Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. The total amount for each of the 2017 prizes is 9 million kronor ($1.1 million), up from 8 million kronor last year. The economics award brings to an end this year’s Nobel prize cycle.
This Year’s Awards:
The peace prize, which was announced in Oslo on Oct. 6, was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.”
The literature prize, announced on Oct. 5 in Stockholm, went to “Remains of the Day” author, Kazuo Ishiguro, for developing a style that incorporated "great emotional force" and that “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world," the academy said.
The chemistry prize was awarded on Oct. 4 to Jacques Dubochet from Switzerland, Joachim Frank from Germany and Richard Henderson from the U.K. for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.
The physics prize went to Rainer Weiss from Germany, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne, both from the U.S., for their "decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves” that had been predicted by Albert Einstein.
The medicine prize was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, for their work on circadian rhythms, offering the world a glimpse “inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.