The oldest Nobel laureate. Interesting "Nobel Prize": facts about the award that few people know about. Who is Arthur Eshkin

In 1888, Alfred Nobel's brother Ludwig died in St. Petersburg. But the French newspapers confused the name and published the news of the death of the inventor of dynamite. In the news, Nobel was called a "merchant of death" who made his millions on blood. Alfred was impressed by what he read, and he decided to do something to be remembered from the positive side. Seven years later, Nobel signed a will, according to which most of his fortune should go to the establishment of prizes in literature, physics, chemistry, health or physiology, as well as for the consolidation of peace. And since 1969, at the suggestion of the Swedish Bank, the prize has also been awarded in the field of economics.

02

Alfred Nobel was also a playwright. Already at death, he finished writing the tragedy "Nemesis" in four acts. After the play was published, the Catholic Church declared it blasphemous, and the entire print run, except three copies, was destroyed. The first surviving edition was published only in 2003, and in 2005, 109 years after the death of the author, the premiere took place in Stockholm.

03

Mahatma Gandhi (you probably remember that lean leader of India in the Civilization series) was nominated for the Peace Prize five times, but he never received it. After his assassination in 1948, the Nobel Committee admitted its mistake and decided to do without the presentation of the award that year.

04

The 102nd element of Mendeleev's periodic table is named Nobelium. It was obtained almost simultaneously in the sixties at the Soviet Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and the University of California, Berkeley. It is noteworthy that Soviet scientists named the joliotium element after the French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie (Jl), and the Americans - nobelium (No). Moreover, both names were in circulation until the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Chemistry approved the final one - nobelium. Although the Americans bypassed us with the name, it was Soviet scientists who were recognized as the discoverers of the element. But the Nobel Prize was not given for this.

05

There is a myth that the Nobel Prize in mathematics is not awarded because Alfred's wife left him for a mathematician. In fact, Nobel never married, and he considered mathematics too abstract science. He wanted the prize to be given to people who have done something useful for humanity. (I wish I could go back many years and say that to my math!)

06

Everyone knows the parody version of the Nobel Prize - the Shnobel Prize (also called the Ignobel Prize), which is awarded for the most useless research. The only person to have received both awards is Andrei Geim, a Dutch scientist born in the USSR. He received the Shnobelevka in 2000 for using magnets to levitate frogs, and the Nobel Prize in 2010, together with Konstantin Novoselov for experiments on graphene research

07

At the end of the 30s of the last century, German physicists James Frank and Max von Laue, fearing that their gold Nobel medals could be confiscated by the Nazis who came to power, transferred them for safekeeping to another prize winner, the Dane Niels Bohr. When Denmark was occupied by German troops in 1940, he handed over the medals to the chemist György de Hevesy (also, by the way, the future winner of the prize in chemistry), who dissolved them in aqua regia. The jar with the solution did not arouse any suspicion, and after the war, de Hevesy allocated gold from there, transferred it to the Royal Swedish Academy, and the German physicists were again cast their medals.

08

In 1971, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He was short-sighted and at the ceremony tripped over a step and fell. And when he approached to thank the king of Sweden, who was sitting among the other guests, he made a mistake and began to bow to the palace guard. After this incident, the monarch was put on stage.

In 1915, the Australian physicist Sir William Lawrence Bragg was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his achievements in the study of crystals using X-rays." In the entire history of the award, he is known as the youngest laureate - at the time of receiving it, he was only 25 years old.

And although 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai received the Peace Prize last year, Bragg is still the youngest winner in science, and the likelihood that something will change in the future is small.

Over the past hundred years, Nobel laureates have grown older: when Bragg received his award in 1915, the average age of discoverers in fields such as chemistry, physics and medicine was no more than 40 years. Today it is equal to 71 years: scientists have been waiting for the prize more and more, and it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve serious achievements in science.

The average age of Nobel Prize-winning scientists at the time of their award: physiology (blue), physics (orange) and chemistry (red).

Waiting for a call from the Swedes

In general, when it comes to discoveries and inventions, it is customary to associate these achievements with the spirit of youth. It is believed that young minds are more inclined to question and question what others take for granted: in other words, they think outside the box.

Paul Dirac, also the recipient of the Physics Prize for discoveries in quantum mechanics, even wrote a poem about this:

Age is, of course, a fever chill
that every physicist must fear.
He is better dead than living still
when once he is past his thirtieth year.

(Oh, fever of time and age chills,
That every physicist has to be ashamed:
He's not dead yet, but it's better to go straight to the coffin -
Than live when he's past thirty.)

It is not known whether he actually experienced something similar when he was thirty, but one thing is clear: if Dirac had not lived to this age, he would never have received the award - the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

He shared it in 1933 with 46-year-old Erwin Schrödinger; Dirac himself at that time was only 31 years old. However, to pay tribute to his poem, it is worth saying that Dirac made his discovery at the age of 26.

This break in time - between scientific discovery and its recognition - is part of the tradition, but according to the authors of the article entitled "Waiting for the Nobel Prize" ( The Nobel Prize Delay, 2014) every year this period becomes longer, and its growth is nonlinear:

Break between discovery and reward: the ordinate axis is the waiting time (in tens of years), the abscissa axis is the year the Nobel Prize was received (physics - blue, chemistry - green, medicine - red). Source: Becattini et. al.

The researchers note that long wait times, sometimes exceeding 20 years, occur in each of the three areas, however, the biggest gap is in physics:

“Cases where the waiting time between opening and receiving an award exceeds tens of years are gradually becoming the norm for all exact sciences: about 60% of awards in physics, 52% in chemistry and 49% in medicine were received with a gap of more than 20 years. ".

The longest wait was for the Nobel Prize in physics to Peter Higgs and François Englert, which they were eventually awarded for the theory that predicted the existence of bosonic particles (1946). However, the discovery of the Higgs bosons itself did not take place earlier than in 2013: scientists have been waiting for the award for 49 years.

(The 84-year-old Higgs did not have a cell phone and was eating lunch the hour the announcement was made. He did not know what had happened until a passing driver stopped him and congratulated him on the good “news.” Higgs later admitted on the BBC: "" What, what other news?"- I said then").

The site found out how much the Nobel laureate medal costs and why billionaire Usmanov bought it

The Nobel Prize winners are announced in Stockholm in October. The names of outstanding scientists are being named now, and the award ceremony will traditionally take place on December 10, the day of Alfred Nobel's death. The prize for this year is SEK 9 million, or approximately USD 1 million. The portal site has collected some interesting facts about the Nobel Prize.

Medal price

American physicist Leon Max Lederman, who exactly 30 years ago received a Nobel Prize for his participation in the discovery of the muon neutrino, in 2015 he was forced to auction the medal to cover the costs of his treatment. The award raised $ 765,000. Thanks to this, Lederman is still alive and in July celebrated his 96th birthday.

Usmanov bought a medal, but did not take it from the laureate

History knows another story of the sale of the Nobel medal. Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov bought an award from a biologist for $ 4.7 million James Watson, famous for his achievements in decoding the double helix of DNA. Meanwhile, Usmanov did not take the medal from the laureate. According to him, this relic should remain with the winner, and the money he paid for it should be used for further research.

Increased control

2011 Nobel Laureate in Physics Brian Schmidt once told a funny story related to the transportation of the Nobel medal by air. It all happened when he tried to fly from the city of Fargo in the US state of North Dakota. Schmidt went through an X-ray machine with a medal in his bag and was then interrogated. The fact is that on the X-ray, the medal, which is a decent-sized gold disk, turns out to be absolutely black. The control staff had never seen anything like it before, and therefore asked the passenger to show them the contents of the bag. When the astrophysicist told them that this was the prize given to him in Stockholm by the king of Sweden, they asked one single question: "How did you get carried to Fargo?"

Age of laureates

The average age of Nobel Prize winners in all nominations is 59 years old. At the same time, the oldest laureate was a 90-year-old Leonid Gurvich, who won the 2007 Economics Prize. The youngest laureate is a human rights defender Malala Yusufzai from Pakistan, who almost died at the hands of the militants, against whose tyranny she spoke in her blog. When the girl was announced the winner of the Peace Prize in 2014, she was only 17 years old.

Awarding an award to prisoners

Three people were declared Nobel Peace Prize laureates while behind bars. This is a German pacifist and journalist Karl von Ossicki (1935), politician Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma (1991) and a Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo (2010).

Where is the money, Zin?

Adolf Hitler once banned three German scientists from accepting the Nobel Prize. it Richard Kuhn, winner of the 1938 Chemistry Prize, Adolf Butenandt - another chemist who should have been awarded the award in 1939, and Gerhard Domagk, noted in 1939 for achievements in physiology and medicine. Later, they still received diplomas and medals, but they did not get any cash prizes.

The greedy Nobel family

The Swedish chemist and outstanding inventor Alfred Nobel wrote a will in November 1885, according to which a significant part of his capital was to go to the creation of a special fund to reward outstanding scientists, writers and peace activists. When the will was announced, his relatives felt left out and began to challenge the last will of the deceased. Due to litigation, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded only in 1901.

The man said - the man did

In 1956, a physicist from the United States John Bardeen received the Nobel Prize for his participation in the study of the theory of superconductivity. He took only one of his three children to the award ceremony, deciding not to interrupt the other two from their studies. When the king of Sweden Gustav chided him for this, Bardin said that next time he would definitely bring the whole family to the award ceremony. The scientist kept his promise and, once again becoming a laureate of the prize in 1972, came for it with three children. By the way, he became the third person in history to receive two Nobel medals.

Receiving the award posthumously

Until 1970, the Nobel Prizes were awarded twice to people who had already died. Then the Nobel Foundation decided that it would no longer do this. Nevertheless, the deceased was declared the winner of the prize in the field of physiology and medicine in 2011 Ralph Steinman... The fact is that he died just three days before the announcement of the names of the laureates and the Foundation did not know about it. The Foundation did not cancel its decision, and the scientist's relatives received the award.

The second week of October has been called Nobel for 111 years: it was at this time that the Nobel Foundation, in accordance with the terms of the will of the famous Swedish scientist, announces the names of the winners of the most prestigious scientific prize in the world. In 2012, the winners in the field of physiology and medicine and physics have already been named, and the last on October 15 will be named the laureates in the field of economics. It is not so easy to answer the question "How many Nobel laureates are there?" In total, from 1901 to 2011, 851 laureates received the awards, but in the list of people and organizations that were awarded the award, there are only 844 names and titles - simply because some were laureates twice or even three times.

Most of the laureates - 199 people (including 2012) - received prizes for research in the field of physiology and medicine. Physicists are only six people less - 193 (including 2012), of which one - twice. 160 laureates were awarded prizes in chemistry (including one - twice), 121 - peace prizes (including one - twice, and one - three times), 108 - in literature, and only 69 - in economics (introduced in 1969) ...

Repeated laureates

Among the rules for awarding Nobel Prizes there is a condition that all prizes, except for the Peace Prize, can be awarded to one person only once. Nevertheless, four Nobel laureates are known who received prizes twice: these are Maria Sklodowska-Curie (pictured; in physics - in 1903, in chemistry - in 1911), Linus Pauling (in chemistry - in 1954, peace prize - in 1962), John Bardeen (in physics - in 1956 and 1972) and Frederic Senger (in chemistry - in 1958 and 1980). There was only one three-time Nobel Prize winner in the entire history of the Nobel Prize - the International Committee of the Red Cross, which received the Peace Prize (this prize is the only one that allows nominating not only individuals but also organizations) in 1917, 1944 and 1963.

Posthumous laureates

In 1974, the Nobel Foundation introduced the rule that the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. Before that, there were only two cases of posthumous awarding of the prize: in 1931 - to Eric Karlfeldt (for literature), and in 1961 - to Dag Hammarskjold (peace prize). After the introduction of the rule, it was violated only once, and then by tragic coincidence of circumstances. In 2011, the Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Ralph Steinman (pictured), but he died of cancer a few hours before the Nobel Committee's decision was made public.

Nobel economy

This year the size of the monetary portion of the Nobel Prize is $ 1.1 million. The amount was reduced by 20% in June 2012 in order to save money. As the Nobel Foundation argued for this step, the innovation will help avoid a reduction in the organization's capital in the long term, because capital management should be carried out in such a way that "the prize can be awarded indefinitely."

Nobel cache

In the entire history of the Nobel Prize, only one case has been recorded when the laureates twice received the same Nobel medals for the same discovery. German physicists Max von Laue (1915 laureate) and James Frank (1925 laureate), after the ban on receiving Nobel Prizes in 1936 in Nazi Germany, transferred their medals for preservation to Niels Bohr, who headed the institute in Copenhagen. In 1940, when the Reich occupied Denmark, an employee of the Hungarian Institute Gyorgy de Hevesy (pictured), fearing that the medals might be withdrawn, dissolved them in "aqua regia" (a mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids), and after liberation isolated gold from the stored solution of chloroauric acid and donated it to the Royal Swedish Academy. There they again made Nobel medals from it, which were returned to the laureates. By the way, György de Hevesy himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944.

Nobel long-liver

Italian neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (pictured) is a long-liver among Nobel laureates and the oldest of them: this year she turned 103. She was awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1986, when she celebrated her 77th birthday. The oldest laureate at the time of the award was 90-year-old American Leonid Gurvich (Prize in Economics - 2007), and the youngest - 25-year-old Australian William Lawrence Bregg (Prize in Physics - 1915), who became a laureate together with his father By William Henry Bragg.

Nobel women

The largest number of women laureates is among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize (15 people) and the Prize for Literature (11 people). However, the winners of the literary prize can boast that the first of them was awarded the high title 37 years earlier: in 1909, the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlef (pictured) became the Nobel laureate in literature, and the American Emily Green Bolch became the first woman to win the Peace Prize. in 1946.

Nobel coauthors

According to the rules of the Nobel Foundation, no more than three people for different works can receive an award in one field per year - or no more than three authors of one work. The top three were Americans George Whipple, George Minot and William Murphy (pictured), recipients of the 1934 Physiology or Medicine Prize. And the last (for 2011) are Americans Saul Pelmutter and Adam Reiss and Australian Brian Schmidt (physics), as well as Liberian women Helen Johnson Sirleaf and Leima Gbowi and Yemeni citizen Tawakul Karman (Nobel Peace Prize). If the prize is awarded to more than one person or for more than one work, it is divided proportionally: first - by the number of works, then - by the number of authors of each work. If two works are awarded, one of which has two authors, then the author of the first will receive half of the amount, and each of the authors of the second - only a quarter.

Nobel Passes

In the rules for awarding the Nobel Prize, there is no requirement to be sure to present it every year: by the decision of the Nobel Committee, if there is no worthy work among the candidates for a high award, the prize may not be awarded. In this case, its cash equivalent is transferred to the Nobel Foundation in whole or in part - in the latter case, from one third to two thirds of the amount can be transferred to the special fund of the profile section. During the three war years - 1940, 1941 and 1942 - no Nobel Prizes were awarded at all. Taking into account this pass, the Nobel Peace Prize was most often (18 times) not awarded, the Prize in Physiology and Medicine - nine times, in chemistry - eight times, in literature - seven times, in physics - six times, and in the award of the Prize in Economics, introduced only in 1969, there was not a single pass.

Nobel transformation

The famous physicist Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. The phrase with which he reacted to this news became winged: the scientist said that "All science is either physics or stamp collecting", and a little later commented on his award even more figuratively, stating that of all the transformations that he witnessed, "The most unexpected thing was my own transformation from a physicist to a chemist."

Nobel heirs

The first Nobel Prize winner in physics was Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, who was awarded the 1901 prize for his discovery of X-rays. In total, for work directly related to the application of Roentgen's discovery in science, Nobel Prizes were awarded 12 more times, including in physics (seven times), in physiology and medicine (three times) and in chemistry (twice): in 1914, 1915, 1917, 1922, 1924, 1927, 1936, 1946, 1962, 1964, 1979 and 1981.

The Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to a writer whose works "approach the ideal."

Alfred Nobel himself in the last years of his life tried his hand at the literary field and began to write fantastic works. His library contained a large selection of literature in various languages.

The name of the award winner is announced in October each year. His candidacy is chosen by a majority vote of the Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academy. The decision is final and not subject to appeal.

The names and number of nominees, according to the charter of the Nobel Foundation, are subject to non-disclosure for 50 years.

The first prize was awarded on December 10, 1901 and amounted to 150 thousand Swedish kronor (6.8 million kronor in 2000). In 2011, the amount of the award was. In 2012, its monetary size was.

In addition to the prize, the laureate is awarded a medal and a diploma. The medal for the Literature Prize depicts a young man sitting under a laurel, listening and recording the song of the Muse, the patroness of the arts and sciences. The inscription on the circumference reads Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes, which translated from Latin means "Invention makes life better, and art more beautiful." The words are taken from Virgil's "Aeneid" (Canto 6, verse 663): "To those of the prophets who rivers only that which Phoebe is worthy, To those who adorned life, creating arts for mortals."

The first Nobel laureate in literature was the French poet Sully Prudhomme. He received the award in recognition of poetry "which testifies to high idealism, artistic excellence and a rare combination of qualities and heart and intellect."

In total, 109 people were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 2012.

In 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943, the prize was not awarded.

Four times the Literature Prize was split between two writers: in 1904 (Frederic Mistral and Jose Echegaray), in 1917 (Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan), in 1966 (Shmuel Agnon and Nelly Sachs) and in 1974 (Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson).
The youngest laureate of the Literature Prize was the English writer Rudyard Kipling, who turned 42 at the time of the Nobel Prize in 1907. The oldest laureate is the English science fiction writer Doris Lessing, who was 88 years old at the time of her presentation in 2007.

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to 12 women, the first of which was the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlef in 1909.
Russian and Soviet writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. In 1933, Ivan Bunin became the winner of the prize for artistic excellence, thanks to which he continued the traditions of Russian classics in lyric prose. In 1958 it was awarded to Boris Pasternak for outstanding achievements in modern lyric poetry and in the traditional field of great Russian prose. Under pressure from the Soviet authorities, Pasternak refused the prize.

In 1965, the prize was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a crucial time for Russia.