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Nobel Prizes (реферат)

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I INTRODUCTION  

Nobel Prizes, annual monetary awards granted to individuals or
institutions for outstanding contributions in the fields of physics,
chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and
economic sciences. The Nobel prizes are internationally recognized as
the most prestigious awards in each of these fields. The prizes were
established by Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel,
who set up a fund for them in his will. The first Nobel prizes were
awarded on December 10, 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel’s death.

In his will, Nobel directed that most of his fortune be invested to form
a fund, the interest of which was to be distributed annually “in the
form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have
conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” He stipulated that the
interest be divided into five equal parts, each to be awarded to the
person who made the most important contribution in one of five different
fields. In addition to the three scientific awards and the literature
award, a prize would go to the person who had done “the most or the best
work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of
standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Nobel also specified certain institutions that would select the
prizewinners. The will indicated that “no consideration whatever shall
be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy
shall receive the prize.”

Alfred Nobel

After his own experiments led him to the lucrative invention of
dynamite, Alfred Nobel established a fund to reward other innovators
“contributing most materially to the benefit of mankind.” The Nobel
Prizes are awarded in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology or
medicine, literature, international peace, and economic sciences. The
awards reflect Nobel’s interests; in addition to performing valuable
chemical research, he spoke several languages, traveled widely, and
wrote poetry.

In 1968 the Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, created an economics
prize to commemorate the bank’s 300th anniversary. This prize, called
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, was first awarded in 1969.
The bank provides a cash award equal to the other Nobel prizes.

II NOBEL FOUNDATION  

In 1900 the Nobel Foundation was established to manage the fund and to
administer the activities of the institutions charged with selecting
winners. The fund is controlled by a board of directors, which serves
for two-year periods and consists of six members: five elected by the
trustees of the awarding bodies mentioned in the will, and the sixth
appointed by the Swedish government. All six members are either Swedish
or Norwegian citizens.

In his will, Nobel stated that the prizes for physics and chemistry
would be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the prize for
physiology or medicine by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the
literature prize by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, and the peace
prize by a five-person committee elected by the Norwegian Storting
(Parliament). After the economics prize was created in 1968, the Swedish
Academy of Sciences has held the responsibility of selecting the winners
of that award.

All the prize-awarding bodies have set up Nobel committees consisting of
three to five people who make recommendations in the selection process.
Additional specialists with expertise in relevant fields assist the
committees. The Nobel committees examine nominations and make
recommendations to the prize-awarding institutions. After deliberating
various opinions and recommendations, the prize-awarding bodies vote on
the final selection, and then they announce the winner. The
deliberations and voting are secret, and prize decisions cannot be
appealed.

III PRIZES  

A prize for achievement in a particular field may be awarded to an
individual, divided equally between two people, or awarded jointly among
two or three people. According to the Nobel Foundation’s statutes, the
prize cannot be divided among more than three people, but it can go to
an institution. A prize may go unawarded if no candidate is chosen for
the year under consideration, but each of the prizes must be awarded at
least once every five years. If the Nobel Foundation does not award a
prize in a given year, the prize money remains in the trust. Likewise,
if a prize is declined or not accepted before a specified date, the
Nobel Foundation retains the prize money in its trust.

The prize amounts are based on the annual yield of the fund capital. In
1948 Nobel prizes were about $32,000 each; in 1997 they were about $1
million each. In addition to a cash award, each prizewinner also
receives a gold medal and a diploma bearing the winner’s name and field
of achievement. Prizewinners are known as Nobel laureates.

IV SELECTION OF PRIZEWINNERS  

Nominations of candidates for the prizes can be made only by those who
have received invitations to do so. In the fall of the year preceding
the award, Nobel committees distribute invitations to members of the
prize-awarding bodies, to previous Nobel prize winners, and to
professors in relevant fields at certain colleges and universities. In
addition, candidates for the prize in literature may be proposed by
invited members of various literary academies, institutions, and
societies. Upon invitation, members of governments or certain
international organizations may nominate candidates for the peace prize.
The Nobel Foundation’s statutes do not allow individuals to nominate
themselves. Invitations to nominate candidates and the nominations
themselves are both confidential.

Nominations of candidates are due on February 1 of the award year. Then,
Nobel committee members and consultants meet several times to evaluate
the qualifications of the nominees. The various committees cast their
final votes in October and immediately notify the laureates that they
have won.

V PRIZE CEREMONIES  

The prizes are presented annually at ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden,
and in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
In Stockholm, the king of Sweden presents the awards in physics,
chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and economic sciences.
The peace prize ceremony takes place at the University of Oslo in the
presence of the king of Norway. After the ceremonies, Nobel Prize
winners give a lecture on a subject connected with their prize-winning
work. The winner of the peace prize lectures in Oslo, the others in
Stockholm. The lectures are later printed in the Nobel Foundation’s
annual publication, Les Prix Nobel (The Nobel Prizes)

Some of the recipients

Recipent of the Nobel prize for chemistry

Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and also the
first person to win the Nobel Prize twice. Curie coined the term
“radioactive” to describe the uranium emissions she observed in early
experiments. With her husband, she later discovered the elements
polonium and radium. A dedicated and respected physicist, her brilliant
work with radioactivity eventually cost her her life; she died from
overexposure to radiation.

Recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics

Hayek, Friedrich August von (1899-1992), Austrian-born economist and
Nobel laureate. Born in Vienna, von Hayek earned a doctorate at Vienna
University in 1927 and spent some years in public service. He began a
long academic career by holding the post of professor of economics and
statistics at the University of London (1931-50); subsequently he was
professor of moral and economic science at the University of Chicago
(1950-62). An economic traditionalist, von Hayek won a wide reputation
with The Road to Serfdom (1944), in which he argued that governments
should not intervene in the control of inflation or other economic
matters. He retired in 1962 but was later appointed professor of
economics at the University of Freiburg, in West Germany (now part of
Germany). Returning to Austria in 1969, he became visiting professor at
the University of Salzburg. In 1974 he and the Swedish economist Gunnar
Myrdal received the Nobel Prize in economic science for their
“pioneering work in the theory of money and economic luctuations and for
their pioneering analysis of the interdependence of economic, social,
and institutional phenomena.

The Recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature

Galsworthy, John (1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was
one of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early
20th century. He was born in Kingston Hills, Surrey, and educated at
Harrow School and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar
in 1890 but soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early
works under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned
principally with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently
find their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal,
sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and with
questions of social justice. Most of his novels deal with the history,
from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th century, of
an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The principal member
of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the drive of his class
for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive that often conflicts
with human values. The Forsyte series includes The Man of Property
(1906), the novelette “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (pub. in the
collection Five Tales,1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and
To Let (1921). These five titles were published as The Forsyte Saga
(1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The White
Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), which were
published together under the title A Modern Comedy (1929). These were
followed in turn by Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932),
and Over the River (1933), published together posthumously as End of the
Chapter (1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice
(1910), The Pigeon (1912), Old English (1924), and The Roof (1929).
Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in literature.

The Recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics

Landau, Lev Davidovich (1908-68), Soviet theoretical physicist and Nobel
laureate, noted chiefly for his pioneer work in low-temperature physics
(cryogenics). He was born in Baku, and educated at the universities of
Baku and Leningrad. In 1937 Landau became professor of theoretical
physics at the S. I. Vavilov Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow.
His development of the mathematical theories that explain how superfluid
helium behaves at temperatures near absolute zero earned him the 1962
Nobel Prize in physics. His writings on a wide variety of subjects
relating to physical phenomena include some 100 papers and many books,
among which is the widely known nine-volume Course of Theoretical
Physics, published in 1943 with Y. M. Lifshitz. In January 1962, he was
gravely injured in an automobile accident; he was several times
considered near death and suffered a severe impairment of memory. By the
time of his death he had been able to make only a partial recovery.

The recipient of the Nobel Prize for peace

Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and formerly the ruler
of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the
Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn
boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new
Dalai Lama.

The first to bear the title of Dalai Lama was Sonam Gyatso, grand lama
of the Drepung monastery and leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect,
who received it in 1578 from the Mongol chief Altan Khan; it was then
applied retroactively to the previous leaders of the sect. In 1642
another Mongol chief, Gushri Khan, installed the fifth Dalai Lama as
Tibet’s spiritual and temporal ruler. His successors governed
Tibet—first as tributaries of the Mongols, but from 1720 to 1911 as
vassals of the emperor of China.

When the Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950, they came into
increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. He left the
country after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1959 and thereafter lived in
India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading the
nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese rule in Tibet. In 1995 the
Dalai Lama came into conflict with Chinese authorities over the
identification of a new Panchen Lama (the second most senior Tibetan
religious authority). In 1996 he published Violence and Compassion, in
which he and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriиre consider topics of
political and spiritual interest.

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