The Nobel Prize

The perilous voyages of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ fleeing the communist regime that controlled their home country, highlighted the refugee crisis in the early 1980s. Around 800,000 people joined the exodus in search of a better life. Some of them fell victim to looting and murder by vicious pirates, as merchant ships often refused to let refugees aboard. In 1981, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for promoting the rights of refugees. Read more about the organisation’s work: https://bit.ly/3WydipA

During a visit to Auburn Girls High School in Sydney, Australia, peace laureate Tawakkol Karman passed the mic to the next generation of activists. Her words of encouragement were felt by the girls seated on the floor of the gymnasium listening attentively, "Believe in yourself. You are the solution. You will be the leaders of the world." Karman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work." Karman's school visit was done in connection with our Nobel Prize Dialogue Sydney.

What makes a poem speak to you? Literature laureate T. S. Eliot strongly believed poetry should represent the complexities of modern civilisation. This belief made him one of the most daring innovators of 20th-century poetry. Never compromising either with the public or with language itself, Eliot experimented with diction and style. This can be seen in his 1922 poem 'The Waste Land', which popularised the modernist poetry movement and is known for its unusual style. The poem is a powerful exploration of urban alienation. The topic resonated with post-war readers and the despair they felt. Let us know your favourite T. S. Eliot poem in the comments. You can read more about Eliot and the 1948 literature prize here: https://bit.ly/3PqNdGQ

Gabriel García Márquez’s international breakthrough came with the novel 'Cien años de soledad' (1967) ('One Hundred Years of Solitude'). He is one of the foremost interpreters of magical realism in literature, a genre in which the framework narrative is set in a real place and time, but supernatural and dreamlike elements are part of the portrayal. The novels 'El otoño del patriarca' (1975) ('The Autumn of the Patriarch') and 'El amor en los tiempos del colera' (1985) ('Love in the Time of Cholera') cemented his position as one of the greatest Latin American writers of all time. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3fRg054 Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Unknown author. #NobelPrize

“Your purpose as a scientist is not to achieve fame or money, that is not your purpose, those might be side effects and good for you, that could be wonderful for you but it is a side effect, it is not the main goal. The main goal is to make discoveries and gift them to humanity. And those discoveries and that knowledge stays with humanity long after you are gone.” - Carolyn Bertozzi on the scientist's purpose Bertozzi was awarded the 2022 chemistry prize for utilising click chemistry in living organisms. She developed bioorthogonal reactions which take place inside living organisms without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell. #NobelPrize

“I did not know what to do with my life after school, except that I was determined not to serve in the military. More by default than by vocation, I decided to enter medical school, which kept all avenues open for a possible career in science or as a practitioner of something useful.” – Medicine laureate Thomas Südhof Südhof helped solve the mystery of how the cell organises its transport system.  Learn more about his work: https://bit.ly/3XFKe1y

“I was a hyperactive kid. Back then they didn't treat hyperactivity […] I used sports and martial arts as a way of controlling my hyperactivity and being able to focus, and I think those are really critical to be a good scientist because if you're bouncing off the walls, you can’t formulate hypotheses. That helped me overcome that that hyperactivity.” - medicine laureate Drew Weissman. Drew Weissman will be joining us at the 2024 Nobel Week Dialogue, where he will discuss the future of health with other Nobel Prize laureates. Sign up for the event: https://bit.ly/48bUGRT

"I think that the prize is recognising, in part, the fact that understanding the deep problems of things like mind is not going to come forth in some simple way like Newtonian physics. It really requires much more understanding of the relationship between structure and properties, and structure dynamics and properties. And that’s a mixture of some corners of physics, some corners of chemistry, some corners of biology, coming together to understand and create an area of study." John Hopfield reflects on receiving the first Nobel Prize relating to artificial intelligence, which he learned of just before our interview. He described his first reaction to getting the news, the connection between AI and physics, and his worries about the future. Hopfield shares the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics with Geoffrey Hinton "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." Listen to our full interview: https://bit.ly/4hmmSWa

What’s this? Have a guess. a) A close-up of a piece of fabric b) An interesting shadow c) A gold surface The answer is a gold surface, in which you can see each individual gold atom. It’s possible to see them at the atomic level thanks to scanning tunnelling microscopy. Nobel Prize laureates Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer developed the technique in which a remarkably fine stylus scans a surface and its vertical movement is used to create a topographical map of the surface at the atomic level. Learn more about how it works and scanning tunnelling microscopy’s impact, from visualising DNA molecules to viruses. https://bit.ly/4cabKrX

Did you know that the richest 20 per cent of the world’s countries are now around 30 times richer than the poorest 20 per cent? Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. This year’s laureates in the economic sciences – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have provided new insights into why there are such vast differences in prosperity between nations. One important explanation is persistent differences in societal institutions. By examining the various political and economic systems introduced by European colonisers, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have been able to demonstrate a relationship between institutions and prosperity. While inclusive institutions introduced by some colonisers have over time resulted in a generally prosperous population, exploitative institutions founded by other colonisers – which provide short-term gains for the people in power – trap some countries in a situation with extractive institutions and low economic growth. The laureates have also developed theoretical tools that can explain why differences in institutions persist and importantly, how institutions can change for the better. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ezB38Tvp