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Journalism of Courage
The 2024 Nobel Prize for Medicine was announced on Monday (October 7), kicking off the week where awards in Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace will be announced. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, popularly called the Economics Nobel, will be declared on October 14.
Some of history’s most well-regarded figures, such as physicist Albert Einstein, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and poet Rabindranath Tagore were Nobel laureates. Many others were nominated but never awarded, such as Mahatma Gandhi (who was nominated five times).
Adolf Hitler was also once nominated by a Swedish Parliamentarian for the Peace Prize as an act of “satiric criticism”, as described on the official Nobel website. How exactly does the nomination process work and who selects the winner? We explain.
The first stage involves nominations. A range of people — university professors, former Nobel winners in that category, etc. — are deemed eligible by the respective Nobel Committee to submit a nomination for that award.
The eligibility, and the larger process, slightly differ for all six awards. For example, heads of state and members of national assemblies and national governments can send nominations for the Peace Prize. Permanent professors in relevant subjects at the universities and colleges in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway can send nominations for the Economics Prize.
But in general, all six awards have a Nobel committee, appointed by the institution responsible for the prize (more on them later in this story). The committee assesses the hundreds of submissions and prepares a shortlist. The Nobel Institute’s permanent advisers, who are subject experts, consider them. After the expert reports are presented, the Nobel Committee discusses the most likely candidates.
The committee reaches a decision in September, before the announcement of the Prize in October. It seeks to achieve unanimity in its selection; on the rare occasions when this proves impossible, a simple majority vote takes place to decide the winner.
A few institutions are responsible for awarding the Nobel Prizes: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry, Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a Committee of five persons elected by the Norwegian Parliament for the Nobel Peace Prize, and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Economic Sciences prize.
Why are only these institutions involved?
It has to do with the man who instituted the prize. Sweden-born Alfred Nobel was an innovator and scientist with over 300 patents, perhaps the best-known one being dynamite. At the end of his life, he had amassed a significant personal fortune thanks to his inventions, many of which had uses in warfare. As per his will, he wanted the money to be used to award excellence across fields, with the first prizes announced in 1901.
While his interest in the sciences was well-known, Nobel was also inclined towards literature and philosophy. “After his death he left a private library of over 1500 volumes, mostly fiction in the original language, works by the great writers of the 19th century, but also the classics and works by philosophers, theologians, historians and other scientists,” according to the Nobel website. What evoked his interest in instituting a Peace Prize is not very clear.
The Economics Prize was established much later in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was based on a donation received by the Nobel Foundation in 1968 from Sveriges Riksbank on the bank’s 300th anniversary.
No one knows for sure, says the Nobel website. In an article, former secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and director of the Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad, wrote: “Nobel left no explanation as to why the prize for peace was to be awarded by a Norwegian committee while the other four prizes were to be handled by Swedish committees.”
He noted some theories to explain his preference for Sweden for the award, like how until 1905, Norway was in union with Sweden (Nobel passed away in 1896).
Further, “Since the scientific prizes were to be awarded by the most competent, i.e. Swedish, committees at least the remaining prize for peace ought to be awarded by a Norwegian committee. Nobel may have been aware of the strong interest of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) in the peaceful solution of international disputes in the 1890s. He might have in fact, considered Norway a more peace-oriented and more democratic country than Sweden,” he wrote.
