salman Rushdie is less enthusiastic, noting his “series of impassioned apologias for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milosevic” and his “denial of the genocide carried out by Serbs at Srebrenica.”
Peace:
Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, for making peace with Eritrea. He was born of a Christian mother and a Muslim father.
Economics:
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer win for “a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty.” By studying poor people in India and Africa, they discovered how to best spend money to help fight poverty. Two of the best bets: helping schoolchildren who fall behind and preventive health care. Duflo is married to Banerjee and is the only woman to win a prize for 2019 – and only the second woman to win the economics prize.
Winners listed by country of birth:
- Austria: Handke
- Britain: Ratcliffe, Whittingham
- Canada: Peebles
- Ethiopia: Abiy
- France: Duflo
- Germany: Goodenough
- India: Banerjee
- Japan: Yoshino
- Switzerland: Mayor, Queloz
- US: Kaelin, Semenza, Kremer
by county of immigration:
- US: Peebles, Goodenough, Whittingham, Banerjee, Duflo
Boys: 13; Girls: 1.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Twitter: @NobelPrize
- nobelprize.org
- Nobel Prizes past:
- Posts on individual Nobel Prize winners:
- Tagore – Literature, 1913
- Fritz Haber – Chemistry, 1918
- Einstein – Physics, 1921
- Jane Addams – Peace, 1931
- Winston Churchill – Literature, 1953
- Martin Luther King, Jr – Peace, 1964
- Solzhenitsyn – Literature, 1970
- Kissinger – Peace, 1973
- Aung San Suu Kyi – Peace, 1991
- Toni Morrison – Literature, 1993
- Nelson Mandela – Peace, 1993
- United Nations – Peace, 2001
- Barack Obama – Peace, 2009
- US dollar
- Attic units – talents and such
- science
- Salman Rushdie
- The genocide in Srebrenica
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Added the Literature Prize.
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There’s somebody with the name Goodenough…😂
I’m a free man now and even though I won’t begin to feel the benefits of basic human rights for over a hundred years from now… I feel my life has become good enough. That will be my name “Goodenough”.
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Wow, they have the Peace Prize for someone who really did something for Peace! Who are those people, and what they did to the Nobel Prize Commitee?
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Added the Peace prize.
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Added the Economics prize.
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[…] via Nobel Prize winners for 2019 […]
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