This article is from WeChat public account: Times Weekly (ID: timeweekly) , author: Wang Chenting, original title: “Nobel Prize 121 Years: More and more bonuses, recording the changes of the times with lag awards”, the header image comes from: Visual China (Figure For: Alfred Nobel)
In the new year, who will be named the “greatest contribution to humanity” in science and economics?
According to the latest introduction of the Nobel Prize Committee, the 2022 Nobel Prize Week will be from October 3 to October 10. Due to the epidemic, no award ceremony will be held in 2020 and 2021. This time, the Nobel Prize Committee announced that it will be re-organized, and the previous two winners will be invited to gather in Stockholm in December this year.
This is a glory that was born 120 years ago.
“I hereby ask the executor to dispose of the remaining property that I can cash in as follows: convert the said property into cash, and then make a safe and reliable investment; set up a foundation with this capital, and award the interest generated by the fund every year. To those who have made outstanding contributions to humanity in the preceding year. Divide this interest into five equal parts and distribute as follows:
An award to the person who has made the most significant discovery or invention in physics;
An award to the person with the most significant discovery or improvement in chemistry;
An award to the person who has made the most significant discovery in medicine and physiology;
An award to the person who has produced the best work in the literary world with ideal tendencies;
The last prize goes to those who have done the best or contributed to the promotion of national unity and friendship, the abolition or reduction of the standing army, and the organization and promotion of peace conferences.
This is the valid Will in all my Wills. “
In 1895, the 63-year-old Swedish chemist Nobel made a will and established the Nobel Foundation with his inheritance of 31 million Swedish kronor. Since it was first awarded in 1901, except for some years when it was suspended due to the war, the Nobel Prize has been extended for 120 years, and it can be regarded as the most high-profile award in the world.
In addition to the “Swedish Central Bank Commemorative Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences” added by the Riksbank in 1968, the Nobel Prize covers six major awards: Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Peace, Literature and Economics .
Since its inception, the Nobel Prize has had its own halo. The annual feast has attracted the attention of many scientists and scholars. Even if they have a job at hand, they still take some time and energy to focus on the Nobel Laureate.
How much money does Nobel have?
More than 120 years later, the Nobel Prize uses inheritance as a prize, but why is it inexhaustible? How much legacy does Nobel have?
In 1895, the 63-year-old Nobel made a will and established the Nobel Foundation with an inheritance of 31 million Swedish kronor.
As a scientist, at the age of 63, he is actually at the peak of scientific research, and the legacy of 31 million Swedish kronor is enough to prove his scientific research achievements in the market.
Nobel was born in Sweden, but his father was appreciated by the Tsar as an engineer, so the family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia.
When Nobel was a teenager, he left Russia to study in the United States. It was not until 1859 that he returned to his hometown of Stockholm to engage in research on nitroglycerin explosives because of the failure of his father’s business.
Nobel’s fortune grew up in the continuous explosion of the laboratory due to improper operation. In the end, he tested the detonator on a boat in a lake near Stockholm and successfully applied for a patent.
△Nobel received 355 patents all over the world in his lifetime. (Source: Nobel Prize official website)
He started to build his own factory, but it exploded as soon as it was put into production. He was blacklisted. Nobel left Sweden and started building a factory in Germany, which also exploded. In the end, his factory was built in California, USA, and developed He developed a new type of detonator with safer and more stable performance, so his explosives became a best-seller, widely used in the engineering field and also in the military field. After his fame, countries around the world continued to snap up his products and patents. The world famous “Gunpowder King” .
When Nobel’s explosives were sold all over the world, he began to invest in oil, machinery and other fields to make profits, so Nobel became a real rich man, but because he was busy with his career, Nobel has been single and has no children. On his deathbed, he cashed out some of his assets and established the Nobel Prize.
Five years after his death, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1895, with an individual prize of SEK 150,000. According to Nobel’s original intention, the prize should ensure that the recipient can continue his research without other income for 20 years. The bonus that year was exactly equivalent to a professor’s salary for 20 years at that time.
By 2021, the Nobel Prize has been increased to 10 million Swedish kronor, or more than 6.6 million yuan.
If compared with the current average salary of Chinese university teachers – a domestic academic website has calculated that the salary of teaching staff in 985 colleges and universities is between 150,000 and 300,000 – it is about 20 years’ salary; Compared with the average salary in euros, it is equivalent to the salary of a Swedish professor for 15 years.
△The average monthly salary of teachers in Swedish universities
The one-year income is higher than the initial principal, and the continuation of the Nobel Prize benefits from the good operation of the Nobel Foundation.
In fact, in the early stage of operation, the Nobel Prize was once in a dilemma of losses. Under the overly conservative investment strategy and gradually heavy tax burden, the Nobel Prize bonus has shrunk year by year after the 150,000 Swedish krona bonus in 1901.
In 1922, the Nobel Foundation’s tax assessment peaked, exceeding the sum of the Nobel Prizes set aside for the following year. This led directly to a record low of 115,000 Swedish krona in 1923.
It was not until 1946 that the Nobel Foundation was granted tax-exempt status by the Swedish government that the size of the foundation’s principal began to grow. In 1953, the Swedish government further eased its policy, allowing the Nobel Foundation to freely invest in stocks and real estate, asset classes that were once off limits.
However, according to the statistics of the Nobel Prize official website, until 1990, the actual value of the Nobel Prize bonus did not exceed the actual value of the first year’s bonus. In 1991, the Nobel Prize bonus was increased to 6 million Swedish kronor, and the actual value was basically equal to the value of the prize first awarded in 1901.
By the end of 2021, the funding had been used for 126 years. The market value of the Nobel Fund has reached 6.103 billion Swedish kronor (about 3.93 billion yuan) . Excluding inflation, the actual value of the fund at the end of 2015 had more than tripled from its initial market value.
△The Nobel Prize bonus from 1960 to 2021 and the market value of the Nobel Fund (Photo source: Nobel Prize official website)
lag awards
In terms of specific awards, the annual Nobel Prize does not only focus on candidates who have made significant contributions in the previous year. In particular, scientific awards have obvious lag.
According to official statistics, awards are usually not awarded until about 18 years after the technology or theory was proposed. Judging from the winners of the Nobel Prize in Science from 1901 to 2014, the longest lag time between the publication of scientific research results and the award of awards in physics, physiology or medicine is about 55 years.
For example, Edwards, the father of IVF, started to study IVF in 1958 and succeeded in producing the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. He was 85 when he won the award in 2010, and his baby Louise Brown was 32.
Tu Youyou extracted artemisinin to treat malaria in 1972, and it was not until 43 years later that she won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015; the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 honored John B Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino have contributed to the research of lithium-ion batteries, and it has been 52 years since the invention of lithium batteries.
This is the lag of the Nobel Prize. On the other hand, it is also rigorous and authoritative, which is also in line with the research attribute of Nobel’s continuous trial and error to improve the detonator.
But in the history of the Nobel Prize, the awards it awarded have also gone wrong. In 1927, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the Danish scientist Johannes Febiger for his research on cancer, which Febiger believed was caused by a parasite called the spirochete. This conclusion seems completely wrong today, but it was widely accepted at the time.
From a new discovery to being verified, it often takes a long time. During this time, there will be various disputes and doubts. For science, this is the most important feature. Therefore, many Nobel Prize winners are constantly This honor is awarded only when the verification is completed under the condition of being questioned.
But there are exceptions. For example, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao are the lucky ones. It took less than a year for them to propose “parity non-conservation” to winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. This award is the fastest in the 100-year history of the Nobel Prize.
As a subversive theoretical achievement, the law of parity non-conservation broke the “law of parity conservation” proposed by physicist Wegener in 1927, and affected the foundation of physics.
The reason why it was quickly recognized by the Nobel Prize Organizing Committee is that the theory is crucial to subsequent physics research. In addition, the theory has also been proved experimentally. But unfortunately, Wu Jianxiong, the experimental physicist who verified the theory of Yang and Li, did not share the honor of the Nobel Prize.
△ Source: Nobel Prize official website
Winners Map
In the map of Nobel Prize winners, the United States, Britain and Germany still firmly occupy the top three of the list of winners. As of 2021, there are 399 winners in the US, 136 in the UK and 111 in Germany. France, Sweden, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, Canada, and Switzerland came in second, respectively.
A total of 12 Israelis have won the Nobel Prize. It is worth mentioning that the “Jews and the Nobel Prize” written by Israeli scholars disclosed that although Jews only account for 0.2% of the world’s population, since the establishment of the Nobel Prize in 1895, Jews have received 22% of the awards. In this century, the proportion of winners has risen to 28%.
Ignoring Asia and Africa is regarded as the tradition of the Nobel Prize. Among Asian countries, only Japan entered the top ten with 29 “achievements”.
In Africa, as of 2021, a total of 26 people have won the Nobel Prize. In 1957, Albert Camus, who was born in Algeria, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African to win the prize. In 1960, Albert John Lutuli of South Africa became the first black African to win the Nobel Prize for leading the South African National Assembly in a nonviolent struggle against the white government.
China has also begun to emerge in the field of Nobel Prizes. In 1957, the Nobel Prize in Physics shared by Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao was the first time a Chinese won the Nobel Prize. After the new century, the Chinese figure is more active. In 2009, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the “Father of Optical Fiber” Kao Kun, and the awards of Mo Yan and Tu Youyou also inspired the Chinese people.
△Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 (Source: Nobel Prize Official Website)
In Nobel’s will, it was specifically mentioned: “No consideration shall be given to the nationality of the candidate for the award, that is to say, regardless of whether he or she is Scandinavian or not, whoever most meets the conditions shall receive the award. The bonus, I declare here, that it is my urgency to award the bonus in this way.”
Compared to the nationality of the laureates, the bigger imbalance is clearly in the area of gender – out of 947 Nobel laureates, only 58 are women. Among them, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 twice.
However, Nobel Prizes are also increasingly being awarded to women. Half of the female laureates were awarded in the last 20 years between 2001 and 2021. Although it is still a minority compared to male laureates and the large number of female researchers, writers and contributors to peace around the world.
△Nobel Prize female winners from 1901 to 2021 (Source: Nobel Prize official website)
Today, the world is far from what it was 120 years ago. In a mobile world, how to understand the Nobel Prize has also become a way of looking at the new changes in this world.
This article is from WeChat public account: Times Weekly (ID: timeweekly) , author: Wang Chenting
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