FireFly

Table of Contents

Introduction

1901-1909 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Sully Prudhomme
Jean Dunant
Emil Fischer
Svante Arrhenius
Henri Becquerel
Pierre Curie
Ivan Pavlov
Robert Koch
Bertha von Suttner
Ramón y Cajal
Theodore Roosevelt
Rudyard Kipling
Ernest Rutherford
Guglielmo Marconi
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1901-1909

1910-1919 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Wilhelm Wien
Marie Curie
Allvar Gullstrand
Maurice Maeterlinck
Elihu Root
Alexis Carrel
Rabindranath Taore
Henri La Fontaine
Theodore Richards
Robert Bárány
International Committee of the Red Cross
Max Planck
Fritz Haber
Erik Karlfeldt
Johannes Stark
Jules Bordet
Woodrow Wilson
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1910-1919

1920-1929 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Anatole France
Albert Einstein
Frederick Soddy
Niels Bohr
Fridjtof Nansen
Frederick Banting
Gustav Hertz
George Bernard Shaw
Austen Chamberlain
Aristide Briand
Arthur Compton
Charles Wilson
Henri Bergson
Adolf Windaus
Thomas Mann
Frank Kellogg
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1920-1929

1930-1939 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Thomas Morgan
Harold Urey
Luigi Pirandello
James Chadwick
Irène Joliot-Curie
Peter Debye
Eugene O'Neil
Carlos Lamas
Norman Haworth
Paul Karrer
Robert Ceci
Pearl Buck
Erinco Fermi
Ernest Lawrence
Gerhard Domagk
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1930-1939

1940-1949 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Wolfgang Pauli
Artturi Virtanen
Gabriela Mistral
Alexander Fleming
Cordell Hull
Hermann Hesse
Emily Balch
John R. Mott
Edward Appleton
Carl & Gerty Cori
André Gide
Patrick Blackett
Arne Tiselius
T.S. Eliot
Egas Moniz
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1940-1949

1950-1959 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Bertrand Russell
Ralph Bunche
John Cockcroft
Ernest Walton
Glenn Seaborg
Edwin McMillan
Max Theiler
Winston Churchill
George Marshall
Linus Pauling
Ernest Hemingway
UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Lester Pearson
John Bardeen
Albert Camus
Boris Pasternak
Arthur Kornberg
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1950-1959

1960-1969 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Albert Lutuli
Willard Libby
Dag Hammarskjöld
James Watson
John Steinbeck
Martin Luther King Jr.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Charles Townes
UNICEF
Peyton Rous
Luis Alvarez
René Cassin
Samuel Beckett
Murray Gell-Mann
International Labour Organization
Ragnar Frisch
Jan Tinbergen
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1960-1969

1970-1979 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Paul Samuelson
Dennis Gabor
Wilbur Sutherland
Pablo Neruda
Willy Brandt
Simon Kuznets
Heinrich Böll
Henry Kissinger
Le Duc Tho
Gunnar Myrdal
Andrei Sakharov
Milton Friedman
Vicente Aleixandre
Mother Teresa
Amnesty International
Menachem Begin
Allan Cormack
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1970-1979

1980-1989 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates
Adolfo Esquivel
James Tobin
Gabriel Marquez
S. Chandrasekhar
Barbara McClintock
William Golding
Lech Walesa
Desmond Tutu
Elie Wiesel
James Buchanan
Susumu Tongegawa
Tenzin Gyatso
United Nations Peacekeeping Forces
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1980-1989

1990-1999 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates
Octavio Paz
Edward Thomas
Georges Charpak
Mikhail Gorbachev
Frederik de Klerk
Toni Morrison
Nelson Mandela
Yasser Arafat
Mario Molina
Robert Lucas
Carlos Belo
Dario Fo
Günther Grass
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 1990-1999

2000-2007 Selected Profiles of Nobel Laureates
Jack Kilby
Zhores Alferov
V.S. Naipaul
Kofi Annan
Koichi Tanaka
Daniel Kahneman
Jimmy Carter
Shirin Edadi
Irwin Rose
Elfriede Jelinek
Robert J. Aumann
Mohamed ElBaradei
Al Gore
Doris Lessing
Complete List of Nobel Laureates 2000-2007

Index

Introduction

Since 1901, the first year the award was given, until the present day, nearly 800 individuals and organizations have been recognized with the Nobel Prize. This group includes some of the greatest scientists, writers, economists and peacemakers in the world.

The four original Nobel awards were expanded in 1968 to include the Economic Sciences (normally known as the Nobel Prize in Economics). Prizes are awarded every December 10th to coincide with the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. Often controversial -- as was Alfred Nobel himself -- and at other times a nearly unanimous choice, the winners chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee (Peace), the Swedish Academy (Literature), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Economics) and the Karolinska Institute (Physiology or Medicine) don't make history, but they do help write it.

On the October 21, 1833, Alfred Bernhard was born in Stockholm, Sweden, third son of Immanuel and Andriette Nobel. Although in the coming years the young Alfred was pampered by his older brothers, the instability of the family's financial situation was always apparent, and a threat of prison hung over Immanuel Nobel because of his debts. In 1837 Immanuel Nobel moved to Finland and then to the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, where he was finally able to rebuild his capital and the family's honor.

Alfred Nobel's father found his son had a melancholic, idealistic side, and he ordered him at just 17 to embark on an extensive educational journey to expand his horizons and increase his interest in business. He also intended to expose his son to developments in the field of engineering, and explosives in particular. Alfred certainly benefited from studying abroad, meeting the brightest scientific minds of his day. In Paris he spent time with the inventor of nitroglycerin, the Italian Ascanio Sobrero, and in the United States he received lessons from the Swedish engineer John Ericsson.

In 1852 his father called him home to become more involved in the family business, which was booming at the time because of orders from the Russian military. Immanuel Nobel had first come into contact with the world of explosives through civil construction and believed that his future in Russia lay in this rapidly changing field. His inventions include deadly land and sea mines, and he was responsible for the most important Russian armaments factory during the Crimean War. The end of this conflict, however, brought another wave of difficulties to Immanuel and, in 1863, facing bankruptcy once again, he left his elder sons, Robert and Ludvig, to run the Russian businesses and returned with his wife and two younger sons, Alfred and Emil, to Stockholm.

While the family industries experienced a boom during the Crimean War, Alfred had devoted himself to studying explosives, particularly nitroglycerin. This compound was as dangerous as it was powerful, since its explosion could be set off by shock or heat. Nobel knew that if he could somehow "tame" nitroglycerin, it would become an unbeatable commercial product.

One of the first experiments, performed in 1864, went horribly wrong and several people died in the explosion, including the young Emil Nobel. The Swedish authorities put an immediate stop to any new experiments within Stockholm, but neither this, nor the loss of his brother, could stop Alfred Nobel. He moved his research center to the banks of Lake Malaren and went back to producing nitroglycerin, experimenting with different types of additives as a way of taming it. He finally achieved his goal in 1866 by mixing nitroglycerin with kieselguhr, thus producing a malleable and safe paste. Months later, on September 19, 1867, Alfred Nobel registered a patent for the new explosive, which he named "dynamite."

Nobel's first factories were in Krümmel, Germany, and very remote, allowing him to experiment without risk to the local population. Between 1865 and 1873 Nobel lived in a simple house between Krümmel and Hamburg, where the family's offices were located. During World War I Krümmel, with 2,700 employees, supplied the German army's gunpowder needs. The Versailles Treaty put an end to this contract, however, and during peace the factory was used to produce artificial silk. With the arrival of World War II, Krümmel was once again at the service of the German war interests, with more than 9,000 workers. The facilities were destroyed in 1945 by an Allied air raid, with bombs based on the inventions of Nobel himself.

Dynamite was, without a doubt, Alfred Nobel's most famous invention, but the list of his other accomplishments is long. In 1887 he created ballistite; known as smokeless gunpowder, this compound is made of 40 percent nitrocellulose and 60 percent nitroglycerin. The explosive was originally intended for the mining industry, but its appearance coincided with a tumultuous period at the end of the 19th century, when governments were scrambling to acquire new military technology. When the patent was made public Alfred Nobel offered his product to the French government, but they turned the proposal down. When he offered ballistite to the Italians, however, they did not hesitate in accepting, and a large production facility was built near Turin.

Through more than 30 productive years of experimentation and developments carried out in Sweden, Germany, France, Italy and other nations around the world, Alfred Nobel never stopped applying himself to the tasks he undertook, whether it was to produce artificial silk or the most powerful explosives of the day. When he died he had put his name to no less than 355 patents, many of them now applicable to the fabrics industry and used in more than 20 countries.

Although just before his 30th birthday Alfred Nobel decided to rejoin his parents in Stockholm, the city had not been his primary residence for some time. Until the end of his days at the age of 63, Alfred Nobel was a constant pilgrim. He kept a house, ready to be lived in, in six different countries. "My home is where I am found working," he wrote, "and I work anywhere." He also kept completely equipped laboratories in Stockholm and Karlskoga (Sweden), Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Paris and Sevran (France) and San Remo (Italy).

Alfred Nobel lived and died as one of the earliest citizens of the world, and this lifestyle was a deeply interwoven part of his personality. He can be considered one of the founding fathers of multinational corporations. Many of the companies he founded still exist today and are at the forefront of their industrial field, including companies like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Société Centrale de Dynamite and Dyno Industries.

Alfred Nobel's Will

When he reached the age of 60, Alfred Nobel began to make arrangements for his vast fortune after his death. He wrote his will himself, without any legal assistance, and signed it on November 27, 1895, in a room of the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, witnessed by four friends.

Nobel gave part of his inheritance to his nieces, nephews and closest collaborators, and he left lifelong pensions to his most dedicated employees, but the amounts he bequeathed to these individuals were smaller than expected (considering the size of his fortune) and criticized by many.

The excerpt from the will below deals exclusively with establishing the annual prizes.

The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.

The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or best work for the fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical work by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.

Nobel finished his will with a list of his assets, including his properties in Paris and San Remo, an endless list of activities in banks and other credit institutions, and the income from his patents, whose registers he stated were guarded in his safe. The immense fortune was calculated at the time to be worth about 31 million Swedish Krona, and interest with careful management by the Foundation has been swelling the coffers for more than a century.

The Prize

The idea of creating prizes to award individual artists and scientists for their efforts is rooted in the French Revolution. Throughout the 19th century there were plenty of awards given to academies, clubs and administrations, but it wasn't until the second half of the century that private foundations began to bestow their own prizes.

What is it, however, that makes the Nobel Prize different from others and grants it the recognition and support it has today? First of all, as is very clear in Alfred Nobel's will and contrary to other contemporary examples, it is a universal award, and there was no intention of benefiting a specific nation. Also to be noted is that Nobel did not create one prize but five (the sixth, for Economic Sciences, was only created in 1968.) The recognition offered by the prizes is, therefore, more complete, bringing together a diverse group of talents from fields that usually have little interaction. The most important point that distinguished the Nobel Prize from other awards, however, was the large sum given to the laureates. In addition to the prize money, a diploma and medal were also presented, which was not specified in Nobel's will.

Although there is great importance in a scientist, writer or pacifist seeing their work published in consequence of being given an award, the Nobel means much more. For the first time there existed a prize with which scientists could continue their investigations without traditional economic limitations, writers could avoid commercial temptations and follow their more creative desires, and pacifists could, against powerful forces, maintain campaigns that could only be kept alive with financial support.

The first people to receive the Nobel Prize took home approximately 150,000 Swedish Krona. In 1923, as a result of an increase in taxes, smaller quantities were awarded, and each laureate received 115,000 Swedish Krona. In 1946 the Nobel Foundation was finally guaranteed an exemption from taxes, which led to the prizes increasing in worth. In 2006 each of the six laureates was given the highest amounts ever: 10 million Swedish Krona, equivalent to about US$1 million.

On December 10th of every year, to coincide with the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, the award ceremonies for five of the six Nobel prizes are held in Stockholm, Sweden; the exception is the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo, Norway. The laureates present Nobel lectures several days before the ceremonies in Stockholm and on the day of the event in Oslo. These ceremonies are attended by Their Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden and Norway, respectively, in addition to the laureates, their families and other distinguished guests. Lavish banquets follow the event.

The honors are conferred in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economics, unless no laureate has been chosen in a given field. As with almost any event, the work that takes place beforehand is of vital importance. The selection process for the people, or institutions as is sometimes the case with the Nobel Peace Prize, to be awarded are meticulous and performed with a great sense of responsibility since the world will scrutinize every decision.

Candidate selection is carried out by four Nobel Committees that are based within the institutions Nobel's will made responsible for attributing the awards. Each of these committees is composed of five elected members, the majority of whom are of Swedish origin, with the exception of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Every year the six committees send invitations to hundreds of scientists, academy members and university professors from around the world to nominate an individual for a Nobel Prize; former laureates are also encouraged to put forward a name. There are differences in the rules regarding nomination for the individual prizes, but they are accentuated with the Nobel Peace Prize, which can be recommended by members of national assemblies, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Law Institutes and governments themselves. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, however, no one prize can be attributed to more than three people in the same year. Additionally, no scientific community, academic institution or organization may receive a prize on their own, except in the case of the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1974, a Nobel Prize cannot be attributed posthumously.

 

This volume offers a general readership brief profiles of 308 of the approximately 800 people and organizations who have received the Nobel Prize for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics since its inception in 1901. The selected profiles are organized by decade each a page long, with an additional page accompanying some of the science honorees that illustrates a major discovery. Chapter conclusions contain a complete list of winners from that decade. A brief profile of Alfred Nobel is included.
-   Book News  2009 02

This volume will be a welcome addition in any public or academic library reference collection.
- Bradford Lee Eden  American Reference Book Annual  

Knowing we have shared the planet with Nobelists like these can in itself be uplifting.
- John Kalbfleisch  The Ottawa Citizen  2008 12 28

Knowing we have shared the planet with Nobelists like these can in itself be uplifting.
- John Kalbfleisch  Montreal Gazette  2008 12 15

This handy reference profiles about 200 of the most famous past winners (by prize and by year). A great fact-checker to consult and learn from.
-   Library Journal  2008 11 15

Nobel: A Century of Prize Winners groups winner in annotated lists by decade and then by year... It's all fascinating.
- James Strecker  May Day  2008 12