This year’s Nobel prize in chemistry went to Frances Arnold, George Smith and Sir Gregory Winter. Dr Arnold created synthetic enzymes by “directed evolution”. Dr Smith invented phage display, a technique that can be used to drive the evolution of new proteins. And Dr Winter used phage display to direct the evolution of antibodies, eventually creating one that is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease
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https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... rm=2018103
Nobel Prizes
The 2018 Nobel peace prize is awarded to a surgeon and a former slave
Two campaigners fighting against rape as a weapon of war have shone a light on a horrible tactic
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions that some readers may find distressing
WHEN Dr Denis Mukwege first saw the injuries of a woman who had been raped by a soldier, he was appalled. It was not just the hideousness of the crime. It was the pitiless planning behind it. During the war in eastern Congo, militia commanders orchestrated campaigns of mass rape to terrorise the whole population into submission. “I couldn't imagine that could be done as a strategy,” Dr Mukwege told The Economist. Since qualifying as a gynaecologist—one of the very few in the Democratic Republic of Congo—he has operated on some 20,000 survivors of sexual violence and devoted his life to publicising their plight.
Nadia Murad’s story is, if anything, more harrowing. She was a quiet, studious 21-year-old when Islamic State arrived in her village in Iraq in 2014. The jihadists separated the men from the women and murdered the men, including six of Ms Murad’s brothers and stepbrothers. They murdered the older women, too, including Ms Murad’s mother. Then they took the young women and sold them as sex slaves. Explicitly, at a slave market. Ms Murad was one of thousands to be violated by men who argued that they were doing their victims a favour, because they were infidels and would have a chance to become Muslims.
Since she escaped, she too has been a tireless campaigner against rape as a weapon of war, sharing her story no matter how much it hurts to tell it, and urging the world to hold Islamic State accountable for the genocide of her people, the Yazidis, a minority faith in Iraq and Syria.
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https://www.economist.com/international ... rm=2018105
*****
Article by Nadia
Outraged by the Attacks on Yazidis? It Is Time to Help
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opin ... dline&te=1
Two campaigners fighting against rape as a weapon of war have shone a light on a horrible tactic
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions that some readers may find distressing
WHEN Dr Denis Mukwege first saw the injuries of a woman who had been raped by a soldier, he was appalled. It was not just the hideousness of the crime. It was the pitiless planning behind it. During the war in eastern Congo, militia commanders orchestrated campaigns of mass rape to terrorise the whole population into submission. “I couldn't imagine that could be done as a strategy,” Dr Mukwege told The Economist. Since qualifying as a gynaecologist—one of the very few in the Democratic Republic of Congo—he has operated on some 20,000 survivors of sexual violence and devoted his life to publicising their plight.
Nadia Murad’s story is, if anything, more harrowing. She was a quiet, studious 21-year-old when Islamic State arrived in her village in Iraq in 2014. The jihadists separated the men from the women and murdered the men, including six of Ms Murad’s brothers and stepbrothers. They murdered the older women, too, including Ms Murad’s mother. Then they took the young women and sold them as sex slaves. Explicitly, at a slave market. Ms Murad was one of thousands to be violated by men who argued that they were doing their victims a favour, because they were infidels and would have a chance to become Muslims.
Since she escaped, she too has been a tireless campaigner against rape as a weapon of war, sharing her story no matter how much it hurts to tell it, and urging the world to hold Islamic State accountable for the genocide of her people, the Yazidis, a minority faith in Iraq and Syria.
More...
https://www.economist.com/international ... rm=2018105
*****
Article by Nadia
Outraged by the Attacks on Yazidis? It Is Time to Help
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opin ... dline&te=1
The Nobel prize for economics is awarded for work on the climate and economic growth
WHY do economies grow, and why might growth outstrip the natural world’s capacity to sustain it? The answers to such questions have long eluded economists. But the profession’s progress towards cracking them is in large part because of this year’s recipients of the Nobel prize for economic sciences, Paul Romer (pictured, right) and William Nordhaus (pictured, left).
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https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... rm=2018108
WHY do economies grow, and why might growth outstrip the natural world’s capacity to sustain it? The answers to such questions have long eluded economists. But the profession’s progress towards cracking them is in large part because of this year’s recipients of the Nobel prize for economic sciences, Paul Romer (pictured, right) and William Nordhaus (pictured, left).
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https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... rm=2018108
Women in Rare Company Accept Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry
For the first time, female scientists had won the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. And on Monday, they accepted their accolades at the same award ceremony in Stockholm.
For Donna Strickland, receiving the call two months ago that she had won the physics prize is the only feeling that can compare, she said, to the moment when she had her scientific breakthrough.
Her colleague had “wheeled his three cameras into my lab one night,” Dr. Strickland said in her acceptance speech, “and together we measured the compressed pulse width of the amplified pulses.”
“I will never forget that night,” she said. “It is truly an amazing feeling when you know that you have built something that no one else ever has and it actually works.”
........
For Dr. Arnold’s part, she pioneered the bioengineering method, which works similar to the way dog breeders mate specific dogs to bring out desired traits, in the early 1990s and has refined it since.
“With evolution in our hands, with the ability to set genetic diversity and tailor the forces of selection, we can now explore paths that nature has left unexplored,” Dr. Arnold said during her acceptance speech.
“We can select life and their chemistries to our benefit to create new sources of energy, to fix the carbon in our atmosphere, to cure disease, to make us younger, more beautiful, or we can make new weapons of terror or state control,” she added.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/scie ... dline&te=1
For the first time, female scientists had won the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. And on Monday, they accepted their accolades at the same award ceremony in Stockholm.
For Donna Strickland, receiving the call two months ago that she had won the physics prize is the only feeling that can compare, she said, to the moment when she had her scientific breakthrough.
Her colleague had “wheeled his three cameras into my lab one night,” Dr. Strickland said in her acceptance speech, “and together we measured the compressed pulse width of the amplified pulses.”
“I will never forget that night,” she said. “It is truly an amazing feeling when you know that you have built something that no one else ever has and it actually works.”
........
For Dr. Arnold’s part, she pioneered the bioengineering method, which works similar to the way dog breeders mate specific dogs to bring out desired traits, in the early 1990s and has refined it since.
“With evolution in our hands, with the ability to set genetic diversity and tailor the forces of selection, we can now explore paths that nature has left unexplored,” Dr. Arnold said during her acceptance speech.
“We can select life and their chemistries to our benefit to create new sources of energy, to fix the carbon in our atmosphere, to cure disease, to make us younger, more beautiful, or we can make new weapons of terror or state control,” she added.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/scie ... dline&te=1
Karen Uhlenbeck Is First Woman to Win Abel Prize for Mathematics
Dr. Uhlenbeck helped pioneer geometric analysis, developing techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.
For the first time, one of the top prizes in mathematics has been given to a woman.
On Tuesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced it has awarded this year’s Abel Prize — an award modeled on the Nobel Prizes — to Karen Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The award cites “the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.”
One of Dr. Uhlenbeck’s advances in essence described the complex shapes of soap films not in a bubble bath but in abstract, high-dimensional curved spaces. In later work, she helped put a rigorous mathematical underpinning to techniques widely used by physicists in quantum field theory to describe fundamental interactions between particles and forces.
In the process, she helped pioneer a field known as geometric analysis, and she developed techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.
“She did things nobody thought about doing,” said Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a mathematician at Princeton University who served on the five-member prize committee, “and after she did, she laid the foundations of a branch of mathematics.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/scie ... ogin-email
Dr. Uhlenbeck helped pioneer geometric analysis, developing techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.
For the first time, one of the top prizes in mathematics has been given to a woman.
On Tuesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced it has awarded this year’s Abel Prize — an award modeled on the Nobel Prizes — to Karen Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The award cites “the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.”
One of Dr. Uhlenbeck’s advances in essence described the complex shapes of soap films not in a bubble bath but in abstract, high-dimensional curved spaces. In later work, she helped put a rigorous mathematical underpinning to techniques widely used by physicists in quantum field theory to describe fundamental interactions between particles and forces.
In the process, she helped pioneer a field known as geometric analysis, and she developed techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.
“She did things nobody thought about doing,” said Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a mathematician at Princeton University who served on the five-member prize committee, “and after she did, she laid the foundations of a branch of mathematics.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/scie ... ogin-email
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Studies of Earth’s Place in the Universe
The cosmologist James Peebles split the prize with the astrophysicists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, for work the Nobel judges said “transformed our ideas about the cosmos.”
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who transformed our view of the cosmos.
James Peebles, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, shared half of the prize for theories that explained how the universe swirled into galaxies and everything we see in the night sky, and indeed much that we cannot see.
The other half was shared by two Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who were the first to discover an exoplanet, or a planet circling around a sun-like star.
“They really, sort of tell us something very essential — existential — about our place in the universe,” Ulf Danielsson, a member of the Nobel committee, said during an interview broadcast on the web.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/scie ... ysics.html
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Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Research on How Cells Manage Oxygen
The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to three scientists — William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza — for their work on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday.
Their work established the genetic mechanisms that allow cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. The findings have implications for treating a variety of diseases, including cancer, anemia, heart attacks and strokes.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/heal ... ogin-email
The cosmologist James Peebles split the prize with the astrophysicists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, for work the Nobel judges said “transformed our ideas about the cosmos.”
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who transformed our view of the cosmos.
James Peebles, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, shared half of the prize for theories that explained how the universe swirled into galaxies and everything we see in the night sky, and indeed much that we cannot see.
The other half was shared by two Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who were the first to discover an exoplanet, or a planet circling around a sun-like star.
“They really, sort of tell us something very essential — existential — about our place in the universe,” Ulf Danielsson, a member of the Nobel committee, said during an interview broadcast on the web.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/scie ... ysics.html
********
Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Research on How Cells Manage Oxygen
The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to three scientists — William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza — for their work on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday.
Their work established the genetic mechanisms that allow cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. The findings have implications for treating a variety of diseases, including cancer, anemia, heart attacks and strokes.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/heal ... ogin-email
Nobel prize for chemistry: the lithium-ion battery
An overdue award for a ubiquitous invention
ALTHOUGH ALFRED NOBEL’S will states that the annual prizes bearing his name should be given to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”, the science awards have a tendency to end up in the hands of those who have made esoteric, if profound, advances. Not so with this year’s prize in chemistry. Three researchers—two from America and one from Japan—have been rewarded for their work in developing the lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries have transformed society because they are lightweight and rechargeable. They have therefore become ubiquitous in everything from mobile phones, tablets and laptops to electric cars. They could also, in the future, become important in storing the intermittently available energy produced by renewable sources such as wind and solar power, as the world attempts to move away from fossil fuels.
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https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... on-battery
An overdue award for a ubiquitous invention
ALTHOUGH ALFRED NOBEL’S will states that the annual prizes bearing his name should be given to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”, the science awards have a tendency to end up in the hands of those who have made esoteric, if profound, advances. Not so with this year’s prize in chemistry. Three researchers—two from America and one from Japan—have been rewarded for their work in developing the lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries have transformed society because they are lightweight and rechargeable. They have therefore become ubiquitous in everything from mobile phones, tablets and laptops to electric cars. They could also, in the future, become important in storing the intermittently available energy produced by renewable sources such as wind and solar power, as the world attempts to move away from fossil fuels.
More...
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... on-battery
Nobel prizes for literature: Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke
The Swedish Academy’s decision to crown two European authors will delight and enrage readers around the world
IT WAS A SPECIAL edition of the Nobel prize in literature. Following the suspension of the award last year in the wake of a sexual-abuse scandal, on October 10th the Swedish Academy announced the winners of both the 2018 and 2019 medals. From shortlists of eight writers, they chose to crown Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish novelist, and Peter Handke, an Austrian playwright, scriptwriter and memoirist. Each writer will receive 9m Swedish krona ($907,000), a medal and a diploma.
Earlier this month, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel prize in literature committee, had said that formerly the jurors “had a more Eurocentric perspective on literature,” but that now they “are looking all over the world”. So the triumph of two authors from Europe, which accounts for just 11% of the world’s population but three-quarters of the laureates since the Nobel prize was founded in 1901, will surprise those who had hoped the Academy might use its year of reflection to broaden its scope and acknowledge a writer from further afield. Early favourites were Maryse Conde, the empress of Caribbean literature; the celebrated Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o; and Haruki Murakami from Japan.
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https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019 ... a/322904/n
The Swedish Academy’s decision to crown two European authors will delight and enrage readers around the world
IT WAS A SPECIAL edition of the Nobel prize in literature. Following the suspension of the award last year in the wake of a sexual-abuse scandal, on October 10th the Swedish Academy announced the winners of both the 2018 and 2019 medals. From shortlists of eight writers, they chose to crown Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish novelist, and Peter Handke, an Austrian playwright, scriptwriter and memoirist. Each writer will receive 9m Swedish krona ($907,000), a medal and a diploma.
Earlier this month, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel prize in literature committee, had said that formerly the jurors “had a more Eurocentric perspective on literature,” but that now they “are looking all over the world”. So the triumph of two authors from Europe, which accounts for just 11% of the world’s population but three-quarters of the laureates since the Nobel prize was founded in 1901, will surprise those who had hoped the Academy might use its year of reflection to broaden its scope and acknowledge a writer from further afield. Early favourites were Maryse Conde, the empress of Caribbean literature; the celebrated Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o; and Haruki Murakami from Japan.
More...
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019 ... a/322904/n
Assessing Abiy Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
The record of Ethiopia’s prime minister remains incomplete, at home and abroad
THERE ARE two types of Nobel Peace Prize winner. The uncontroversial ones are often campaigners, such as Nadia Murad (who won last year for her work highlighting rape during war) or the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (which won in 2013). The controversial ones are often the politicians who actually negotiate peace deals—think of Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk. Politics in violent places is a nasty, messy affair, and peace deals don’t always last. The award of the prize on October 11th to Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, will spark more debate than most.
On the plus side, Abiy has tried hard to be a unifier since he took office last year. He often uses the Amharic word medemer (to add together) in speeches. Millions of Ethiopians have welcomed his promises of democracy, reconciliation and reform in a country that had long been oppressed.
In June 2018 he signed a historic peace deal with Eritrea, a smaller neighbour that seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. The accord brought to a close two decades of pointless conflict over a scrap of barren land. The war had led to tens of thousands of deaths, ripped apart families and severed the deep ties of blood, culture and language between the two countries.
Abiy broke the deadlock by promising to withdraw from the disputed territories, thus implementing the findings of a UN commission that Ethiopia had long rejected. He also took advantage of his close relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose financial largesse may have helped nudge Issaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s president, to the negotiating table. After the peace agreement, families and friends were reunited and cross-border trade flourished.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee’s chair, said the prize recognised Abiy’s “efforts to achieve peace and international co-operation, and in particular his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea”. He has also been praised for helping to mediate a power-sharing accord between pro-democracy protesters and a military junta that took power earlier this year in Sudan.
More...
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-a ... eace-prize
The record of Ethiopia’s prime minister remains incomplete, at home and abroad
THERE ARE two types of Nobel Peace Prize winner. The uncontroversial ones are often campaigners, such as Nadia Murad (who won last year for her work highlighting rape during war) or the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (which won in 2013). The controversial ones are often the politicians who actually negotiate peace deals—think of Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk. Politics in violent places is a nasty, messy affair, and peace deals don’t always last. The award of the prize on October 11th to Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, will spark more debate than most.
On the plus side, Abiy has tried hard to be a unifier since he took office last year. He often uses the Amharic word medemer (to add together) in speeches. Millions of Ethiopians have welcomed his promises of democracy, reconciliation and reform in a country that had long been oppressed.
In June 2018 he signed a historic peace deal with Eritrea, a smaller neighbour that seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. The accord brought to a close two decades of pointless conflict over a scrap of barren land. The war had led to tens of thousands of deaths, ripped apart families and severed the deep ties of blood, culture and language between the two countries.
Abiy broke the deadlock by promising to withdraw from the disputed territories, thus implementing the findings of a UN commission that Ethiopia had long rejected. He also took advantage of his close relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose financial largesse may have helped nudge Issaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s president, to the negotiating table. After the peace agreement, families and friends were reunited and cross-border trade flourished.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee’s chair, said the prize recognised Abiy’s “efforts to achieve peace and international co-operation, and in particular his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea”. He has also been praised for helping to mediate a power-sharing accord between pro-democracy protesters and a military junta that took power earlier this year in Sudan.
More...
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-a ... eace-prize
A Nobel economics prize goes to pioneers in understanding poverty
Using randomised trials help policymakers grasp which policies work and which don’t
THE MOST important question in economics is also the hardest: why do some countries stay poor while others grow rich? In 2015, 10% of the world’s population lived on less than $1.90 per day, down from 36% in 1990. But more than 700m people remain in extreme poverty, and the number grows every day in certain parts of the world, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. For their contributions to understanding gaps in development, the better to close them, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for economics. All three are Americans, though Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo are immigrants (and married to each other). Ms Duflo is only the second woman to have received the prize and, at 46, the youngest winner ever.
Thirty years ago, economists mostly looked at the big picture. They studied large-scale structural transformations: from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. Macroeconomists built growth theories around variables such as human capital, then ran cross-country growth regressions to try to measure relationships—for example, between years of schooling and GDP per person. But data were scarce or poor, and the vast number of potentially relevant factors made it hard to be sure what caused what.
In the mid-1990s Michael Kremer of Harvard University tried something different. With collaborators and co-authors, he began studying poverty with methods more commonly associated with chemists and biologists: randomised trials. If human capital—health, education, skills and so forth—is essential for development, then economists had better make sure they understand where it comes from. In Kenya he conducted field experiments in which schools were randomly divided into groups—some subject to a policy intervention and others not. He tested, among other things, additional textbooks, deworming treatments and financial incentives for teachers linked to their pupils’ progress.
More...
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... ng-poverty
Using randomised trials help policymakers grasp which policies work and which don’t
THE MOST important question in economics is also the hardest: why do some countries stay poor while others grow rich? In 2015, 10% of the world’s population lived on less than $1.90 per day, down from 36% in 1990. But more than 700m people remain in extreme poverty, and the number grows every day in certain parts of the world, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. For their contributions to understanding gaps in development, the better to close them, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for economics. All three are Americans, though Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo are immigrants (and married to each other). Ms Duflo is only the second woman to have received the prize and, at 46, the youngest winner ever.
Thirty years ago, economists mostly looked at the big picture. They studied large-scale structural transformations: from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. Macroeconomists built growth theories around variables such as human capital, then ran cross-country growth regressions to try to measure relationships—for example, between years of schooling and GDP per person. But data were scarce or poor, and the vast number of potentially relevant factors made it hard to be sure what caused what.
In the mid-1990s Michael Kremer of Harvard University tried something different. With collaborators and co-authors, he began studying poverty with methods more commonly associated with chemists and biologists: randomised trials. If human capital—health, education, skills and so forth—is essential for development, then economists had better make sure they understand where it comes from. In Kenya he conducted field experiments in which schools were randomly divided into groups—some subject to a policy intervention and others not. He tested, among other things, additional textbooks, deworming treatments and financial incentives for teachers linked to their pupils’ progress.
More...
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... ng-poverty
The Scandal of a Nobel Laureate
We live in an age that is losing the capacity to distinguish art from ideology and artists from politics.
Excerpt:
But part of the answer, too, is that we live in an age that is losing the capacity to distinguish art from ideology and artists from politics. “I’m standing at my garden gate and there are 50 journalists,” Handke complained on Tuesday, “and all of them just ask me questions like you do, and from not a single person who comes to me I hear they have read any of my works or know what I have written.” He has a point. He didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize or some other humanitarian award. His art deserves to be judged, or condemned, on its artistic merits alone.
What’s the alternative? Those who think that a core task of art is political instruction or moral uplift will wind up with some version of socialist realism or religious dogma. And those who think that the worth of art must be judged according to the moral and political commitments of its creator ultimately consign all art to the dustbin, since even the most avant-garde artists are creatures of their time.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opin ... d=45305309
We live in an age that is losing the capacity to distinguish art from ideology and artists from politics.
Excerpt:
But part of the answer, too, is that we live in an age that is losing the capacity to distinguish art from ideology and artists from politics. “I’m standing at my garden gate and there are 50 journalists,” Handke complained on Tuesday, “and all of them just ask me questions like you do, and from not a single person who comes to me I hear they have read any of my works or know what I have written.” He has a point. He didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize or some other humanitarian award. His art deserves to be judged, or condemned, on its artistic merits alone.
What’s the alternative? Those who think that a core task of art is political instruction or moral uplift will wind up with some version of socialist realism or religious dogma. And those who think that the worth of art must be judged according to the moral and political commitments of its creator ultimately consign all art to the dustbin, since even the most avant-garde artists are creatures of their time.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opin ... d=45305309
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes
The prize was awarded half to Roger Penrose for showing how black holes could form and half to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering a supermassive object at the Milky Way’s center.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists Tuesday for work that was literally out of the world, and indeed the universe. They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. They were recognized for their work on the gateways to eternity known as black holes, massive objects that swallow light and everything else forever that falls in their unsparing maws.
Dr. Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University, was awarded half of the approximately $1.1 million prize for proving that black holes must exist if Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as general relativity, is right.
The second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez for their relentless and decades long investigation of the dark monster here in the center of our own galaxy, gathering evidence to convict it of being a supermassive black hole.
Dr. Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/scie ... 778d3e6de3
The prize was awarded half to Roger Penrose for showing how black holes could form and half to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering a supermassive object at the Milky Way’s center.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists Tuesday for work that was literally out of the world, and indeed the universe. They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. They were recognized for their work on the gateways to eternity known as black holes, massive objects that swallow light and everything else forever that falls in their unsparing maws.
Dr. Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University, was awarded half of the approximately $1.1 million prize for proving that black holes must exist if Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as general relativity, is right.
The second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez for their relentless and decades long investigation of the dark monster here in the center of our own galaxy, gathering evidence to convict it of being a supermassive black hole.
Dr. Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/scie ... 778d3e6de3
This Year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry Honors a Revolution
With Crispr, two scientists turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race.
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled “The Double Helix” on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama, filled with colorful characters, about ambition and competition in the pursuit of nature’s wonders. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
She would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, later told her was the most important biological advance since he and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. She worked with a brilliant Parisian biologist named Emmanuelle Charpentier to turn a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as Crispr, it ushered in a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
For this accomplishment, on Wednesday they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It is a recognition that the development of Crispr will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, the computer and the internet. Now we are entering a life-science era. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study the code of life. It will be a revolution that will someday allow us to cure diseases, fend off virus pandemics and (if we decide it’s wise) to design babies with the genetic features we want for them.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
With Crispr, two scientists turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race.
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled “The Double Helix” on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama, filled with colorful characters, about ambition and competition in the pursuit of nature’s wonders. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
She would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, later told her was the most important biological advance since he and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. She worked with a brilliant Parisian biologist named Emmanuelle Charpentier to turn a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as Crispr, it ushered in a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
For this accomplishment, on Wednesday they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It is a recognition that the development of Crispr will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, the computer and the internet. Now we are entering a life-science era. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study the code of life. It will be a revolution that will someday allow us to cure diseases, fend off virus pandemics and (if we decide it’s wise) to design babies with the genetic features we want for them.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
2020 Nobel Prize Winners: Full List
Nobel Prize season begins every October as committees in Sweden and Norway name laureates in a variety of prizes in the sciences, literature and economics, as well as peace work. The announcements started on Monday this year with the awarding of the prize in Physiology or Medicine. They will continue until next Monday, when the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is announced.
The Nobel Prizes most years are presented to recipients in Stockholm and Oslo in December. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the committees are changing their approaches. Some of the events in Stockholm will be canceled in favor of a digital ceremony for the Nobelists, and medals and diplomas are to be distributed to the recipients’ embassies and handed over in their home countries. Recipients may be invited to the award ceremony for 2021, if possible.
The Oslo ceremony for the peace prize will be smaller than in most years, with a limited audience.
The Nobel committee also announced another change last month: Each prize will rise to 10 million Swedish krona, 1 million more than in the previous year. That’s a hike in the prize value of about $112,000 in current exchange rates.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/2020-no ... 778d3e6de3
******
Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C Virus
Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice were jointly honored for their decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem.
Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”
“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population,” the committee said in a statement. They announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
About 71 million people worldwide live with a chronic infection of the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne pathogen that can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis, and is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/heal ... 778d3e6de3
*****
World Food Program Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for Work During Pandemic
The Nobel committee said the U.N. agency’s work to address hunger had laid the foundations for peace in nations ravaged by war.
The World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to combat a surge in global hunger amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has swept around the world with devastating impact.
The Nobel committee said that work by the organization, a United Nations agency, to address hunger had laid the foundations for peace in nations ravaged by war.
“In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said as she announced the prize in Oslo. “The combination of violent conflict and the pandemic has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people living on the brink of starvation,” she added.
In many nations, particularly those at war, the combination of conflict and the pandemic has sharply increased the number of people on the brink of starvation. As the global fallout from the pandemic began this spring, the World Food Program estimated that the number of people experiencing life-threatening levels of food insecurity could more than double this year, to 265 million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/worl ... pe=Article
Nobel Prize season begins every October as committees in Sweden and Norway name laureates in a variety of prizes in the sciences, literature and economics, as well as peace work. The announcements started on Monday this year with the awarding of the prize in Physiology or Medicine. They will continue until next Monday, when the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is announced.
The Nobel Prizes most years are presented to recipients in Stockholm and Oslo in December. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the committees are changing their approaches. Some of the events in Stockholm will be canceled in favor of a digital ceremony for the Nobelists, and medals and diplomas are to be distributed to the recipients’ embassies and handed over in their home countries. Recipients may be invited to the award ceremony for 2021, if possible.
The Oslo ceremony for the peace prize will be smaller than in most years, with a limited audience.
The Nobel committee also announced another change last month: Each prize will rise to 10 million Swedish krona, 1 million more than in the previous year. That’s a hike in the prize value of about $112,000 in current exchange rates.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/2020-no ... 778d3e6de3
******
Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C Virus
Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice were jointly honored for their decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem.
Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”
“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population,” the committee said in a statement. They announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
About 71 million people worldwide live with a chronic infection of the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne pathogen that can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis, and is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/heal ... 778d3e6de3
*****
World Food Program Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for Work During Pandemic
The Nobel committee said the U.N. agency’s work to address hunger had laid the foundations for peace in nations ravaged by war.
The World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to combat a surge in global hunger amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has swept around the world with devastating impact.
The Nobel committee said that work by the organization, a United Nations agency, to address hunger had laid the foundations for peace in nations ravaged by war.
“In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said as she announced the prize in Oslo. “The combination of violent conflict and the pandemic has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people living on the brink of starvation,” she added.
In many nations, particularly those at war, the combination of conflict and the pandemic has sharply increased the number of people on the brink of starvation. As the global fallout from the pandemic began this spring, the World Food Program estimated that the number of people experiencing life-threatening levels of food insecurity could more than double this year, to 265 million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/worl ... pe=Article
U.S. Auction Theorists Win the 2020 Nobel in Economics
Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson were honored for work that has pushed auctions into new and useful territory.
Two American economists, Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, were awarded the Nobel in economic science on Monday for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats — innovations that have had huge practical applications when it comes to allocating scarce resources.
The pair, close collaborators who are both affiliated with Stanford University, pioneered a type of auction that governments have since used to bid radio frequency.
“They haven’t just profoundly changed the way we understand auctions — they have changed how things are auctioned,” said Alvin E. Roth, a Nobel laureate himself who was one of Mr. Wilson’s doctoral students. “The two of them are some of the greatest theorists living in economics today.”
Auctions help to sell a variety of products, including diamonds, minerals and online advertising. They can also take on various characteristics: Objects can have a shared, common value for all bidders (such as commodities like oil) or private values that vary across bidders (like art). Bidders may know exactly what the object’s value is, or they may have imperfect information. Bids can be open, meaning everyone can see them, or closed.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/busi ... 778d3e6de3
Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson were honored for work that has pushed auctions into new and useful territory.
Two American economists, Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, were awarded the Nobel in economic science on Monday for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats — innovations that have had huge practical applications when it comes to allocating scarce resources.
The pair, close collaborators who are both affiliated with Stanford University, pioneered a type of auction that governments have since used to bid radio frequency.
“They haven’t just profoundly changed the way we understand auctions — they have changed how things are auctioned,” said Alvin E. Roth, a Nobel laureate himself who was one of Mr. Wilson’s doctoral students. “The two of them are some of the greatest theorists living in economics today.”
Auctions help to sell a variety of products, including diamonds, minerals and online advertising. They can also take on various characteristics: Objects can have a shared, common value for all bidders (such as commodities like oil) or private values that vary across bidders (like art). Bidders may know exactly what the object’s value is, or they may have imperfect information. Bids can be open, meaning everyone can see them, or closed.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/busi ... 778d3e6de3
2 Win Abel Prize for Work That Bridged Math and Computer Science
Avi Wigderson and László Lovász will share the annual prize that aims to be something like the Nobel for mathematics.
Two mathematicians will share this year’s Abel Prize — regarded as the field’s equivalent of the Nobel — for advances in understanding the foundations of what can and cannot be solved with computers.
The work of the winners — László Lovász, 73, of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and Avi Wigderson, 64, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. — involves proving theorems and developing methods in pure mathematics, but the research has found practical use in computer science, particularly in cryptography.
On Wednesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which administers the prize, cited Dr. Lovász and Dr. Wigderson “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.”
Dr. Lovász and Dr. Wigderson will split the award money of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, or about $880,000.
The two mathematicians have “really opened up the landscape and shown the fruitful interactions between computer science and mathematics,” said Hans Z. Munthe-Kaas, a mathematician at the University of Bergen in Norway who was the chairman of the Abel Prize committee.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/scie ... iversified
Avi Wigderson and László Lovász will share the annual prize that aims to be something like the Nobel for mathematics.
Two mathematicians will share this year’s Abel Prize — regarded as the field’s equivalent of the Nobel — for advances in understanding the foundations of what can and cannot be solved with computers.
The work of the winners — László Lovász, 73, of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and Avi Wigderson, 64, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. — involves proving theorems and developing methods in pure mathematics, but the research has found practical use in computer science, particularly in cryptography.
On Wednesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which administers the prize, cited Dr. Lovász and Dr. Wigderson “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.”
Dr. Lovász and Dr. Wigderson will split the award money of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, or about $880,000.
The two mathematicians have “really opened up the landscape and shown the fruitful interactions between computer science and mathematics,” said Hans Z. Munthe-Kaas, a mathematician at the University of Bergen in Norway who was the chairman of the Abel Prize committee.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/scie ... iversified
Nobel Prize Awarded for Research About Temperature and Touch
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored for their discoveries about how heat, cold and touch can initiate signals in the nervous system.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly on Monday to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, two scientists who independently discovered key mechanisms of how people sense heat, cold, touch and their own bodily movements.
Dr. Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, used a key ingredient in hot chili peppers to identify a protein in nerve cells that responds to uncomfortably hot temperatures.
Dr. Patapoutian, a molecular biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., led a team that, by poking individual cells with a tiny pipette, hit upon a receptor that responds to pressure, touch and the positioning of body parts.
After Dr. Julius’s pivotal discovery of a heat-sensing protein in 1997, pharmaceutical companies poured billions of dollars into looking for nonopioid drugs that could dull pain by targeting the receptors. But while research is ongoing, the related treatments have so far run into huge obstacles, scientists said, and interest from drug makers has largely dried up.
Neither winner was easy for the Nobel committee to reach before it announced the prize around 2:30 a.m. California time. Dr. Julius said in an interview that his phone pinged with a text message from his sister-in-law, who told him that she had gotten a call from the Nobel Assembly’s secretary-general but had not wanted to give the man Dr. Julius’s phone number.
Dr. Patapoutian said that the committee eventually reached his 94-year-old father on a landline, who in turn called Dr. Patapoutian to tell him, “I think you won the Nobel Prize.”
“I’m a bit overwhelmed,” Dr. Patapoutian said a few hours later, “but pretty happy.”
Why did they win?
Pain and pressure were among the last frontiers of scientists’ efforts to describe the molecular basis for sensations. The 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine was given to work clarifying how smell worked. As far back as 1967, the prize was awarded to scientists studying vision.
But unlike smell and sight, the perceptions of pain or touch are not located in an isolated part of the body, and scientists did not even know what molecules to look for. “It’s been the last main sensory system to fall to molecular
analysis,” Dr. Julius said at an online briefing on Monday.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/heal ... 778d3e6de3
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored for their discoveries about how heat, cold and touch can initiate signals in the nervous system.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly on Monday to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, two scientists who independently discovered key mechanisms of how people sense heat, cold, touch and their own bodily movements.
Dr. Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, used a key ingredient in hot chili peppers to identify a protein in nerve cells that responds to uncomfortably hot temperatures.
Dr. Patapoutian, a molecular biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., led a team that, by poking individual cells with a tiny pipette, hit upon a receptor that responds to pressure, touch and the positioning of body parts.
After Dr. Julius’s pivotal discovery of a heat-sensing protein in 1997, pharmaceutical companies poured billions of dollars into looking for nonopioid drugs that could dull pain by targeting the receptors. But while research is ongoing, the related treatments have so far run into huge obstacles, scientists said, and interest from drug makers has largely dried up.
Neither winner was easy for the Nobel committee to reach before it announced the prize around 2:30 a.m. California time. Dr. Julius said in an interview that his phone pinged with a text message from his sister-in-law, who told him that she had gotten a call from the Nobel Assembly’s secretary-general but had not wanted to give the man Dr. Julius’s phone number.
Dr. Patapoutian said that the committee eventually reached his 94-year-old father on a landline, who in turn called Dr. Patapoutian to tell him, “I think you won the Nobel Prize.”
“I’m a bit overwhelmed,” Dr. Patapoutian said a few hours later, “but pretty happy.”
Why did they win?
Pain and pressure were among the last frontiers of scientists’ efforts to describe the molecular basis for sensations. The 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine was given to work clarifying how smell worked. As far back as 1967, the prize was awarded to scientists studying vision.
But unlike smell and sight, the perceptions of pain or touch are not located in an isolated part of the body, and scientists did not even know what molecules to look for. “It’s been the last main sensory system to fall to molecular
analysis,” Dr. Julius said at an online briefing on Monday.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/heal ... 778d3e6de3
Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel prize in literature
Zanzibari novelist becomes first black African writer in 35 years to win prestigious award
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/book ... 778d3e6de3
The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.
Gurnah grew up on one of the islands of Zanzibar before fleeing persecution and arriving in England as a student in the 1960s. He has published 10 novels as well as a number of short stories. Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, said that the Tanzanian writer’s novels – from his debut Memory of Departure, about a failed uprising, to his most recent, Afterlives – “recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world”.
No black African writer has won the prize since Wole Soyinka in 1986. Gurnah is the first Tanzanian writer to win, and the first black writer to win since Toni Morrison in 1993.
Gurnah’s fourth novel, Paradise, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994, and his sixth, By the Sea, was longlisted in 2001. Olsson said that it “has obvious reference to Joseph Conrad in its portrayal of the innocent young hero Yusuf’s journey to the heart of darkness”.
“[Gurnah] has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals,” Olsson told journalists in Stockholm.
GurnahX, who was in the kitchen when he was informed of his win, said that he believed it was a wind-up.
“I thought it was a prank,” he said. “These things are usually floated for weeks beforehand, or sometimes months beforehand, about who are the runners, so it was not something that was in my mind at all. I was just thinking, I wonder who’ll get it?”
His longtime editor, Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury, said Gurnah’s win was “most deserved” for a writer who has not previously received due recognition.
Books by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
“He is one of the greatest living African writers, and no one has ever taken any notice of him and it’s just killed me. I did a podcast last week and in it I said that he was one of the people that has been just ignored. And now this has happened,” she said.
Pringle said Gurnah had always written about displacement, “but in the most beautiful and haunting ways of what it is that uproots people and blows them across continents”.
“It’s not always asylum seeking, it can be so many reasons, it can be trade, it can be commerce, it can be education, it can be love,” she said. “The first of his novels I took on at Bloomsbury is called By the Sea, and there’s this haunting image of a man at Heathrow airport with a carved incense box, and that’s all he has. He arrives, and he says one word, and that’s ‘asylum’.”
Pringle said Gurnah is as important a writer as Chinua Achebe. “His writing is particularly beautiful and grave and also humorous and kind and sensitive. He’s an extraordinary writer writing about really important things.”
Afterlives, published last year, tells the story of Ilyas, who was stolen from his parents by German colonial troops as a boy and returns to his village after years fighting in a war against his own people. It was described in the Guardian as “a compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure”.
“In Gurnah’s literary universe, everything is shifting – memories, names, identities. This is probably because his project cannot reach completion in any definitive sense,” said Olsson. “An unending exploration driven by intellectual passion is present in all his books, and equally prominent now, in Afterlives, as when he began writing as a 21-year-old refugee.”
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah review – living through colonialism
Read more
Maya Jaggi, critic and 2021 Costa Prize judge said: “Gurnah, whom I first interviewed for the Guardian in 1994, is a powerful and nuanced writer whose elliptical lyricism counters the silences and lies of imperial history imposed when he was a child in east Africa. His subtle oeuvre is as robust about the brutal flaws of the mercantile culture he left as the atrocities of British and German colonialism, not least during the first world war, and the ‘random acts of terror’ he experienced as a black person in Britain - converting them into a comic triumph in his 1988 novel Pilgrims Way.”
Gurnah was born in 1948, growing up in Zanzibar. When Zanzibar went through a revolution in 1964, citizens of Arab origin were persecuted, and Gurnah was forced to flee the country when he was 18. He began to write as a 21-year-old refugee in England, choosing to write in English, although Swahili is his first language. His first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. He has until recently been professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent, until his retirement.
Worth 10m Swedish krona (£840,000), the Nobel prize for literature goes to the writer deemed to be, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”. Winners have ranged from Bob Dylan, cited for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, to Kazuo Ishiguro “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.According to Ellen Mattson, who sits on the Swedish Academy and the Nobel committee: “Literary merit. That’s the only thing that counts.”
The Nobel winner is chosen by the 18 members of the Swedish Academy – an august and mysterious organisation that has made efforts to become more transparent after it was hit by a sexual abuse and financial misconduct scandal in 2017. Last year’s prize went to the American poet Louise Glück – an uncontroversial choice after the uproar provoked by the Austrian writer Peter Handke’s win in 2019. Handke had denied the Srebrenica genocide and attended the funeral of war criminal Slobodan Milošević.
The Nobel prize for literature has been awarded 118 times. Just 16 of the awards have gone to women, seven of those in the 21st century. In 2019, the Swedish academy promised the award would become less “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric”, but proceeded to give its next two prizes to two Europeans, Handke and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... literature
Zanzibari novelist becomes first black African writer in 35 years to win prestigious award
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/book ... 778d3e6de3
The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.
Gurnah grew up on one of the islands of Zanzibar before fleeing persecution and arriving in England as a student in the 1960s. He has published 10 novels as well as a number of short stories. Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, said that the Tanzanian writer’s novels – from his debut Memory of Departure, about a failed uprising, to his most recent, Afterlives – “recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world”.
No black African writer has won the prize since Wole Soyinka in 1986. Gurnah is the first Tanzanian writer to win, and the first black writer to win since Toni Morrison in 1993.
Gurnah’s fourth novel, Paradise, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994, and his sixth, By the Sea, was longlisted in 2001. Olsson said that it “has obvious reference to Joseph Conrad in its portrayal of the innocent young hero Yusuf’s journey to the heart of darkness”.
“[Gurnah] has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals,” Olsson told journalists in Stockholm.
GurnahX, who was in the kitchen when he was informed of his win, said that he believed it was a wind-up.
“I thought it was a prank,” he said. “These things are usually floated for weeks beforehand, or sometimes months beforehand, about who are the runners, so it was not something that was in my mind at all. I was just thinking, I wonder who’ll get it?”
His longtime editor, Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury, said Gurnah’s win was “most deserved” for a writer who has not previously received due recognition.
Books by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
“He is one of the greatest living African writers, and no one has ever taken any notice of him and it’s just killed me. I did a podcast last week and in it I said that he was one of the people that has been just ignored. And now this has happened,” she said.
Pringle said Gurnah had always written about displacement, “but in the most beautiful and haunting ways of what it is that uproots people and blows them across continents”.
“It’s not always asylum seeking, it can be so many reasons, it can be trade, it can be commerce, it can be education, it can be love,” she said. “The first of his novels I took on at Bloomsbury is called By the Sea, and there’s this haunting image of a man at Heathrow airport with a carved incense box, and that’s all he has. He arrives, and he says one word, and that’s ‘asylum’.”
Pringle said Gurnah is as important a writer as Chinua Achebe. “His writing is particularly beautiful and grave and also humorous and kind and sensitive. He’s an extraordinary writer writing about really important things.”
Afterlives, published last year, tells the story of Ilyas, who was stolen from his parents by German colonial troops as a boy and returns to his village after years fighting in a war against his own people. It was described in the Guardian as “a compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure”.
“In Gurnah’s literary universe, everything is shifting – memories, names, identities. This is probably because his project cannot reach completion in any definitive sense,” said Olsson. “An unending exploration driven by intellectual passion is present in all his books, and equally prominent now, in Afterlives, as when he began writing as a 21-year-old refugee.”
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah review – living through colonialism
Read more
Maya Jaggi, critic and 2021 Costa Prize judge said: “Gurnah, whom I first interviewed for the Guardian in 1994, is a powerful and nuanced writer whose elliptical lyricism counters the silences and lies of imperial history imposed when he was a child in east Africa. His subtle oeuvre is as robust about the brutal flaws of the mercantile culture he left as the atrocities of British and German colonialism, not least during the first world war, and the ‘random acts of terror’ he experienced as a black person in Britain - converting them into a comic triumph in his 1988 novel Pilgrims Way.”
Gurnah was born in 1948, growing up in Zanzibar. When Zanzibar went through a revolution in 1964, citizens of Arab origin were persecuted, and Gurnah was forced to flee the country when he was 18. He began to write as a 21-year-old refugee in England, choosing to write in English, although Swahili is his first language. His first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. He has until recently been professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent, until his retirement.
Worth 10m Swedish krona (£840,000), the Nobel prize for literature goes to the writer deemed to be, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”. Winners have ranged from Bob Dylan, cited for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, to Kazuo Ishiguro “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.According to Ellen Mattson, who sits on the Swedish Academy and the Nobel committee: “Literary merit. That’s the only thing that counts.”
The Nobel winner is chosen by the 18 members of the Swedish Academy – an august and mysterious organisation that has made efforts to become more transparent after it was hit by a sexual abuse and financial misconduct scandal in 2017. Last year’s prize went to the American poet Louise Glück – an uncontroversial choice after the uproar provoked by the Austrian writer Peter Handke’s win in 2019. Handke had denied the Srebrenica genocide and attended the funeral of war criminal Slobodan Milošević.
The Nobel prize for literature has been awarded 118 times. Just 16 of the awards have gone to women, seven of those in the 21st century. In 2019, the Swedish academy promised the award would become less “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric”, but proceeded to give its next two prizes to two Europeans, Handke and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... literature
The Nobel in economics goes to three who find experiments in real life.
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/busi ... 778d3e6de3
David Card has made a career of studying unintended experiments to examine economic questions — like whether raising the minimum wage causes people to lose jobs.
Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens have developed research tools that help economists use real-life situations to test big theories, like how additional education affects earnings.
On Monday, their work earned them the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
All three winners are based in the United States. Mr. Card, who was born in Canada, works at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Angrist, born in the United States, is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mr. Imbens, born in the Netherlands, is at Stanford University.
“Sometimes, nature, or policy changes, provide situations that resemble randomized experiments,” said Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the prize committee. “This year’s laureates have shown that such natural experiments help answer important questions for society.”
The recognition was bittersweet, many economists noted, because much of the research featured in the prize announcement was co-written by Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University economist and former White House adviser who died in 2019. The Nobels are not typically awarded posthumously. Despite that note of sadness, the economics profession celebrated the news, crediting the winners for their work in changing the way that labor markets in particular are studied.
“They ushered in a new phase in labor economics that has now reached all fields of the profession,” Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State, wrote on Twitter shortly after the prize was announced.
Mr. Card’s work has challenged conventional wisdom in labor economics — including the idea that higher minimum wages led to lower employment. He was a co-author of influential studies on that topic with Mr. Krueger, including one that used the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania to test the effect of a minimum wage change. Comparing outcomes between the states, the research found that employment at fast food restaurants was not negatively affected by an increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage.
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David Card has made a career of studying unintended experiments to examine economic questions — like whether raising the minimum wage causes people to lose jobs.
Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens have developed research tools that help economists use real-life situations to test big theories, like how additional education affects earnings.
On Monday, their work earned them the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
All three winners are based in the United States. Mr. Card, who was born in Canada, works at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Angrist, born in the United States, is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mr. Imbens, born in the Netherlands, is at Stanford University.
“Sometimes, nature, or policy changes, provide situations that resemble randomized experiments,” said Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the prize committee. “This year’s laureates have shown that such natural experiments help answer important questions for society.”
The recognition was bittersweet, many economists noted, because much of the research featured in the prize announcement was co-written by Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University economist and former White House adviser who died in 2019. The Nobels are not typically awarded posthumously. Despite that note of sadness, the economics profession celebrated the news, crediting the winners for their work in changing the way that labor markets in particular are studied.
“They ushered in a new phase in labor economics that has now reached all fields of the profession,” Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State, wrote on Twitter shortly after the prize was announced.
Mr. Card’s work has challenged conventional wisdom in labor economics — including the idea that higher minimum wages led to lower employment. He was a co-author of influential studies on that topic with Mr. Krueger, including one that used the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania to test the effect of a minimum wage change. Comparing outcomes between the states, the research found that employment at fast food restaurants was not negatively affected by an increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/busi ... 778d3e6de3
Pakistani microfinance pioneer nominated for Nobel Peace Prize 2022
KARACHI:
Dr Amjad Saqib, a Pakistani philanthropist and founder of the country’s largest interest-free microfinance programme Akhuwat, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work in poverty alleviation.
As many as 343 candidates from around the world have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 – 251 individuals and 92 organisations.
“My services are beyond such awards and they are purely for the sake of Allah,” Akhuwat Foundation Chairman Dr Amjad told The Express Tribune.
Dr Amjad said no person can nominate himself for the Nobel Prize and there is no lobbying involved in the entire process.
“An official of a foreign country might have recommended my name for the award as people across the world are familiar with my services for humanity… but I am not aware of any such development,” he said while responding to a question that a minister of Malta recommended his name for the prestigious award.
Also read: Pakistani microfinance pioneer wins Asia's 'Nobel Prize' https://tribune.com.pk/story/2317947/pa ... obel-prize
Dr Amjad, was one of five recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award — named after a Filipino president killed in a plane crash — for his "first-of-its-kind" interest- and collateral-free microfinance programme that has helped millions of poor families.
Nearly two decades after its launch, Akhuwat has grown into the nation's largest microfinance institution, distributing the equivalent of $900 million and boasting an almost 100 per cent loan repayment rate.
Dr Amjad, who uses places of worship to hand out money, was cited for "his inspiring belief that human goodness and solidarity will find ways to eradicate poverty."
Having graduated from King Edward Medical University, Dr Amjad started his career by joining the esteemed civil service of Pakistan in 1985.
He served at various high-level government positions including Punjab Rural Support Programme (PRSP), a rural development and microfinance initiative by government of Punjab for seven years. The programme aimed at social mobilisation, community organisation and provision of financial access to the poor.
Also read: Pakistani volunteer bags Commonwealth award for helping the underprivileged https://tribune.com.pk/story/1671545/pa ... privileged
Concluding that an alternative method is needed to cater to the needs of the poor, he decided to resign from the civil service and dedicate his life to the mission of creating a poverty-free society by founding Akhuwat.
Dr Amjad resigned from Civil Service in 2003 and founded Akhuwat the same year. He has been its CEO and main driving force since beginning. With seventeen years of successful operations, Akhuwat now presents a viable model of Shariah-compliant microfinance, which is both sustainable and replicable. Besides Akhuwat, the philanthropist is voluntarily serving many civil society organisations in the realm of education, health, disability, banking and finance.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded on the day of Alfred Nobel’s death, the 10th of December, a time-honoured tradition since 1901.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2353779/pa ... prize-2022
Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work Exploring Quantum Weirdness
Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were recognized for their experiments in an area that has broad implications for secure information transfer and quantum computing.
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Three physicists whose works each showed that nature is even weirder than Einstein had dared to imagine have been named winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
John Clauser, of J.F. Clauser and Associates in Walnut Creek, Calif.; Alain Aspect of the Institut d’Optique in Palaiseau, France; and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria, will split a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor.
Their independent works explored the foundations of quantum mechanics, the paradoxical rules that govern behavior in the subatomic world. In experiments conducted over the last 50 years, they confirmed the reality of an effect that Albert Einstein had disdained as “spooky action at a distance.” Measuring one of a widely separated pair of particles could instantaneously change the results of measuring the other particle, even if it was light-years away. Today, physicists call this strange effect quantum entanglement, and it is the basis of the burgeoning field of quantum information. When the award winners were announced on Tuesday, Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, noted that quantum information science had broad implications in areas like cryptography and quantum computing.
Quantum information science is a “vibrant and rapidly developing field,” she said. “Its predictions have opened doors to another world, and it has also shaken the very foundation of how we interpret measurements.”
As Daniel Kabat, a physics professor at Lehman College in New York, explained recently, “We’re used to thinking that information about an object — say that a glass is half full — is somehow contained within the object.” Instead, he says, entanglement means objects “only exist in relation to other objects, and moreover these relationships are encoded in a wave function that stands outside the tangible physical universe.”
In a conversation with the Nobel committee Tuesday morning, Dr. Aspect said he had been looking for a limit on quantum mechanics but had not found it.
“I am accepting in my mental images something which is totally crazy,” he said.
Quantum mechanics arose in the early decades of the 20th century, a period often called the Second Scientific Revolution, as scientists tried to understand the inner lives of atoms. Its centerpiece was the uncertainty principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, which states that certain types of knowledge — of a particle’s position and velocity, for example — are incompatible: The more precisely one property is measured, the blurrier and more uncertain the other becomes.
Einstein, though one of the founders of quantum theory, rejected it, saying famously, God did not play dice with the universe.
In a 1935 paper written with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he tried to demolish quantum mechanics as an incomplete theory by pointing out that by quantum rules, measuring a particle in one place could instantly affect measurements of the other particle, even if it was millions of miles away.
This was a philosophical argument about the nature of reality until 1964, when John Stewart Bell, a theoretical physicist at CERN who also was skeptical about the claims of quantum mechanics, described — but did not perform — an experiment that could test whether Einstein or quantum mechanics was right.
Dr. Clauser, who has a knack for electronics and experimentation and misgivings about quantum theory, was the first to perform Bell’s proposed experiment. He happened upon Dr. Bell’s paper while a graduate student at Columbia University and recognized it as something he could do.
In 1972, using duct tape and spare parts in the basement on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Clauser and a graduate student, Stuart Freedman, who died in 2012, endeavored to perform Bell’s experiment to measure quantum entanglement. In a series of experiments, he fired thousands of light particles, or photons, in opposite directions to measure a property known as polarization, which could have only two values — up or down. The result for each detector was always a series of seemingly random ups and downs. But when the two detectors’ results were compared, the ups and downs matched in ways that neither “classical physics” nor Einstein’s laws could explain. Something weird was afoot in the universe. Entanglement seemed to be real.
At the time, most physicists weren’t interested in arguing about the meaning of quantum mechanics, as they were busy using it to build atomic bombs and transistors.
“Clauser got a lot of pushback from scientists who didn’t think this was even part of science,” said David Kaiser, a professor of physics and the history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival.”
“He had to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness to publish his result,” Dr. Kaiser said on Tuesday.
John F. Clauser, with his second quantum entanglement experiment, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975.Credit...Steve Gerber/Berkeley Lab, via Associated Press
In an interview with the American Institute of Physics in 2002, Dr. Clauser admitted that he himself had expected quantum mechanics to be wrong and Einstein to be right. “Obviously, we got the ‘wrong’ result. I had no choice but to report what we saw, you know, ‘Here’s the result.’ But it contradicts what I believed in my gut has to be true.” He added, “I hoped we would overthrow quantum mechanics. Everyone else thought, ‘John, you’re totally nuts.’”
The catch in Dr. Clauser’s discovery and the quantum mechanical description of this spooky action was that the correlations only showed up after the measurements of the individual particles, when the physicists compared their results after the fact. Entanglement seemed real, but it could not be used to communicate information faster than the speed of light.
Dr. Clauser spent much of the decade worrying about what loopholes he might have overlooked. One possibility, which was called the locality loophole, was that the laboratory instruments might have been leaking information to each other.
Enter Dr. Aspect, who is now a professor at Université Paris-Saclay, in Paris, and École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. In the 1970s, on the way to his doctorate, he spent three years performing his national service requirement by teaching in Cameroon, boning up on quantum mechanics in his spare time. In an interview with the Nobel committee, he said he had returned to France ready to tackle the challenge posed by Dr. Bell’s work.
In 1982, Dr. Aspect and his team at the University of Paris tried to outfox Dr. Clauser’s loophole by switching the direction along which the photons’ polarizations were measured every 10 nanoseconds, while the photons were already in the air and too fast for them to communicate with each other. He too, was expecting Einstein to be right.
Dr. Aspect’s results put entanglement on the map as a real phenomenon that physicists and engineers could use. Quantum predictions held true, but there were still more possible loopholes in the Bell experiment that Dr. Clauser had identified and which needed to be closed before quantum physicists could declare victory over Einstein.
For example, the polarization directions in Dr. Aspect’s experiment had been changed in a regular and thus theoretically predictable fashion that could be sensed by the photons or detectors.
It was then that Anton Zeilinger — a professor at the University of Vienna, who with his group has emerged as perhaps the leading ringmaster of quantum trickery — picked up the baton. In 1998, he added even more randomness to the Bell experiment, using random number generators to change the direction of the polarization measurements while the entangled particles were in flight.
Once again, quantum mechanics beat Einstein by an overwhelming margin, closing the “locality” loophole.
Still, there remained other possible sources of criticism or bias, including some over free will and whether the experimenters or the experiments had been influenced by underlying causes. In recent years, Dr. Zeilinger and his collaborators have been performing “Cosmic Bell” experiments by using fluctuations in the light of distant objects called quasars billions of light-years from here as random number generators to set the detector directions.
By now, as scientists have done more experiments with entangled particles, entanglement is accepted as one of main features of quantum mechanics and is being put to work in cryptology, quantum computing and an upcoming “quantum internet” to the tune of more than a billion dollars a year. One of its first successes in cryptology is messages sent using entangled pairs, which can send cryptographic keys in a secure manner — any eavesdropping will destroy the entanglement, alerting the receiver that something is wrong.
In 2017, Dr. Zeilinger used this technique with entangled photons beamed from a Chinese satellite called Micius to have an encrypted 75-minute video conversation with Jian-Wei Pan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of his former students.
When receiving the Nobel Prize on Tuesday, Dr. Zeilinger acknowledged the more than 100 young people who had worked for him over the years and described receiving the award as “an encouragement to young people.”
Though he acknowledged that the award was honoring the future applications of his work, he said, “My advice would be: Do what you find interesting, and don’t care too much about possible applications.”
However, with quantum mechanics, just because we can use it, doesn’t mean our ape brains understand it. The pioneering quantum physicist Niels Bohr once said that anyone who didn’t think quantum mechanics was outrageous hadn’t understood what was being said.
In his interview with A.I.P., Dr. Clauser said, “I confess even to this day that I still don’t understand quantum mechanics, and I’m not even sure I really know how to use it all that well. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that I still don’t understand it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/scie ... 778d3e6de3
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Nobel Prize Awarded to Scientist Who Sequenced Neanderthal Genome
Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, was honored for work that created a new field of ancient DNA studies and identified populations at higher risk of disease.
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Svante Pääbo, a Swedish scientist who peered back into human history by retrieving genetic material from 40,000-year-old bones, producing a complete Neanderthal genome and launching the field of ancient DNA studies, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.
The prize recognized an improbable scientific career. Having once dreamed of becoming an Egyptologist, Dr. Pääbo devoted his early years of research to extracting genetic material from mummies, only for that research to run aground because the samples might have become contaminated by his and his colleagues’ own DNA.
Within about two decades, in 2006, he had launched an unlikely effort to decipher a Neanderthal genome. He designed so-called clean rooms dedicated to handling ancient DNA, which protected his fossils from the genetic material of living humans. And dramatic advances in sequencing technology allowed him to decode the sort of badly damaged DNA found in ancient bones.
“It was certainly considered to be impossible to recover DNA from 40,000-year-old bones,” said Dr. Nils-Göran Larsson, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine and a professor of medical biochemistry at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
In 2010, Dr. Pääbo unveiled the Neanderthal genome. The publication opened a window into questions about what made early humans different from modern ones. It also helped scientists track genetic differences in modern humans and understand what role those differences play in disease, including Covid-19. In 2020, Dr. Pääbo and a colleague found that the coronavirus caused more severe symptoms in people who had inherited a stretch of Neanderthal DNA.
Even some of Dr. Pääbo’s biggest admirers described the prize as unexpected. Analysts have long speculated that the scientists who sequenced the modern human genome were strong contenders for a Nobel Prize, not thinking that the scientist who sequenced Neanderthal DNA would get there first.
But geneticists said that the two projects were interwoven: Rapid advances in sequencing technology that followed the beginning of the Human Genome Project in 1990, they said, helped Dr. Pääbo to interpret tiny quantities of Neanderthal DNA, damaged as they were from tens of thousands of years underground.
What to Know About the Nobel Prizes
Card 1 of 7
An annual event. Every October, committees in Sweden and Norway name Nobel laureates for their contributions in fields including physics, literature and peace work. This year, the Nobel Prizes will be awarded from Oct. 3 to 10. Here is what to know:
What are the prizes? Six Nobel Prizes are awarded every year, each recognizing an individual’s or organization’s groundbreaking contribution to a specific field. Prizes are given for physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, economic science, literature and peace work.
When were the awards established? The Nobel Prizes were established after the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosives, in 1896. In his will, Nobel bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to create five annual prizes honoring ingenuity.
What do the winners receive? Nobel Prize laureates receive a Nobel Prize diploma, a Nobel Prize medal and a monetary award, which for 2022 is 10 million Swedish krona, or about $900,000 according to current exchange rates, for a full prize.
How do the nominations work? Eligible nominators, which include university professors, scientists, members of national governments and previous Nobel Prize laureates, submit the names of potential candidates each year. Nominations for 2022 had to be submitted by Jan. 31.
Who selects the winners? Four separate institutions are responsible for picking the winners: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, the Karolinska Institute for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Parliament for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Isn’t there a prize for economics? Yes, but it is technically not a Nobel Prize. The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was not among the awards originally stipulated in Nobel’s will. The economics prize was established by the Bank of Sweden in 1968; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has been selecting the winners since 1969.
“There’s a lot of Human Genome Project fingerprints all over the research,” said Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Still, Dr. Green said, it was left to Dr. Pääbo to retrieve clean samples, to sift through the DNA left by bacteria that had colonized the bones and to analyze the resulting fragments of Neanderthal DNA.
“He ends up with tons of snippets from Neanderthal bone,” Dr. Green said. “Then it’s, ‘How do you put that jigsaw puzzle back together?’”
Once Dr. Pääbo cleared away the bacterial DNA, dealt with the damage to the Neanderthal genes, analyzed the sequences and ultimately reassembled the genetic jigsaw puzzle, the picture that emerged was staggering.
There was already archaeological evidence that before Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, they had lived in Europe and Asia beside the ancestors of modern humans, who had migrated there from Africa. But the prevailing belief was that modern humans were so distinctive that they had not had children with Neanderthals. (Modern humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor that lived some 600,000 years ago.)
Analyses of the Neanderthal genome by Dr. Pääbo and his colleagues overturned that belief, showing that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred all the time, said David Reich, a geneticist specializing in ancient DNA at Harvard Medical School who worked with Dr. Pääbo on sequencing the genome.
“We’re alone in the world right now — we don’t have these other archaic humans living with us,” Dr. Reich said. “Only 50 to 60 thousand years ago, we mixed with them whenever we could.”
That mixing left a strong genetic imprint. The research team found that people currently living in Europe and Asia derive one percent to four percent of their genomes from Neanderthals. There is no record of Neanderthals in Africa, meaning that they did not directly contribute to the genomes of people there, but scientists believe that other early human species probably did.
Dr. Pääbo, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, went on to use the techniques he had developed to sequence the Neanderthal genome to study other evolutionary relatives.
In 2008, Dr. Pääbo’s team retrieved DNA from a finger bone found in a Siberian cave and learned that it had belonged to an undiscovered ancient human population, later named the Denisovans. That genome had also left its signature in some modern humans: Gene variants that help modern Tibetans live at high altitude, Dr. Pääbo found, may be derived from Denisovans.
Results from those studies not only created a new map of human migration, but also offered evidence of considerable mixing between groups in distant human history, Dr. Reich said.
“It’s profoundly changed many people’s understandings of human history,” he said. “The racist myths of purity just don’t stand up to the data, which proves how central mixture and migration are to our past.”
The question of what makes modern humans unique, among the most fundamental raised by Dr. Pääbo’s research, remains difficult to untangle. His research identified genetic variants that are common among living humans but absent in Neanderthals, offering a sort of blueprint for the set of mutations that distinguish them from modern humans.
But scientists have not yet linked those mutations to modern human traits, such as the capacity for figurative art, complex cultures, large social collaborations and advanced innovation.
That has not slowed a boom in studies of ancient DNA in recent years. Some scientists have attributed this partly to the vast network of geneticists whom Dr. Pääbo has trained and invited into collaborations over the years.
“When we have a meeting, he can inspire a whole group to continue working in the lab until late hours,” said Dr. Hugo Zeberg, a geneticist at the Karolinska Institute who studies the link between genetic variability and disease. “This is an amazing colleague.”
Among the research that has grown out of Dr. Pääbo’s work was the finding by him and Dr. Zeberg in 2020 that people with a stretch of DNA passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago were at greater risk of severe illness from the coronavirus.
Knowing that people with Neanderthal ancestry are at greater risk for a disease can help to distinguish populations that are in more danger, Dr. Zeberg said. In the case of the genes implicated in severe Covid, almost one-third of people in South Asia were known to have inherited that segment of the Neanderthal genome.
Other colleagues of Dr. Pääbo’s are now trying to fill in the gaps of human genetic history by sequencing the genomes of humans who have lived in the last 10,000 years. Dr. Reich said that he and other scientists were also trying to study more samples from Africa and the Americas, where the climate is often less friendly to preserving genetic material.
For his part, Dr. Pääbo said at a news conference on Monday that despite the hoopla around the prize, he hoped that “we can continue to work calmly and without being disturbed by too many journalists.”
He has a bit of Nobel Prize history in his own family: In a 2014 memoir, “Neanderthal Man,” he wrote that he was “the secret extramarital son of Sune Bergstrom, a well-known biochemist who had shared the Nobel Prize in 1982.” But he said that scarcely prepared him for winning the prize himself.
Dr. Pääbo said that his focus remained on the genetic changes that explain why modern humans became so populous and formed such large societies.
“What really drives our work is really curiosity,” he said. “It is just as if you do an archaeological investigation to find out about the past. We sort of make excavations in the human genome.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/heal ... 778d3e6de3
Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian Activists
The three laureates are Ales Bialiatski from Belarus; Memorial, a rights group in Russia; and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine.
Staff of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights organization, celebrating in their office in Kyiv on Friday. The other recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize were Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate from Belarus, and Memorial, a Russian human rights organization.Credit...Ed Ram/Getty Images
Nobel Peace Prize announcement comes as war rages in Europe.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to rights advocates in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus who have become symbols of resistance and accountability at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has set off the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.
The laureates — Ales Bialiatski, a jailed Belarusian activist; Memorial, a Russian organization; and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine — have emerged as some of the starkest challengers to the widespread misinformation and harmful myths disseminated by authoritarian leaders and fueled by globalization, digital connectedness and new methods of surveillance.
“The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in announcing the awards. “They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.”
The committee said it had chosen the three laureates because it wanted to honor the champions of “human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence” in the neighboring countries of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Their work has taken on new significance since February, when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, displacing millions of people and destabilizing the entire region.
The prize was an implicit rebuke to Mr. Putin, whose tenure has been punctuated with violent crackdowns on dissidents and critics at home — and whose 70th birthday was on Friday, an overlap noted by several observers.
“On Putin’s 70th birthday, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a Russian human rights group that he shut down, a Ukrainian human rights group that is documenting his war crimes, and a Belarusian human rights activist whom his ally Lukashenko has imprisoned,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.
Asked whether this year’s choice of winners was “a timely birthday president,” Ms. Reiss-Andersen said, “This prize is not addressing President Putin, not for his birthday or in any other sense — except that his government, as the government in Belarus, is representing an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists.”
The Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine has engaged in efforts to identify and document evidence of Russian war crimes since the invasion began, Ms. Reiss-Andersen said, adding that the group was “playing a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes.”
The committee praised the organization for taking a stand to “strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy.”
There were 343 candidates for this year’s prize, including 251 people and 92 organizations — the second-highest total ever, trailing only 2016. Although there was no clear front-runner, some of the names attracting attention included President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine; Aleksei A. Navalny, a jailed Russian dissident; Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a Belarusian opposition politician; the World Health Organization; and the International Court of Justice.
Mr. Zelensky was the bookmakers’ favorite.
Last year, the Peace Prize was shared by two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitri A. Muratov, “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” the Nobel committee said.
Mr. Muratov, the editor in chief of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has been described as one of the most prominent defenders of free speech in Russia. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend publication amid mounting government censorship.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/07 ... 778d3e6de3
Staff of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights organization, celebrating in their office in Kyiv on Friday. The other recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize were Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate from Belarus, and Memorial, a Russian human rights organization.Credit...Ed Ram/Getty Images
Nobel Peace Prize announcement comes as war rages in Europe.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to rights advocates in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus who have become symbols of resistance and accountability at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has set off the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.
The laureates — Ales Bialiatski, a jailed Belarusian activist; Memorial, a Russian organization; and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine — have emerged as some of the starkest challengers to the widespread misinformation and harmful myths disseminated by authoritarian leaders and fueled by globalization, digital connectedness and new methods of surveillance.
“The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in announcing the awards. “They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.”
The committee said it had chosen the three laureates because it wanted to honor the champions of “human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence” in the neighboring countries of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Their work has taken on new significance since February, when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, displacing millions of people and destabilizing the entire region.
The prize was an implicit rebuke to Mr. Putin, whose tenure has been punctuated with violent crackdowns on dissidents and critics at home — and whose 70th birthday was on Friday, an overlap noted by several observers.
“On Putin’s 70th birthday, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a Russian human rights group that he shut down, a Ukrainian human rights group that is documenting his war crimes, and a Belarusian human rights activist whom his ally Lukashenko has imprisoned,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.
Asked whether this year’s choice of winners was “a timely birthday president,” Ms. Reiss-Andersen said, “This prize is not addressing President Putin, not for his birthday or in any other sense — except that his government, as the government in Belarus, is representing an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists.”
The Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine has engaged in efforts to identify and document evidence of Russian war crimes since the invasion began, Ms. Reiss-Andersen said, adding that the group was “playing a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes.”
The committee praised the organization for taking a stand to “strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy.”
There were 343 candidates for this year’s prize, including 251 people and 92 organizations — the second-highest total ever, trailing only 2016. Although there was no clear front-runner, some of the names attracting attention included President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine; Aleksei A. Navalny, a jailed Russian dissident; Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a Belarusian opposition politician; the World Health Organization; and the International Court of Justice.
Mr. Zelensky was the bookmakers’ favorite.
Last year, the Peace Prize was shared by two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitri A. Muratov, “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” the Nobel committee said.
Mr. Muratov, the editor in chief of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has been described as one of the most prominent defenders of free speech in Russia. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend publication amid mounting government censorship.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/07 ... 778d3e6de3
A Nobel Prize for the Economics of Panic
Do people still read Rudyard Kipling’s “If”? Even if you haven’t, you probably know how it begins: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …” Refusing to panic, Kipling asserted, was a great virtue.
But during a bank run, refusing to panic can also be a way to lose all your money.
On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Economics was given to a household name, Ben Bernanke, and two economists’ economists, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, largely for papers they published almost 40 years ago. So let’s talk about their work and why, unfortunately, it remains all too relevant.
An aside: I sometimes encounter people who insist that the economics prize isn’t a “real” Nobel, because it’s just an award handed out by some Swedes, unlike the other prizes, which are … awards handed out by some Swedes. Yes, I may be talking my own book here, since I got one of these things myself in 2008, but it’s hard to deny the importance of the economics work the Swedes just honored.
Obviously, Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig weren’t the first economists to notice that bank runs happen. But Diamond and Dybvig provided the first really clear analysis of why they happen — and why, destructive as they are, they can represent rational behavior on the part of bank depositors. Their analysis was also full of implications for financial policy. At the same time, Bernanke provided evidence on why bank runs matter and, although he avoided saying so directly, why Milton Friedman was wrong about the causes of the Great Depression.
Diamond and Dybvig offered a stylized but insightful model of what banks do. They argued that there is always a tension between individuals’ desire for liquidity — ready access to funds — and the economy’s need to make long-term investments that can’t easily be converted into cash.
Banks square that circle by taking money from depositors who can withdraw their funds at will — making those deposits highly liquid — and investing most of that money in illiquid assets, such as business loans.
So banking is a productive activity that makes the economy richer by reconciling otherwise incompatible desires for liquidity and productive investment. And it normally works because only a fraction of a bank’s depositors want to withdraw their funds at any given time.
This does, however, make banks vulnerable to runs. Suppose that for some reason many depositors come to believe that many other depositors are about to cash out, and try to beat the pack by withdrawing their own funds. To meet these demands for liquidity, a bank will have to sell off its illiquid assets at fire sale prices, and doing so can drive an institution that should be solvent into bankruptcy. If that happens, people who didn’t withdraw their funds will be left with nothing. So during a panic, the rational thing to do is to panic along with everyone else.
There was, of course, a huge wave of banking panics in 1930-31. Many banks failed, and those that survived made far fewer business loans than before, holding cash instead, while many families shunned banks altogether, putting their cash in safes or under their mattresses. The result was a diversion of wealth into unproductive uses. In his 1983 paper, Bernanke offered evidence that this diversion played a large role in driving the economy into a depression and held back the subsequent recovery.
As I said, this was a tacit rejection of Milton Friedman. In the story told by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, the banking crisis of the early 1930s was damaging because it led to a fall in the money supply — currency plus bank deposits. Bernanke asserted that this was at most only part of the story; his paper was, in fact, titled “Non-Monetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression.”
What can be done to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling panic? As Diamond and Dybvig noted, a government backstop — either deposit insurance, the willingness of the central bank to lend money to troubled banks or both — can short-circuit potential crises. Indeed, the mere knowledge that a backstop exists can often quell a bank run; no money need actually change hands.
But providing such a backstop raises the possibility of abuse; banks may take on undue risks because they know they’ll be bailed out if things go wrong. Case in point: the huge costs to taxpayers of bailing out irresponsible players during the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s. So banks need to be regulated as well as backstopped. As I said, the Diamond-Dybvig analysis had remarkably large implications for policy.
Another implication of their work, which unfortunately went unheeded for decades, was that we need to think carefully about what we mean by a “bank.” It doesn’t have to be a big marble building with rows of tellers. From an economic point of view, banking is any form of financial intermediation that offers people seemingly liquid assets while using their wealth to make illiquid investments.
This insight was dramatically validated in the 2008 financial crisis. Conventional banks were, for the most part, unaffected by the panic; there was no mass exodus from bank deposits. By the eve of the crisis, however, the financial system relied heavily on “shadow banking” — banklike activities that didn’t involve standard bank deposits. For example, many corporations had taken to parking their cash not in deposits but in “repo” — overnight loans using things like mortgage-backed securities as collateral. Such arrangements offered a higher yield than conventional deposits. But they had no safety net, which opened the door to an old-style bank run and financial panic.
And the panic came. The conventionally measured money supply didn’t plunge in 2008 the way it did in the 1930s — but repo and other money-like liabilities of financial intermediaries did:
The run on shadow banking.Credit...FRED
Fortunately, by then Bernanke was chair of the Federal Reserve. He understood what was going on, and the Fed stepped in on an immense scale to prop up the financial system.
Finally, a sort of meta point about the Diamond-Dybvig work: Once you’ve understood and acknowledged the possibility of self-fulfilling banking crises, you become aware that similar things can happen elsewhere.
Perhaps the most notable case in relatively recent times was the euro crisis of 2010-12. Market confidence in the economies of southern Europe collapsed, leading to huge spreads between the interest rates on, for example, Portuguese bonds and those on German bonds. The conventional wisdom at the time — especially in Germany — was that countries were being justifiably punished for taking on excessive debt. But the Belgian economist Paul De Grauwe argued that what was actually happening was a self-fulfilling panic — basically a run on the bonds of countries that couldn’t provide a backstop because they no longer had their own currencies.
Sure enough, when Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank at the time, finally did provide a backstop in 2012 — he said the magic words “whatever it takes,” implying that the bank would lend money to the troubled governments if necessary — the spreads collapsed and the crisis came to an end:
“Whatever it takes” was all it took.Credit...FRED
So here’s to a well-deserved Nobel that unfortunately remains relevant.
But during a bank run, refusing to panic can also be a way to lose all your money.
On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Economics was given to a household name, Ben Bernanke, and two economists’ economists, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, largely for papers they published almost 40 years ago. So let’s talk about their work and why, unfortunately, it remains all too relevant.
An aside: I sometimes encounter people who insist that the economics prize isn’t a “real” Nobel, because it’s just an award handed out by some Swedes, unlike the other prizes, which are … awards handed out by some Swedes. Yes, I may be talking my own book here, since I got one of these things myself in 2008, but it’s hard to deny the importance of the economics work the Swedes just honored.
Obviously, Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig weren’t the first economists to notice that bank runs happen. But Diamond and Dybvig provided the first really clear analysis of why they happen — and why, destructive as they are, they can represent rational behavior on the part of bank depositors. Their analysis was also full of implications for financial policy. At the same time, Bernanke provided evidence on why bank runs matter and, although he avoided saying so directly, why Milton Friedman was wrong about the causes of the Great Depression.
Diamond and Dybvig offered a stylized but insightful model of what banks do. They argued that there is always a tension between individuals’ desire for liquidity — ready access to funds — and the economy’s need to make long-term investments that can’t easily be converted into cash.
Banks square that circle by taking money from depositors who can withdraw their funds at will — making those deposits highly liquid — and investing most of that money in illiquid assets, such as business loans.
So banking is a productive activity that makes the economy richer by reconciling otherwise incompatible desires for liquidity and productive investment. And it normally works because only a fraction of a bank’s depositors want to withdraw their funds at any given time.
This does, however, make banks vulnerable to runs. Suppose that for some reason many depositors come to believe that many other depositors are about to cash out, and try to beat the pack by withdrawing their own funds. To meet these demands for liquidity, a bank will have to sell off its illiquid assets at fire sale prices, and doing so can drive an institution that should be solvent into bankruptcy. If that happens, people who didn’t withdraw their funds will be left with nothing. So during a panic, the rational thing to do is to panic along with everyone else.
There was, of course, a huge wave of banking panics in 1930-31. Many banks failed, and those that survived made far fewer business loans than before, holding cash instead, while many families shunned banks altogether, putting their cash in safes or under their mattresses. The result was a diversion of wealth into unproductive uses. In his 1983 paper, Bernanke offered evidence that this diversion played a large role in driving the economy into a depression and held back the subsequent recovery.
As I said, this was a tacit rejection of Milton Friedman. In the story told by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, the banking crisis of the early 1930s was damaging because it led to a fall in the money supply — currency plus bank deposits. Bernanke asserted that this was at most only part of the story; his paper was, in fact, titled “Non-Monetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression.”
What can be done to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling panic? As Diamond and Dybvig noted, a government backstop — either deposit insurance, the willingness of the central bank to lend money to troubled banks or both — can short-circuit potential crises. Indeed, the mere knowledge that a backstop exists can often quell a bank run; no money need actually change hands.
But providing such a backstop raises the possibility of abuse; banks may take on undue risks because they know they’ll be bailed out if things go wrong. Case in point: the huge costs to taxpayers of bailing out irresponsible players during the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s. So banks need to be regulated as well as backstopped. As I said, the Diamond-Dybvig analysis had remarkably large implications for policy.
Another implication of their work, which unfortunately went unheeded for decades, was that we need to think carefully about what we mean by a “bank.” It doesn’t have to be a big marble building with rows of tellers. From an economic point of view, banking is any form of financial intermediation that offers people seemingly liquid assets while using their wealth to make illiquid investments.
This insight was dramatically validated in the 2008 financial crisis. Conventional banks were, for the most part, unaffected by the panic; there was no mass exodus from bank deposits. By the eve of the crisis, however, the financial system relied heavily on “shadow banking” — banklike activities that didn’t involve standard bank deposits. For example, many corporations had taken to parking their cash not in deposits but in “repo” — overnight loans using things like mortgage-backed securities as collateral. Such arrangements offered a higher yield than conventional deposits. But they had no safety net, which opened the door to an old-style bank run and financial panic.
And the panic came. The conventionally measured money supply didn’t plunge in 2008 the way it did in the 1930s — but repo and other money-like liabilities of financial intermediaries did:
The run on shadow banking.Credit...FRED
Fortunately, by then Bernanke was chair of the Federal Reserve. He understood what was going on, and the Fed stepped in on an immense scale to prop up the financial system.
Finally, a sort of meta point about the Diamond-Dybvig work: Once you’ve understood and acknowledged the possibility of self-fulfilling banking crises, you become aware that similar things can happen elsewhere.
Perhaps the most notable case in relatively recent times was the euro crisis of 2010-12. Market confidence in the economies of southern Europe collapsed, leading to huge spreads between the interest rates on, for example, Portuguese bonds and those on German bonds. The conventional wisdom at the time — especially in Germany — was that countries were being justifiably punished for taking on excessive debt. But the Belgian economist Paul De Grauwe argued that what was actually happening was a self-fulfilling panic — basically a run on the bonds of countries that couldn’t provide a backstop because they no longer had their own currencies.
Sure enough, when Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank at the time, finally did provide a backstop in 2012 — he said the magic words “whatever it takes,” implying that the bank would lend money to the troubled governments if necessary — the spreads collapsed and the crisis came to an end:
“Whatever it takes” was all it took.Credit...FRED
So here’s to a well-deserved Nobel that unfortunately remains relevant.
What to Know About the 2023 Nobel Prizes and the Winners So Far
Nobel Prize season is upon us once again. Every October, committees in Sweden and Norway name laureates in a variety of prizes in the sciences, literature and economics, as well as peace work. In total, six prizes will be awarded.
Throughout the pandemic, the Nobels have made adjustments. In 2020 and 2021, some events were canceled in favor of a digital ceremony for the winners, and the Oslo ceremony for the peace prize was smaller than in most years, with a limited audience.
Laureates will receive their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in Stockholm in December. Last year’s ceremony included 15 laureates from 2020 and 2021 who received their diplomas and medals in their home countries because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here is a quick guide to this year’s prizes.
What are the Nobel prizes?
Six Nobel Prizes are awarded every year, each recognizing an individual’s or organization’s groundbreaking contribution in a specific field. Prizes are given for physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, economic science, literature and peace work, which often draws the most attention because of the caliber of people and groups nominated.
This year, there are 351 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel committee said. That’s the second highest number of candidates ever behind 2016, when 376 candidates were nominated. (Here’s how those nominations work.)
Previous Nobel Peace Prize recipients include Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai (2014), President Barack Obama (2009), Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk (1993), the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso (1989) and Mother Teresa (1979).
Here are this year’s winners so far.
One prize is announced each weekday from Monday through Oct. 9, between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. Eastern time. Announcements are made in Stockholm and Oslo, and will be streamed live on the official digital channels of the Nobel Prize.
The award for physiology or medicine was awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman on Monday, for their discoveries that led to the development of effective vaccines against Covid-19. Read more about them here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/heal ... icine.html .
On Tuesday, the award for physics was shared by three scientists — Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier — for their work on electrons. Read more about them here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/scie ... ysics.html.
The award for chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so small that their size determines their properties. Read more about them here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/scie ... istry.html.
The award for literature will be announced on Thursday.
The award for peace work will be announced on Friday.
The award for economic science will be announced on Oct. 9.
What do the laureates receive?
Nobel Prize laureates will receive a Nobel Prize diploma, a Nobel Prize medal and a document detailing the Nobel Prize amount, which this year is 11 million Swedish krona, or about $989,000 in current exchange rates.
Who were last year’s recipients?
See a complete list of 2022 winners here.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/nobel-p ... 778d3e6de3
Nobel Peace Prize Narges Mohammadi, Jailed Iranian Activist, Is 2023 Laureate
Video:
Narges Mohammadi was honored for her fight against the oppression of women by Iran’s government. She is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in Tehran.CreditCredit...Reihane Taravati/Middle East Images, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian activist who is serving a 10-year sentence in an Iranian prison, received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
Here’s what to know about this year’s prize.
The closely watched announcement, made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, comes after women-led protests in Iran that convulsed the country over the death in police custody of a 22-year-old who had been arrested by the country’s morality police. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing government crackdown, including at least 44 minors, while about 20,000 Iranians were arrested, the United Nations calculated.
“This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” the committee said. “The motto adopted by the demonstrators — ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ — suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi.”
Ms. Mohammadi, who has reported extensively about government abuse in Iran and organized protests and other forms of civil disobedience while imprisoned, vowed to stay in Iran and continue her activism, even if that meant spending the rest of her life in prison. “Standing alongside the brave mothers of Iran,” she said, “I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of women.” She is also the vice-director of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a Tehran-based civil society organization.
There were 351 candidates for the prize this year, according to the Nobel committee, the second-highest number ever. Ms. Mohammadi joins 137 laureates named since the prize’s inception in 1901, a list that includes President Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk; and Mother Teresa.
Here are some other highlights from our reporting:
- Over the past 30 years, Iran’s government has penalized Ms. Mohammadi again and again for her activism and her writing, depriving her of most of what she holds dear — her career as an engineer, her health, time with her parents, husband and children, and her liberty. Read our full profile from June.
- The new Nobel laureate’s family, thousands of miles away from her in Paris, expressed joy over the honor, but acknowledged it had come at a cost, with the family fearing for her safety every day.
- Ms. Mohammadi’s activism took on renewed urgency when mass protests erupted in September of last year, posing the most formidable challenge to the Iranian government since at least 2009.
- Last year, the Peace Prize was shared by democracy activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was widely seen as a rebuke to President Vladimir V. Putin and Kremlin repression.
Ali Rahmani, Narges Mohammadi’s 16-year-old son, said he was extremely proud of his mother even though her activism had kept his family apart.
“This is not a prize just for my mom; it is for the Iranian people, for the fight,” he said. Chirinne Ardakani, a lawyer who founded a group to help exfiltrate Iranian activists, cried as she translated Ali’s words to reporters.
Kiana Rahmani, Ali’s twin sister, told reporters that she had last spoken to her mother a year ago. “For now I think she is in good health, and I think she knows about the Nobel, but I can’t be sure,” Kiana said.
Image
Credit...Thibault Camus/Associated Press
Oct. 6, 2023, 12:11 p.m. ET42 minutes ago
42 minutes ago
Juliette Guéron-GabrielleReporting from Paris
Speaking to reporters in the courtyard of their building later on Friday, Taghi Rahmani, Narges Mohammadi’s husband, said Mohammadi “would have liked to dedicate her prize to all the women that are fighting in Iran, to her comrades and cellmates,” before listing the names of Iranians imprisoned for opposing the regime.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/06 ... -mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi was honored for her fight against the oppression of women by Iran’s government. She is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in Tehran.CreditCredit...Reihane Taravati/Middle East Images, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian activist who is serving a 10-year sentence in an Iranian prison, received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
Here’s what to know about this year’s prize.
The closely watched announcement, made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, comes after women-led protests in Iran that convulsed the country over the death in police custody of a 22-year-old who had been arrested by the country’s morality police. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing government crackdown, including at least 44 minors, while about 20,000 Iranians were arrested, the United Nations calculated.
“This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” the committee said. “The motto adopted by the demonstrators — ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ — suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi.”
Ms. Mohammadi, who has reported extensively about government abuse in Iran and organized protests and other forms of civil disobedience while imprisoned, vowed to stay in Iran and continue her activism, even if that meant spending the rest of her life in prison. “Standing alongside the brave mothers of Iran,” she said, “I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of women.” She is also the vice-director of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a Tehran-based civil society organization.
There were 351 candidates for the prize this year, according to the Nobel committee, the second-highest number ever. Ms. Mohammadi joins 137 laureates named since the prize’s inception in 1901, a list that includes President Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk; and Mother Teresa.
Here are some other highlights from our reporting:
- Over the past 30 years, Iran’s government has penalized Ms. Mohammadi again and again for her activism and her writing, depriving her of most of what she holds dear — her career as an engineer, her health, time with her parents, husband and children, and her liberty. Read our full profile from June.
- The new Nobel laureate’s family, thousands of miles away from her in Paris, expressed joy over the honor, but acknowledged it had come at a cost, with the family fearing for her safety every day.
- Ms. Mohammadi’s activism took on renewed urgency when mass protests erupted in September of last year, posing the most formidable challenge to the Iranian government since at least 2009.
- Last year, the Peace Prize was shared by democracy activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was widely seen as a rebuke to President Vladimir V. Putin and Kremlin repression.
Ali Rahmani, Narges Mohammadi’s 16-year-old son, said he was extremely proud of his mother even though her activism had kept his family apart.
“This is not a prize just for my mom; it is for the Iranian people, for the fight,” he said. Chirinne Ardakani, a lawyer who founded a group to help exfiltrate Iranian activists, cried as she translated Ali’s words to reporters.
Kiana Rahmani, Ali’s twin sister, told reporters that she had last spoken to her mother a year ago. “For now I think she is in good health, and I think she knows about the Nobel, but I can’t be sure,” Kiana said.
Image
Credit...Thibault Camus/Associated Press
Oct. 6, 2023, 12:11 p.m. ET42 minutes ago
42 minutes ago
Juliette Guéron-GabrielleReporting from Paris
Speaking to reporters in the courtyard of their building later on Friday, Taghi Rahmani, Narges Mohammadi’s husband, said Mohammadi “would have liked to dedicate her prize to all the women that are fighting in Iran, to her comrades and cellmates,” before listing the names of Iranians imprisoned for opposing the regime.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/06 ... -mohammadi
Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel in Economics for Studying Women in the Work Force
Her research uncovered the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings. She is the third woman to win the prize.
Claudia Goldin’s wide-ranging work has delved into the causes of the gender wage gap and the evolution of women’s participation in the labor market.Credit...Harvard University/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor, for advancing the world’s understanding of women’s progress in the work force.
She is the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first awarded in 1969, and the first one to be honored with it solo rather than sharing in the prize.
Dr. Goldin, 77, is a professor of economics at Harvard University. She has long been a trailblazer in the field — she was the first woman to be offered tenure in Harvard’s economics department, in 1989. Her wide-ranging work has delved into the causes of the gender wage gap, the evolution of women’s participation in the job market over the past 200 years, and the implications for the future of the labor force.
Why did the committee say she received the prize?
The Nobel committee announced the award in Stockholm, praising Dr. Goldin for her research on female employment, which showed that employment among married women decreased in the 1800s, as the economy moved away from agriculture and toward industry. Women’s participation then increased in the 1900s, as the service sector began to expand as a part of the economy.
Dr. Goldin has described the 1970s in particular as a “revolutionary” period in which women in the United States began to marry later, take strides in higher education, and make major progress in the labor market. Birth control pills became more easily available in those years, taking away what Dr. Goldin has called a “potent” reason for early marriage — and giving women more time to form identities outside of the home.
Dr. Goldin has also illustrated how the process of closing the gender wage gap has been uneven over the course of history. Recently, progress in closing it has been halting: Today, women in the United States make a little over 80 cents for every dollar a man makes.
In the past, gender wage gaps could be explained by education and occupation. But Dr. Goldin has shown that most of the earnings difference is now between men and women in the same jobs, the Nobel committee said. Notably, it kicks in after the birth of a woman’s first child.
In a 15-year study of business school students at the University of Chicago, for instance, Goldin and her colleagues found in one paper that the gap in pay started to widen a year or two after a woman had her first baby.
“Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast societal implications,” said Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the committee and professor of economics at the University of Gothenburg.
What did she say about winning the prize?
Dr. Goldin said in an interview that she hoped people would take away from her work how important long-term changes are to understanding the labor market.
“We see a residue of history around us,” she said, explaining that societal and family structures that women and men grow up in shape their behavior and economic outcomes.
“We’re never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity,” she said. While there has been “monumental progressive change, at the same time there are important differences” which often tie back to women doing more work in the home.
Dr. Goldin has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. She often co-authors papers with her husband, Lawrence Katz, a fellow Harvard University economist.
She was asleep when the call informing her of the prize came in — she had gotten up earlier to let the dog out but had gone back to bed. She said that she was “delighted.”
Asked about what it meant for a woman to win the economics award on her own, Dr. Goldin said it marked a sort of “culmination” after years of “important changes” toward more gender diversity in the field.
What do her colleagues say about her?
Claudia Olivetti of Dartmouth, a co-author of Dr. Goldin’s, said that Dr. Goldin’s work has “shaped much of the current research on women and labor markets.” She pointed out that it continues to today: Dr. Goldin has just released a new working paper on why women made such great advances in the 1970s, and why that progress has hit roadblocks in the years since.
Dr. Goldin has also been an important mentor to many women entering the field of economics, she said.
“Claudia has been a source of inspiration to many women in economics, generously sharing her experiences and demonstrating the possibilities of success in a mostly male-dominated world,” Dr. Olivetti wrote in an email.
Leah Boustan, a professor at Princeton and once a student of Dr. Goldin’s, said that her work has had a “profound” influence on labor economics.
“The first thing I thought about when Claudia won is how much her research is still inspiring current work,” she said, explaining that her students today are still digging into how marriage, contraception and labor market decisions have interacted over time.
“There are so many threads that we as labor economists and economic historians can follow from Claudia’s work,” she said.
Who else has won a Nobel Prize this year?
The award for physiology or medicine went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that led to the development of effective vaccines against Covid-19.
The prize in physics was shared by Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for techniques that illuminate the subatomic realm of electrons.
The award for chemistry went to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so small that their size determines their properties.
The literature prize went to the Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/book ... ature.html
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s most prominent human rights activist and an inmate in the country’s notorious Evin Prison, “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/busi ... 778d3e6de3
Claudia Goldin’s wide-ranging work has delved into the causes of the gender wage gap and the evolution of women’s participation in the labor market.Credit...Harvard University/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor, for advancing the world’s understanding of women’s progress in the work force.
She is the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first awarded in 1969, and the first one to be honored with it solo rather than sharing in the prize.
Dr. Goldin, 77, is a professor of economics at Harvard University. She has long been a trailblazer in the field — she was the first woman to be offered tenure in Harvard’s economics department, in 1989. Her wide-ranging work has delved into the causes of the gender wage gap, the evolution of women’s participation in the job market over the past 200 years, and the implications for the future of the labor force.
Why did the committee say she received the prize?
The Nobel committee announced the award in Stockholm, praising Dr. Goldin for her research on female employment, which showed that employment among married women decreased in the 1800s, as the economy moved away from agriculture and toward industry. Women’s participation then increased in the 1900s, as the service sector began to expand as a part of the economy.
Dr. Goldin has described the 1970s in particular as a “revolutionary” period in which women in the United States began to marry later, take strides in higher education, and make major progress in the labor market. Birth control pills became more easily available in those years, taking away what Dr. Goldin has called a “potent” reason for early marriage — and giving women more time to form identities outside of the home.
Dr. Goldin has also illustrated how the process of closing the gender wage gap has been uneven over the course of history. Recently, progress in closing it has been halting: Today, women in the United States make a little over 80 cents for every dollar a man makes.
In the past, gender wage gaps could be explained by education and occupation. But Dr. Goldin has shown that most of the earnings difference is now between men and women in the same jobs, the Nobel committee said. Notably, it kicks in after the birth of a woman’s first child.
In a 15-year study of business school students at the University of Chicago, for instance, Goldin and her colleagues found in one paper that the gap in pay started to widen a year or two after a woman had her first baby.
“Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast societal implications,” said Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the committee and professor of economics at the University of Gothenburg.
What did she say about winning the prize?
Dr. Goldin said in an interview that she hoped people would take away from her work how important long-term changes are to understanding the labor market.
“We see a residue of history around us,” she said, explaining that societal and family structures that women and men grow up in shape their behavior and economic outcomes.
“We’re never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity,” she said. While there has been “monumental progressive change, at the same time there are important differences” which often tie back to women doing more work in the home.
Dr. Goldin has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. She often co-authors papers with her husband, Lawrence Katz, a fellow Harvard University economist.
She was asleep when the call informing her of the prize came in — she had gotten up earlier to let the dog out but had gone back to bed. She said that she was “delighted.”
Asked about what it meant for a woman to win the economics award on her own, Dr. Goldin said it marked a sort of “culmination” after years of “important changes” toward more gender diversity in the field.
What do her colleagues say about her?
Claudia Olivetti of Dartmouth, a co-author of Dr. Goldin’s, said that Dr. Goldin’s work has “shaped much of the current research on women and labor markets.” She pointed out that it continues to today: Dr. Goldin has just released a new working paper on why women made such great advances in the 1970s, and why that progress has hit roadblocks in the years since.
Dr. Goldin has also been an important mentor to many women entering the field of economics, she said.
“Claudia has been a source of inspiration to many women in economics, generously sharing her experiences and demonstrating the possibilities of success in a mostly male-dominated world,” Dr. Olivetti wrote in an email.
Leah Boustan, a professor at Princeton and once a student of Dr. Goldin’s, said that her work has had a “profound” influence on labor economics.
“The first thing I thought about when Claudia won is how much her research is still inspiring current work,” she said, explaining that her students today are still digging into how marriage, contraception and labor market decisions have interacted over time.
“There are so many threads that we as labor economists and economic historians can follow from Claudia’s work,” she said.
Who else has won a Nobel Prize this year?
The award for physiology or medicine went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that led to the development of effective vaccines against Covid-19.
The prize in physics was shared by Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for techniques that illuminate the subatomic realm of electrons.
The award for chemistry went to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so small that their size determines their properties.
The literature prize went to the Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/book ... ature.html
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s most prominent human rights activist and an inmate in the country’s notorious Evin Prison, “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/busi ... 778d3e6de3
Children of Jailed Narges Mohammadi Accept Her Nobel Peace Prize
At the ceremony in Oslo, the Iranian activist’s twins also read a speech from their mother calling for a “globalization of peace and human rights.”
The ceremony awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, shown on the screen, in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday.Credit...Fredrik Varfjell/NTB Scanpix, via Associated Press
Iran’s most prominent human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi, was supposed to be handed the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Sunday.
But, locked inside Evin Prison in Iran, Ms. Mohammadi, 51, was unable to attend and her 17-year-old twin children, Kiana Rahmani and Ali Rahmani, instead accepted medal and diploma on her behalf and read out a speech she had prepared.
“I write this message from behind the tall and cold walls of a prison,” she said in her speech, making a plea for a “globalization of peace and human rights” in a world where authoritarian governments continue to commit abuses against their people.
Ms. Mohammadi’s children have not seen their mother since 2015, when they fled Iran for France, and they have been unable to speak with her for two years, after Iranian prison authorities banned her from phone contact with them, according to PEN America, a free-speech group.
In the speech, which was greeted with a standing ovation, Ms. Mohammadi described the undemocratic ways of the Islamic republic, its oppressive rules mandating the hijab for women, and the women-led uprisings that shook the country last year.
She warned that human rights violations perpetrated by authoritarian governments had broader consequences, including migration, unrest and growing terrorist threats.
//More on Iran
//Nobel Winner’s Hunger Strike: Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, began a hunger strike after she was denied hospital treatment for two blocked coronary arteries, her family said.
//Cyberattacks: A new report shows how Iranian hackers have been waging a sophisticated espionage campaign targeting the country’s rivals across the Middle East, a sign of how Iran’s quickly improving cyberattacks have become a new, important prong in a shadow war.
//Armita Geravand: The 16-year-old Iranian girl died weeks after she collapsed and fell into a coma after what many believe was an encounter over not covering her hair in public. Several activists were later arrested at her funeral.
“In the globalized world, either human rights will become respected internationally, or human rights violations will continue to spread across state borders,” she said.
A portrait of Ms. Mohammadi hung on the wall of Oslo’s city hall during the ceremony, which included performances by Iranian musicians.
In her speech, the Iranian human rights activist also talked of the “soul-crushing suffering resulting from the lack of freedom, equality, and democracy” in her country, perpetrated by a “despotic religious government.”
“Tyranny turns life into death, blessing into lament, and comfort into torment,” she said.
Iran’s authoritarian government has long tried to silence and punish Ms. Mohammadi for her activism and she is currently serving a long prison sentence for “spreading anti-state propaganda.”
On Saturday, Ms. Mohammadi’s family announced that she had begun a hunger strike to protest the violation of human rights in Iran and the treatment of the Baha’i religious minority there. She has previously suffered severe health problems in prison, including a heart attack.
Image
A woman with short hair and a black jacket handing a blue-framed certificate to two younger people in black formal clothes.
The leader of the Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, handing the award to Kiana Rahmani and Ali Rahmani on behalf of their mother.Credit...Javad Parsa/NTB, via Agence France-Presse
Last month, she held another hunger strike to protest the refusal of prison authorities to take her to a hospital for treatment for two blocked coronary arteries when she refused to wear the mandatory hijab to go there.
Despite her detention, she has remained a powerful voice promoting human rights in Iran and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and promoting freedom and human rights.
As major protests rocked Iran last year after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in the custody of the country’s morality police after being accused of failing to wear a hijab properly, Ms. Mohammadi organized demonstrations inside the prison.
Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist and human rights activist who was in Oslo on Sunday, said that Ms. Mohammadi’s struggle highlighted the juxtaposition between “a government’s cruelty” and “the unwavering resilience of activists.”
Her absence from Oslo, he added in a message, “casts a glaring spotlight on the Iranian government’s disregard for human rights.”
PEN America had previously written an open letter to ask the Iranian government to free Ms. Mohammadi in time for her to attend the Nobel ceremony.
“The government of Iran prefers the humiliating spectacle of the world honoring her in absentia to the risk of allowing her to speak her mind,” Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America, who attended the Nobel ceremony on Sunday, said in a statement.
Ms. Rahmani said that being able to deliver the speech at the ceremony gave her a feeling of connection with her mother.
“Her own words in my hands,” she said in an interview with the Nobel Peace Center on Saturday. “It is really nice to finally have something of my mother.”
In a letter written after receiving the prize, which her daughter also read out at the time, Ms. Mohammadi talked about her life and activism. As a 9-year-old, she said, she heard her mother mourn after her niece was executed; at 19, she was jailed for wearing an orange coat.
“From our very childhood we are exposed to the domination, blatant and hidden violence, tyranny, and discrimination,” she said.
The Nobel announcement in October was broadcast by Iranian state television in the women’s ward at Evin Prison, she said, and her cellmates chanted one of the slogans of the nationwide protests that erupted last year: “Woman, Life, Freedom!”
She said the award marked a turning point in empowering protest and social movements worldwide as forces for change.
“Victory is not easy,” Ms. Mohammadi said. “But it is certain.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/worl ... emony.html
The ceremony awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, shown on the screen, in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday.Credit...Fredrik Varfjell/NTB Scanpix, via Associated Press
Iran’s most prominent human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi, was supposed to be handed the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Sunday.
But, locked inside Evin Prison in Iran, Ms. Mohammadi, 51, was unable to attend and her 17-year-old twin children, Kiana Rahmani and Ali Rahmani, instead accepted medal and diploma on her behalf and read out a speech she had prepared.
“I write this message from behind the tall and cold walls of a prison,” she said in her speech, making a plea for a “globalization of peace and human rights” in a world where authoritarian governments continue to commit abuses against their people.
Ms. Mohammadi’s children have not seen their mother since 2015, when they fled Iran for France, and they have been unable to speak with her for two years, after Iranian prison authorities banned her from phone contact with them, according to PEN America, a free-speech group.
In the speech, which was greeted with a standing ovation, Ms. Mohammadi described the undemocratic ways of the Islamic republic, its oppressive rules mandating the hijab for women, and the women-led uprisings that shook the country last year.
She warned that human rights violations perpetrated by authoritarian governments had broader consequences, including migration, unrest and growing terrorist threats.
//More on Iran
//Nobel Winner’s Hunger Strike: Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, began a hunger strike after she was denied hospital treatment for two blocked coronary arteries, her family said.
//Cyberattacks: A new report shows how Iranian hackers have been waging a sophisticated espionage campaign targeting the country’s rivals across the Middle East, a sign of how Iran’s quickly improving cyberattacks have become a new, important prong in a shadow war.
//Armita Geravand: The 16-year-old Iranian girl died weeks after she collapsed and fell into a coma after what many believe was an encounter over not covering her hair in public. Several activists were later arrested at her funeral.
“In the globalized world, either human rights will become respected internationally, or human rights violations will continue to spread across state borders,” she said.
A portrait of Ms. Mohammadi hung on the wall of Oslo’s city hall during the ceremony, which included performances by Iranian musicians.
In her speech, the Iranian human rights activist also talked of the “soul-crushing suffering resulting from the lack of freedom, equality, and democracy” in her country, perpetrated by a “despotic religious government.”
“Tyranny turns life into death, blessing into lament, and comfort into torment,” she said.
Iran’s authoritarian government has long tried to silence and punish Ms. Mohammadi for her activism and she is currently serving a long prison sentence for “spreading anti-state propaganda.”
On Saturday, Ms. Mohammadi’s family announced that she had begun a hunger strike to protest the violation of human rights in Iran and the treatment of the Baha’i religious minority there. She has previously suffered severe health problems in prison, including a heart attack.
Image
A woman with short hair and a black jacket handing a blue-framed certificate to two younger people in black formal clothes.
The leader of the Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, handing the award to Kiana Rahmani and Ali Rahmani on behalf of their mother.Credit...Javad Parsa/NTB, via Agence France-Presse
Last month, she held another hunger strike to protest the refusal of prison authorities to take her to a hospital for treatment for two blocked coronary arteries when she refused to wear the mandatory hijab to go there.
Despite her detention, she has remained a powerful voice promoting human rights in Iran and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and promoting freedom and human rights.
As major protests rocked Iran last year after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in the custody of the country’s morality police after being accused of failing to wear a hijab properly, Ms. Mohammadi organized demonstrations inside the prison.
Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist and human rights activist who was in Oslo on Sunday, said that Ms. Mohammadi’s struggle highlighted the juxtaposition between “a government’s cruelty” and “the unwavering resilience of activists.”
Her absence from Oslo, he added in a message, “casts a glaring spotlight on the Iranian government’s disregard for human rights.”
PEN America had previously written an open letter to ask the Iranian government to free Ms. Mohammadi in time for her to attend the Nobel ceremony.
“The government of Iran prefers the humiliating spectacle of the world honoring her in absentia to the risk of allowing her to speak her mind,” Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America, who attended the Nobel ceremony on Sunday, said in a statement.
Ms. Rahmani said that being able to deliver the speech at the ceremony gave her a feeling of connection with her mother.
“Her own words in my hands,” she said in an interview with the Nobel Peace Center on Saturday. “It is really nice to finally have something of my mother.”
In a letter written after receiving the prize, which her daughter also read out at the time, Ms. Mohammadi talked about her life and activism. As a 9-year-old, she said, she heard her mother mourn after her niece was executed; at 19, she was jailed for wearing an orange coat.
“From our very childhood we are exposed to the domination, blatant and hidden violence, tyranny, and discrimination,” she said.
The Nobel announcement in October was broadcast by Iranian state television in the women’s ward at Evin Prison, she said, and her cellmates chanted one of the slogans of the nationwide protests that erupted last year: “Woman, Life, Freedom!”
She said the award marked a turning point in empowering protest and social movements worldwide as forces for change.
“Victory is not easy,” Ms. Mohammadi said. “But it is certain.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/worl ... emony.html
Re: Nobel Prizes
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to 3 Scientists for Predicting and Creating Proteins
The Nobel, awarded to David Baker of the University of Washington and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind, is the second this week to involve artificial intelligence.
Video: https://nyti.ms/3YebR1R
Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper were part of a Google DeepMind team whose A.I. technology predicts protein shapes. The University of Washington’s David Baker designed “a new protein that was unlike any other,” the Nobel committee said.CreditCredit...Christine Olsson/TT News Agency, via Associated Press
Claire MosesCade MetzTeddy Rosenbluth
By Claire MosesCade Metz and Teddy Rosenbluth
Oct. 9, 2024
Updated 9:15 a.m. ET
Leer en español
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for discoveries that show the potential of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to predict the shape of proteins, life’s chemical tools, and to invent new ones.
The laureates are: Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, who used A.I. to predict the structure of millions of proteins; and David Baker at the University of Washington, who used computer software to invent a new protein.
The impact of the work of this year’s laureates is “truly huge,” Johan Aqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said on Wednesday, and has already been applied to the development of pharmaceuticals and other technologies. “In order to understand how proteins work, you need to know what they look like, and that’s what this year’s laureates have done.”
Wednesday’s prize was also the second this week to involve artificial intelligence, highlighting the technology’s growing significance in scientific research.
Proteins and enzymes are the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of viruses, bacteria, the human body and all other living things. They begin as strings of chemical compounds, before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define what they can and cannot do. For many decades, scientists would spend months or even decades trying to pinpoint the precise shape of individual proteins.
Dr. Hassabis and Dr. Jumper were part of a team at Google DeepMind, the company’s central A.I. lab, and worked toward better understanding of protein structures. With their artificial intelligence mode, AlphaFold2, the Nobel committee said, they were eventually able to calculate the structure of all human proteins. The researchers “also predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have so far discovered when mapping Earth’s organisms,” the committee said.
And they were also able to do it with speed — what had once taken years, AlphaFold could do in a few hours or even a few minutes.
When the Google team unveiled the technology in 2020, many scientists had assumed that such as a breakthrough was still years away. Scientists had struggled for more than 50 years to solve what was called “the protein folding problem.”
Biochemists have used the technology to speed the discovery of medicines, and it could also lead to new biological tools such as enzymes that efficiently break down plastic bottles and convert them into materials that are easily reused and recycled.
At the University of Washington, Dr. Baker’s work preceded the emergence of the latest A.I. models, and centered on protein creation.
Dr. Baker “opened up a completely new world of protein structures that we had never seen before,” Dr. Aqvist said.
In 2003, the committee pointed out, Dr. Baker “succeeded in designing a new protein that was unlike any other protein,” which it said was “something that can only be described as an extraordinary development.”
His research group, which now utilizes A.I. methods similar to the AlphaFold team’s, “has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors,” the committee said.
Dr. Baker’s proteins have been the basis of several potential medical treatments, like an antiviral nasal spray for Covid-19 and a medication for celiac disease.
He has also co-founded more than 20 biotechnology companies.
Mary Carroll, president of American Chemical Society, said she views the laureates’ work firmly in the field of chemistry — not an artificial intelligence discovery that happens to have chemical applications.
She added that this prize may indicate the field is headed toward a greater share of computational research, which may make scientists less reliant on physical study in laboratories or help to make that research more efficient.
“Computational work is experimental work, It’s just a different kind,” she said. “I think it is a direction of chemistry.”
Who are the laureates?
Dr. Hassabis was born in London, where his parents — one a Greek Cypriot, the other a Singaporean — ran a toy store. As a teenager, he was the second-highest ranked under-14 chess player in the world and began designing video games professionally before attending college.
After completing a computer science degree at the University of Cambridge, he founded his own video game company and then returned to academia for a doctorate in neuroscience. Dr. Hassabis, along with a fellow academic and a childhood friend, founded an A.I. start-up that they called DeepMind in 2010. About four years later, Google acquired it for $650 million.
DeepMind’s stated goal was to build artificial general intelligence, a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. It also explored other technologies that help reach that goal and that can solve particular scientific problems. One of those technologies was AlphaFold.
Dr. Jumper was born in the United States. After finishing an undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge, he completed a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry at the University of Chicago. He joined DeepMind as a researcher in 2017 after Google had acquired the lab. Alongside Dr. Hassabis and others, he soon began work on what became AlphaFold.
Dr. Baker, a Seattle native, earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1984 and later earned a biochemistry doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.
Currently at the University of Washington, he serves as the head of the Institute for Protein Design and is a professor of biochemistry. Dr. Baker’s research at the institute is focused on the prediction and design of protein structures.
Dr. Baker said that he was excited about proteins and their ability to solve problems. One protein that he and researchers in his lab designed could protect against the coronavirus. (When asked by a journalist after the ceremony if he had a favorite protein, he answered, “I love all proteins. I don’t want to pick favorites.”)
What did the laureates say about receiving the prize?
When the committee informed the laureates on Wednesday, Dr. Baker was sleeping. “I answered the phone, and I heard the announcement, and my wife began screaming very loudly so I couldn’t really hear very well,” he told reporters.
He said “he turned down 100 calls” while he was on the phone with the Nobel committee.
In a post on the website X, Google DeepMind described the prize as “a monumental achievement for AI, for computational biology, and science itself.”
Dr. Jumper took a video of himself sharing the news with colleagues over a video call. They hugged and cheered in little squares on his computer screen.
“Glad you guys are all caught up now,” he said.
In an interview shortly after the prize was announced, Dr. Hassabis said the news hadn’t “really sunk in.”
“I had a whole day of normal work ahead of me but I guess those plans will have to change now,” he said.
With two of this year’s prize recipients working at a private company and not an academic institution, Dr. Hassabis noted that researchers in fields like A.I. require a lot of resources and computing power.
“Why not tap into the private sector in order to fund those kinds of things?” he said.
Dr. Hassabis said he modeled his research group after the Golden era of Bell Labs, a research and development company that has produced 10 Nobel laureates.
Who received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
The prize went to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for discovering and developing quantum dots, semiconductors made of tightly squeezed particles that are expected to lead to advances in electronics, solar cells and encrypted quantum information.
Who else has received a Nobel Prize in the sciences this year?
On Monday, the prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, which helps determine how cells develop and function.
On Tuesday, the prize in Physics was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for discoveries that helped computers learn more in the way that the human brain does, providing the building blocks for developments in artificial intelligence.
When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?
The Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded on Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, Jon Fosse of Norway was honored for plays and prose that gave “voice to the unsayable.”
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Last year, Narges Mohammadi, an activist in Iran was recognized “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” Ms. Mohammadi is serving a 10-year sentence in an Iranian prison where her attorneys have raised concerns about her well-being.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded on Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Last year, Claudia Goldin was awarded for her research uncovering the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings.
All of the prize announcements are streamed live by the Nobel Prize organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/scie ... 778d3e6de3
The Nobel, awarded to David Baker of the University of Washington and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind, is the second this week to involve artificial intelligence.
Video: https://nyti.ms/3YebR1R
Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper were part of a Google DeepMind team whose A.I. technology predicts protein shapes. The University of Washington’s David Baker designed “a new protein that was unlike any other,” the Nobel committee said.CreditCredit...Christine Olsson/TT News Agency, via Associated Press
Claire MosesCade MetzTeddy Rosenbluth
By Claire MosesCade Metz and Teddy Rosenbluth
Oct. 9, 2024
Updated 9:15 a.m. ET
Leer en español
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for discoveries that show the potential of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to predict the shape of proteins, life’s chemical tools, and to invent new ones.
The laureates are: Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, who used A.I. to predict the structure of millions of proteins; and David Baker at the University of Washington, who used computer software to invent a new protein.
The impact of the work of this year’s laureates is “truly huge,” Johan Aqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said on Wednesday, and has already been applied to the development of pharmaceuticals and other technologies. “In order to understand how proteins work, you need to know what they look like, and that’s what this year’s laureates have done.”
Wednesday’s prize was also the second this week to involve artificial intelligence, highlighting the technology’s growing significance in scientific research.
Proteins and enzymes are the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of viruses, bacteria, the human body and all other living things. They begin as strings of chemical compounds, before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define what they can and cannot do. For many decades, scientists would spend months or even decades trying to pinpoint the precise shape of individual proteins.
Dr. Hassabis and Dr. Jumper were part of a team at Google DeepMind, the company’s central A.I. lab, and worked toward better understanding of protein structures. With their artificial intelligence mode, AlphaFold2, the Nobel committee said, they were eventually able to calculate the structure of all human proteins. The researchers “also predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have so far discovered when mapping Earth’s organisms,” the committee said.
And they were also able to do it with speed — what had once taken years, AlphaFold could do in a few hours or even a few minutes.
When the Google team unveiled the technology in 2020, many scientists had assumed that such as a breakthrough was still years away. Scientists had struggled for more than 50 years to solve what was called “the protein folding problem.”
Biochemists have used the technology to speed the discovery of medicines, and it could also lead to new biological tools such as enzymes that efficiently break down plastic bottles and convert them into materials that are easily reused and recycled.
At the University of Washington, Dr. Baker’s work preceded the emergence of the latest A.I. models, and centered on protein creation.
Dr. Baker “opened up a completely new world of protein structures that we had never seen before,” Dr. Aqvist said.
In 2003, the committee pointed out, Dr. Baker “succeeded in designing a new protein that was unlike any other protein,” which it said was “something that can only be described as an extraordinary development.”
His research group, which now utilizes A.I. methods similar to the AlphaFold team’s, “has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors,” the committee said.
Dr. Baker’s proteins have been the basis of several potential medical treatments, like an antiviral nasal spray for Covid-19 and a medication for celiac disease.
He has also co-founded more than 20 biotechnology companies.
Mary Carroll, president of American Chemical Society, said she views the laureates’ work firmly in the field of chemistry — not an artificial intelligence discovery that happens to have chemical applications.
She added that this prize may indicate the field is headed toward a greater share of computational research, which may make scientists less reliant on physical study in laboratories or help to make that research more efficient.
“Computational work is experimental work, It’s just a different kind,” she said. “I think it is a direction of chemistry.”
Who are the laureates?
Dr. Hassabis was born in London, where his parents — one a Greek Cypriot, the other a Singaporean — ran a toy store. As a teenager, he was the second-highest ranked under-14 chess player in the world and began designing video games professionally before attending college.
After completing a computer science degree at the University of Cambridge, he founded his own video game company and then returned to academia for a doctorate in neuroscience. Dr. Hassabis, along with a fellow academic and a childhood friend, founded an A.I. start-up that they called DeepMind in 2010. About four years later, Google acquired it for $650 million.
DeepMind’s stated goal was to build artificial general intelligence, a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. It also explored other technologies that help reach that goal and that can solve particular scientific problems. One of those technologies was AlphaFold.
Dr. Jumper was born in the United States. After finishing an undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge, he completed a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry at the University of Chicago. He joined DeepMind as a researcher in 2017 after Google had acquired the lab. Alongside Dr. Hassabis and others, he soon began work on what became AlphaFold.
Dr. Baker, a Seattle native, earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1984 and later earned a biochemistry doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.
Currently at the University of Washington, he serves as the head of the Institute for Protein Design and is a professor of biochemistry. Dr. Baker’s research at the institute is focused on the prediction and design of protein structures.
Dr. Baker said that he was excited about proteins and their ability to solve problems. One protein that he and researchers in his lab designed could protect against the coronavirus. (When asked by a journalist after the ceremony if he had a favorite protein, he answered, “I love all proteins. I don’t want to pick favorites.”)
What did the laureates say about receiving the prize?
When the committee informed the laureates on Wednesday, Dr. Baker was sleeping. “I answered the phone, and I heard the announcement, and my wife began screaming very loudly so I couldn’t really hear very well,” he told reporters.
He said “he turned down 100 calls” while he was on the phone with the Nobel committee.
In a post on the website X, Google DeepMind described the prize as “a monumental achievement for AI, for computational biology, and science itself.”
Dr. Jumper took a video of himself sharing the news with colleagues over a video call. They hugged and cheered in little squares on his computer screen.
“Glad you guys are all caught up now,” he said.
In an interview shortly after the prize was announced, Dr. Hassabis said the news hadn’t “really sunk in.”
“I had a whole day of normal work ahead of me but I guess those plans will have to change now,” he said.
With two of this year’s prize recipients working at a private company and not an academic institution, Dr. Hassabis noted that researchers in fields like A.I. require a lot of resources and computing power.
“Why not tap into the private sector in order to fund those kinds of things?” he said.
Dr. Hassabis said he modeled his research group after the Golden era of Bell Labs, a research and development company that has produced 10 Nobel laureates.
Who received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
The prize went to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for discovering and developing quantum dots, semiconductors made of tightly squeezed particles that are expected to lead to advances in electronics, solar cells and encrypted quantum information.
Who else has received a Nobel Prize in the sciences this year?
On Monday, the prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, which helps determine how cells develop and function.
On Tuesday, the prize in Physics was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for discoveries that helped computers learn more in the way that the human brain does, providing the building blocks for developments in artificial intelligence.
When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?
The Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded on Thursday by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year, Jon Fosse of Norway was honored for plays and prose that gave “voice to the unsayable.”
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Last year, Narges Mohammadi, an activist in Iran was recognized “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” Ms. Mohammadi is serving a 10-year sentence in an Iranian prison where her attorneys have raised concerns about her well-being.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded on Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Last year, Claudia Goldin was awarded for her research uncovering the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings.
All of the prize announcements are streamed live by the Nobel Prize organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/scie ... 778d3e6de3
Re: Nobel Prizes
Live Updates: Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to Japanese Group of Atomic Bomb Survivors
Nihon Hidankyo is a grass-roots movement of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group’s efforts have helped establish a “nuclear taboo,” the Nobel committee said.
Video: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/eur ... =url-share
The Nobel committee said that Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese grass-roots movement of “hibakusha,” or atomic bombing survivors, has demonstrated that “nuclear weapons must never be used again.”CreditCredit...Moe Sasaki/Kyodo News, via Associated Press
Here is what to know about Nihon Hidankyo.
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Nihon Hidankyo has for decades represented hundreds of thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These survivors, known as the hibakusha, are living memorials to the horror of the attacks and have used their testimony to raise awareness of the human consequences of nuclear warfare.
The Nobel — one of the world’s most prestigious honors — recognizes the group at a time when survivors of the attacks, which killed an estimated 200,000 people, are mostly in their 80s and are dying by the hundreds each month. And it comes as the world confronts increasing worries about Russia’s veiled threats that it could use its arsenal as the war in Ukraine continues and about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.
“The hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said during his announcement on Friday.
Mr. Frydnes added that “extraordinary efforts” by survivors of the U.S. nuclear bombings, including those who are part of Nihon Hidankyo, “have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo.” That, he said, had led to a world in which no weapons of that type had been used in war in 80 years.
He added that it was alarming to see that taboo fading in recent years.
Mr. Frydnes said that the Nobel committee, in honoring Nihon Hidankyo, wished “to honor all survivors who despite physical suffering and painful memories have chosen to use their painful experience to cultivate hope.”
The Peace Prize is arguably the most distinguished of the Nobels, and its recipients have often been celebrated global figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, President Barack Obama and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.
The 2023 prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, an imprisoned Iranian human rights activist.
The prize, first awarded in 1901, has also been given to 30 organizations, including twice to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and three times to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The World Food Program, a U.N. agency, received the award in 2020.
This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which administers the prize, registered 286 candidates, including 197 individuals and 89 organizations.
Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/11 ... _id=180179
*****************
They were bombed, and then shunned. Now the nuclear survivors are being honored.
Wreckage after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.Credit...Associated Press
They crawled out from the wreckage of twin atomic bomb blasts, their flesh burned, their bodies irradiated and their family members obliterated by mushroom clouds of devastating intent.
And then they were shunned.
The payloads dropped by American B-29 bombers on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 echoed far beyond the ruined cities and catalyzed vertiginous contradictions: The bombs, code-named Little Boy and Fat Man, were followed by the end of World War II, but also by an arms race that has made nine countries into nuclear powers, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In the wake of the atomic blasts, a once martial Japan blossomed into a culture that has dedicated itself, even in its Constitution, to peace. Japanese children flashed peace signs for photos, and Olympic ceremonies in Japan featured white doves. But many Japanese feel more comfortable averting their gaze from the more than 100,000 remaining Hibakusha, as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are known.
Struggling with both survivor’s guilt and radiation-induced illnesses, the Hibakusha knew they represented something that many in Japan — and the victorious United States — didn’t want to see.
Some Japanese feared that radiation-induced diseases were contagious, and Hibakusha worried about their marriage and career prospects.
“Starting with the inhumane acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were oppressed by the United States and abandoned by the Japanese government for a long time,” Sueichi Kido, the secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo and a survivor of the Nagasaki bomb, told NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, on Friday.
These days, the Hibakusha, whose largest collective is Nihon Hidankyo, are celebrated for their continued campaign against nuclear weapons despite the obstacles. Many have dedicated their lives to recounting their stories of loss and pain in an effort to ensure that the world comprehends the profound devastation a nuclear war could bring.
It is that crusade for which Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
The miseries of the Hibakusha, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”
When Hidankyo formed in 1956, its founding declaration described the hardship of existing as living memorials to nuclear devastation. “We have survived until now in silence, with our heads down,” the statement said.
In the years after the war, the Hibakusha, whose name means “people affected by bombs,” were a tangible reminder that the United States, which occupied Japan after World War II and imposed upon the nation a war-renouncing Constitution, had caused the ruination of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Hibakusha were also a counternarrative to a Japan that was developing into a high-tech economic giant fueled, in some cases, by nuclear power. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which led to a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, once again forced a national moment of reflection. Most of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors remain shuttered.
In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel committee said that even though the Hibakusha are growing old, a new generation of Japanese is “helping to maintain the nuclear taboo — a precondition of a peaceful future for humanity.”
But Japan’s near neighbors are Russia and China. And, as the Nobel committee pointed out, nuclear arsenals are growing and nuclear threats are proliferating worldwide.
From Laos, where he was attending a regional summit, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan said that it was “extremely significant” that Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Ishiba, who was previously defense minister, has called for Japan to adopt a more muscular military stance. He supports revising Japan’s Constitution to add a specific mention of Japan’s military, which is called the Self-Defense Forces. While the United States is treaty-bound to defend Japan if it comes under attack, Mr. Ishiba has said that he wants Japan to be equals with the United States in terms of security.
And while the Japanese public still overwhelmingly supports nuclear disarmament, some young people have expressed support for the nuclear deterrence theory, in which countries arm themselves to deter attack, a Hidankyo member told the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, last year.
Last year, at a summit in Hiroshima, the Group of 7 nations released a statement that did not call outright for nuclear disarmament, instead urging that nuclear weapons “for as long as they exist, should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war and coercion.”
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the chairman of Nihon Hidankyo, said on Friday that his foremost wish was for the world to “please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/11 ... _id=180179
Nihon Hidankyo is a grass-roots movement of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group’s efforts have helped establish a “nuclear taboo,” the Nobel committee said.
Video: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/eur ... =url-share
The Nobel committee said that Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese grass-roots movement of “hibakusha,” or atomic bombing survivors, has demonstrated that “nuclear weapons must never be used again.”CreditCredit...Moe Sasaki/Kyodo News, via Associated Press
Here is what to know about Nihon Hidankyo.
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Nihon Hidankyo has for decades represented hundreds of thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These survivors, known as the hibakusha, are living memorials to the horror of the attacks and have used their testimony to raise awareness of the human consequences of nuclear warfare.
The Nobel — one of the world’s most prestigious honors — recognizes the group at a time when survivors of the attacks, which killed an estimated 200,000 people, are mostly in their 80s and are dying by the hundreds each month. And it comes as the world confronts increasing worries about Russia’s veiled threats that it could use its arsenal as the war in Ukraine continues and about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.
“The hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said during his announcement on Friday.
Mr. Frydnes added that “extraordinary efforts” by survivors of the U.S. nuclear bombings, including those who are part of Nihon Hidankyo, “have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo.” That, he said, had led to a world in which no weapons of that type had been used in war in 80 years.
He added that it was alarming to see that taboo fading in recent years.
Mr. Frydnes said that the Nobel committee, in honoring Nihon Hidankyo, wished “to honor all survivors who despite physical suffering and painful memories have chosen to use their painful experience to cultivate hope.”
The Peace Prize is arguably the most distinguished of the Nobels, and its recipients have often been celebrated global figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, President Barack Obama and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.
The 2023 prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, an imprisoned Iranian human rights activist.
The prize, first awarded in 1901, has also been given to 30 organizations, including twice to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and three times to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The World Food Program, a U.N. agency, received the award in 2020.
This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which administers the prize, registered 286 candidates, including 197 individuals and 89 organizations.
Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/11 ... _id=180179
*****************
They were bombed, and then shunned. Now the nuclear survivors are being honored.
Wreckage after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.Credit...Associated Press
They crawled out from the wreckage of twin atomic bomb blasts, their flesh burned, their bodies irradiated and their family members obliterated by mushroom clouds of devastating intent.
And then they were shunned.
The payloads dropped by American B-29 bombers on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 echoed far beyond the ruined cities and catalyzed vertiginous contradictions: The bombs, code-named Little Boy and Fat Man, were followed by the end of World War II, but also by an arms race that has made nine countries into nuclear powers, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In the wake of the atomic blasts, a once martial Japan blossomed into a culture that has dedicated itself, even in its Constitution, to peace. Japanese children flashed peace signs for photos, and Olympic ceremonies in Japan featured white doves. But many Japanese feel more comfortable averting their gaze from the more than 100,000 remaining Hibakusha, as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are known.
Struggling with both survivor’s guilt and radiation-induced illnesses, the Hibakusha knew they represented something that many in Japan — and the victorious United States — didn’t want to see.
Some Japanese feared that radiation-induced diseases were contagious, and Hibakusha worried about their marriage and career prospects.
“Starting with the inhumane acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were oppressed by the United States and abandoned by the Japanese government for a long time,” Sueichi Kido, the secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo and a survivor of the Nagasaki bomb, told NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, on Friday.
These days, the Hibakusha, whose largest collective is Nihon Hidankyo, are celebrated for their continued campaign against nuclear weapons despite the obstacles. Many have dedicated their lives to recounting their stories of loss and pain in an effort to ensure that the world comprehends the profound devastation a nuclear war could bring.
It is that crusade for which Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
The miseries of the Hibakusha, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”
When Hidankyo formed in 1956, its founding declaration described the hardship of existing as living memorials to nuclear devastation. “We have survived until now in silence, with our heads down,” the statement said.
In the years after the war, the Hibakusha, whose name means “people affected by bombs,” were a tangible reminder that the United States, which occupied Japan after World War II and imposed upon the nation a war-renouncing Constitution, had caused the ruination of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Hibakusha were also a counternarrative to a Japan that was developing into a high-tech economic giant fueled, in some cases, by nuclear power. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which led to a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, once again forced a national moment of reflection. Most of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors remain shuttered.
In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel committee said that even though the Hibakusha are growing old, a new generation of Japanese is “helping to maintain the nuclear taboo — a precondition of a peaceful future for humanity.”
But Japan’s near neighbors are Russia and China. And, as the Nobel committee pointed out, nuclear arsenals are growing and nuclear threats are proliferating worldwide.
From Laos, where he was attending a regional summit, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan said that it was “extremely significant” that Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Ishiba, who was previously defense minister, has called for Japan to adopt a more muscular military stance. He supports revising Japan’s Constitution to add a specific mention of Japan’s military, which is called the Self-Defense Forces. While the United States is treaty-bound to defend Japan if it comes under attack, Mr. Ishiba has said that he wants Japan to be equals with the United States in terms of security.
And while the Japanese public still overwhelmingly supports nuclear disarmament, some young people have expressed support for the nuclear deterrence theory, in which countries arm themselves to deter attack, a Hidankyo member told the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, last year.
Last year, at a summit in Hiroshima, the Group of 7 nations released a statement that did not call outright for nuclear disarmament, instead urging that nuclear weapons “for as long as they exist, should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war and coercion.”
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the chairman of Nihon Hidankyo, said on Friday that his foremost wish was for the world to “please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/11 ... _id=180179
Re: Nobel Prizes
Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
The South Korean author, best known for “The Vegetarian,” is the first writer from her country to receive the prestigious award.
The news that Han Kang was a Nobel laureate was widely celebrated in South Korea, and welcomed by authors and fans on social media. Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday — the first writer from her country to receive the award.
Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
“The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. It centers on a depressed housewife who shocks her family when she stops eating meat; later, she stops eating altogether and yearns to turn into a tree that can live off sunlight alone. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.”
Han’s Nobel was a surprise. Before the announcement, the bookmakers’ favorite for this year’s award was Can Xue, an avant-garde Chinese writer of category-defying novels. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media and greeted with fanfare in South Korea.
“This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han.
Some in the country were astonished to learn a Korean writer had won. “I could not believe my eyes when I saw this news,” said Park Sang-in, an office worker in Seoul. “No one had told us that we had a strong candidate this year.”
At the same time, many saw it as an appropriate choice. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.
“Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.”
Image
A stack of books shows many by Han Kang. A hand reaches out into the frame to adjust one of the books.
Paige Aniyah Morris, one of Han’s translators into English, said her work “has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring.”Credit...Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.”
When Han was 9, her family moved to Seoul just months before the Gwangju uprising, when government troops fired on crowds of pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds. The event shaped her views on humanity’s capacity for violence, Han said in the 2016 interview, and its specter has haunted her writing. In her 2014 novel “Human Acts,” a writer observes a police raid on a group of activists.
She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising.
“It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”
The novelist Hernan Diaz praised Han’s “unique ear for the rumors of history,” adding that she can “access the traumas that have shaped and bruised entire generations, and she does so without ever turning her novels into mere didactical tools.”
Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. In the 2016 interview, Han said it was around that time that she developed the idea for a short story about a woman who becomes a plant, which she eventually developed into “The Vegetarian.”
Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023.
In “Greek Lessons,” a woman loses her ability to speak and tries to restore it by learning ancient Greek. Idra Novey, in a review for The Times, called the novel “a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language.”
“Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.”
Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time, she said, and some of her books were initially greeted with bafflement. “The Vegetarian” was received as “very extreme and bizarre,” Han said.
She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages.
When the English-language edition was released to acclaim in 2016, “The Vegetarian” helped to drive a new wave of translations of more experimental fiction, including works by women with a feminist bent.
“Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”
Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.”
The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer, poet or playwright’s career. Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.
Although relatively young for Nobel laureate, Han is far older than Rudyard Kipling was when he accepted the 1907 award, at age 41.
In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America.
Since 2020, the academy has awarded the prize to one person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Glück, the American poet, and Annie Ernaux, the French writer of autobiographical works.
Last year’s recipient was Jon Fosse, a Norwegian author and playwright whose novels, told in lengthy sentences, often contain religious undertones.
Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901.
Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea. Yet in media and literary circles, older male writers have often been seen as the most likely contenders for the Nobel.
“For years now, the conversation about how to get Korea its literature prize has not once seemed to seriously consider that the answer might be Han Kang, despite her massive success,” said Morris, who in addition to translating Han has translated work by Korean women like Pak Kyongni and Ji-min Lee. “So it’s a pleasant surprise and a bit of poetic justice to see a woman become the one to end Korea’s literature Nobel drought.”
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/arts ... 778d3e6de3
The South Korean author, best known for “The Vegetarian,” is the first writer from her country to receive the prestigious award.
The news that Han Kang was a Nobel laureate was widely celebrated in South Korea, and welcomed by authors and fans on social media. Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday — the first writer from her country to receive the award.
Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
“The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. It centers on a depressed housewife who shocks her family when she stops eating meat; later, she stops eating altogether and yearns to turn into a tree that can live off sunlight alone. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.”
Han’s Nobel was a surprise. Before the announcement, the bookmakers’ favorite for this year’s award was Can Xue, an avant-garde Chinese writer of category-defying novels. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media and greeted with fanfare in South Korea.
“This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han.
Some in the country were astonished to learn a Korean writer had won. “I could not believe my eyes when I saw this news,” said Park Sang-in, an office worker in Seoul. “No one had told us that we had a strong candidate this year.”
At the same time, many saw it as an appropriate choice. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.
“Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.”
Image
A stack of books shows many by Han Kang. A hand reaches out into the frame to adjust one of the books.
Paige Aniyah Morris, one of Han’s translators into English, said her work “has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring.”Credit...Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.”
When Han was 9, her family moved to Seoul just months before the Gwangju uprising, when government troops fired on crowds of pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds. The event shaped her views on humanity’s capacity for violence, Han said in the 2016 interview, and its specter has haunted her writing. In her 2014 novel “Human Acts,” a writer observes a police raid on a group of activists.
She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising.
“It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”
The novelist Hernan Diaz praised Han’s “unique ear for the rumors of history,” adding that she can “access the traumas that have shaped and bruised entire generations, and she does so without ever turning her novels into mere didactical tools.”
Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. In the 2016 interview, Han said it was around that time that she developed the idea for a short story about a woman who becomes a plant, which she eventually developed into “The Vegetarian.”
Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023.
In “Greek Lessons,” a woman loses her ability to speak and tries to restore it by learning ancient Greek. Idra Novey, in a review for The Times, called the novel “a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language.”
“Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.”
Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time, she said, and some of her books were initially greeted with bafflement. “The Vegetarian” was received as “very extreme and bizarre,” Han said.
She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages.
When the English-language edition was released to acclaim in 2016, “The Vegetarian” helped to drive a new wave of translations of more experimental fiction, including works by women with a feminist bent.
“Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”
Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.”
The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer, poet or playwright’s career. Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.
Although relatively young for Nobel laureate, Han is far older than Rudyard Kipling was when he accepted the 1907 award, at age 41.
In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America.
Since 2020, the academy has awarded the prize to one person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Glück, the American poet, and Annie Ernaux, the French writer of autobiographical works.
Last year’s recipient was Jon Fosse, a Norwegian author and playwright whose novels, told in lengthy sentences, often contain religious undertones.
Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901.
Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea. Yet in media and literary circles, older male writers have often been seen as the most likely contenders for the Nobel.
“For years now, the conversation about how to get Korea its literature prize has not once seemed to seriously consider that the answer might be Han Kang, despite her massive success,” said Morris, who in addition to translating Han has translated work by Korean women like Pak Kyongni and Ji-min Lee. “So it’s a pleasant surprise and a bit of poetic justice to see a woman become the one to end Korea’s literature Nobel drought.”
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/arts ... 778d3e6de3