Every year, a handful of the world’s leading scholars, social activists, and researchers receive what is often referred to as the most prestigious recognition of human effort: The Nobel Prize 2022 was no different, with some great work being recognized by the esteemed awards. We’ll throw light on the 2022 Nobel Prize winners in some time, but let’s get to know the awards a bit more first.
The Nobel Prizes, awarded for ground-breaking work in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, and economic sciences were established by the Swedish inventor and industrialist, Alfred Nobel, in 1895. He stipulated that the awards be given to those “who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.1” Today, there is no other prize that matches the prestige of the Nobel Prizes. But what does it take to win them?
The status and desirability of the Nobel Prize can be attributed to the extensive process that goes into selecting its winners. The announcement of winners comes a full year after the process starts. In September of the prior year, things kick off and renowned individuals – previous Nobel Laureates, members of the prize-awarding institutions, scholars active in the fields of physics, chemistry, economics, physiology or medicine – are invited to nominate candidates.
The Nobel committee then screens nominations—sometimes over 1,000 names—and gets a working list of up to 350 names, depending on the field (physics and economics, for example, are the most in number, but the peace award list is much shorter). By spring, the list is whittled down to around 15 names with the help of expert consultation. The recommendations are given to the respective academies, which determine final selections through a majority of votes in October. Pretty extensive, isn’t it?
The 2022 Nobel Laureates
The Nobel prizes are presented to winners on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The 2022 Nobel Prize winners received a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a prize money of 1,00,00,000 Swedish Krona. Those who win a Nobel are often propelled from being an ordinary researcher to a globally renowned personality. Let’s take a look at who won what this year.
Physiology or Medicine
Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo took home the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how modern day people evolved from extinct ancestors at the dawn of human history.
Physics
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was split between John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger for their groundbreaking work in quantum physics. Clauser proved that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables, while Aspect built a setup that closed an important loophole in Clauser’s work, and Zeillinger demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance.
Their work delves into how the universe operates by establishing the existence of entanglement, a quantum phenomenon where two separate particles appear to share information without any way of communicating.
Chemistry
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by three scientists — Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and Barry Sharpless — for discovering chemical reactions that let molecules snap together to create new compounds. The three chemists have been working independently since 2000 to create functional molecules that have led to a revolution in how chemists think about linking molecules together.
Tiny Trivia: Barry Sharpless is one of the five scientists who have the distinction of winning two Nobel Prizes. He has earlier won a prize in Chemistry for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions.
Literature
Celebrated French author Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize for literature, winning over the likes of Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh. Ernaux was awarded the prize “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.2” Ernaux is known for chronicling events of her life and the lives of those around her, with an uncompromising portrayal of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.
Tiny Trivia: Ernaux is the 16th Nobel laureate in literature from France, the 18th woman, and the first French woman to win the prize.
Peace
The Nobel Peace Prize was taken home by human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization, Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organization Centre for Civil Liberties. They were honored for their documentation of war crimes and the abuse of power and human rights, as well as their initiatives to support the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.
Economic sciences
The prize for economic sciences was awarded to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig for their research on the role of banks and financial crises. Their work has been invaluable in regulating financial markets, especially the emphasis on preventing widespread bank collapses to avoid deep and prolonged financial crises.
Tiny Trivia: The economics award, is not, technically, a Nobel Prize. It is called the ‘Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences’ in Memory of Alfred Nobel because it wasn’t among the original categories that Alfred Nobel set out in his will in 1895.
Nobel Prize and controversy: Two things that go hand-in-hand
The Nobel Prizes have been brewing controversy over the years. Be it in 2009 when then US president Barack Obama won the prize in just the first year of his presidency, which was seen as too early, or the marked omission of Mahatma Gandhi from the awards of 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and 1948. In 2021, the Nobel committee witnessed the community’s rage for ignoring top COVID-19 scientists despite their incredible contribution in launching a new class of vaccines in a short span of time; they have been left out this year as well due to a technicality. This was not the only controversy stirred by this year’s Nobel Prize announcements. The decision to group Centre for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian civil organization, with human rights defenders from Russia and Belarus — two of the country’s aggressors — was also seen as an affront to people who’ve been working to protect Ukrainians since Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
References
- www.britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nobel-Prize
- www.nobelprize.org.https://www.nobelprize.org/all-nobel-prizes-2022/
