The Nobel Prize

"'I had in my pocket a film containing the text of the Nobel speech. We had failed to find any other way of sending it out, and once again, its destination was Sweden. I was standing in an inconspicuous spot; he and his wife Ingrid came strolling along arm in arm...´ "That evening in late April 1972 was when my career as a secret courier to Solzhenitsyn started." Read Stig Fredrikson's remarkable account of how he helped smuggle Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Prize lecture out of the USSR. The novelist was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature 1970. Read the tale of a controversial Nobel Prize: https://bit.ly/3G7caAj

”Sexual violence is a red line … And if it is crossed, the world should react together and be able to say 'no, this is not acceptable'.” Gynaecologist and human rights activist Denis Mukwege received the peace prize in 2018 for his efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. He has become the world’s leading specialist in the treatment of wartime sexual violence and a global campaigner against the use of rape as a weapon of war. Read more about his work in this newly published The Guardian article: https://lnkd.in/e3QvKEAs

“Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m still a singer-songwriter.” Did you know that Kazuo Ishiguro wrote songs for jazz singer Stacey Kent? Hear him talk about his journey from guitars to novels – and how he was influenced by Leonard Cohen and fellow literature laureate, Bob Dylan. #JazzDay

On 30 April 1897, British physicist J. J. Thomson presented his research on cathode rays culminating in the discovery of the electron. The announcement took place during an evening lecture at the Royal Institution in London. In 1906, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3thauNX #NobelPrize

“They do not discriminate between combatant and civilian, nor between battlefield and village. You cannot see them. You cannot smell them. And they offer no warning for the unsuspecting.” Chemical weapons have a long and dark history. World War One was the first example of their large-scale use. By the end of the war, a total of 124,000 tonnes of gas had been produced. 85,000 are reckoned to have lost their lives owing to chemical weapons, while almost 1.2 million were injured. Over time there were demands to bring an end to this method of warfare, but it was of little effect until a new Chemical Weapons Convention was drawn up, overseen by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which was formed on 29 April 1997. The mission of the OPCW is to achieve a world free of chemical weapons. As of 31 March 2024, 98% of the world’s population live under the protection of the convention and 100% of the world’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles have been destroyed. OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. Read their Nobel Prize lecture: https://bit.ly/3u3Wzh8

“Radiocarbon dating had its origin in a study of the possible effects that cosmic rays might have on the earth,” said Willard Libby. In 1949 he developed a method harnessing radioactive decay to determine the age of organic materials and revolutionised archaeology. His method has been used to solve historical mysteries and shed light on “the wilderness of prehistory”, and is known as radiocarbon dating or carbon-14 dating. Carbon is a fundamental component in all living material. In nature there are two variants: carbon-12, which is stable, and carbon-14, which is radioactive. Living organisms absorb both types of carbon. When an organism dies and the supply of carbon from the atmosphere ceases, the content of carbon-14 declines through radioactive decay at a fixed rate. Experts can accurately determine the age of organic materials up to 60,000 years old by counting carbon-14 atoms left in the materials. “You read statements in books that such and such a society or archaeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather abruptly these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately,” Libby said in his Nobel Prize lecture. He initially tested his dating method on charred bread from Pompeii and a fragment of an ancient chest from Ancient Egypt. But carbon-14 dating has since been used to determine the real age of the Shroud of Turin and reveal more about Ötzi the Iceman, whose remarkable remains were found in the Alps, frozen for 5,300 years. As well as revolutionising the field of archaeology and shedding light on the history of humankind through the use of chemistry, Libby’s breakthrough has helped scientists understand Earth’s geology and changing climate, and reveal how our bodies work.

"I would find it very hard to write papers with people that I’m not friends with, that I don’t like to spend time with. I can’t be very close friends with all of them, but writing a paper is a vulnerable process. You share ideas, some of them are not going to work out, some of them are not good ideas, you make mistakes, so you need to have a fair amount of trust and a level of comfort with people to work with them." Guido Imbens was awarded the prize in economic sciences alongside his friends Joshua Angrist and David Card. He spoke to us about the importance of friendship: https://bit.ly/356U6bN

Elements occur as various isotopes, variations of elements with different atomic weights. American scientist Harold Urey wondered if the smallest atom, hydrogen, had other isotopes, and he calculated how they ought to be constituted if that were the case. In 1931, he discovered heavy hydrogen and named the new form of hydrogen deuterium. The name is formed from the Greek deuteros, which means "second", to denote the two particles composing the nucleus. According to the New York Times obituary, Urey once commented that at the time of the discovery, he thought that heavy hydrogen might eventually have practical use in "something like neon signs". Deuterium and tritium are the forms of hydrogen used as fuel in the hydrogen bomb. Deuterium, combined with oxygen as "heavy water", is also essential to operating some nuclear reactors. Urey was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry but refused to travel to Sweden because his wife was pregnant, so he delivered his Nobel Prize lecture the following year. Read his lecture: https://bit.ly/3KIVBN6

Jane Addams was a social work pioneer, feminist and peace maker. In 1910 Addams received the first honorary degree ever awarded to a women at Yale University. She dedicated her life to getting great powers to conclude peace agreements and helping the poor. She ran Hull House in Chicago with the mission "to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago." After being nominated on 91 occasions for the Nobel Peace Prize, Addams was finally awarded the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize together with Nicholas Murray Butler. Addams became the second woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, after Bertha von Suttner. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3gdYgSz Photo: Jane Addams, 1906. Painting by George de Forest Brush. Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; partial gift of Mrs. Nancy Pierce York and Mrs. Grace Pierce Forbes.