Nobel Prize
From Conservapedia
The Nobel Prize is a well-known award for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature, and peace. The Nobel Prizes, named in honor of Alfred Nobel, were first given out in 1901. The award for economics, the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", was added as a prize in 1969.[1]
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Nomination and Selection
To nominate somebody for a Nobel Prize, the nominating party must meet the requirements outlined for the specific category or has to be invited.[2]
The Nobel Prizes are represented externally by the Nobel Foundation, a private institution entrusted with protecting the common interests of the Prize Awarding Institutions. However, the Nobel Foundation is not involved with the selection process itself. The Prize-Awarding Institutes are independent of government agencies and the Nobel Foundation itself.[1] The multiple Prize-Awarding Institutes are all located in Scandinavia, the homeland of Alfred Nobel (a larger country at the time of prizes' founding, but which has since split).
Omissions
Over the years, there have been cases in which some people felt that a person should have received a Nobel Prize for his or her work.
Mahatma Gandhi
Possibly the most well-known case had been Mahatma Gandhi, who had been nominated 12 times for the Nobel Peace Prize without success.[2] The Nobel Foundation has an information page detailing his nominations and the potential reasons for his lack of success.[3] Among other things, these statements can be found on the page:
The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee; when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".
Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. In retrospect, the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee may seem too narrow. Gandhi was very different from earlier Laureates. He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of Laureates.
Raymond Damadian
A case in which a scientist openly voiced that he should have received a Nobel Prize was Raymond Damadian. In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging".[4] Damadian, who had outlined the use of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to detect tumors in 1971, protested against his omission from the Prize and said that his "life's work has been stricken". He then took out full-page ads in several newspapers, describing his omission as a "shameful wrong". The first wave of ads appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Dagens Nyheter (daily newspaper in Stockholm), and The New York Times.[5] This action of Damadian's led one critic to observe that "There is no Nobel Prize for whining."
A possible explanation of Damadian's exclusion could be that, even though it was one of the pioneers of using magnetic resonance in medicine, his work did not lead to the magnetic resonance imaging the Nobel Prize was awarded for.[6]
However, there are others who argue that he did not receive a Nobel Prize because of his views. Damadian is a Young Earth Creationist, leading some to conclude that this influenced the selection process.[7]
Controversial Awards
Equally there have been several instances where prizes were awarded to those whom many felt did not deserve the honor. Controversy in this regard has been especially acute in the award of the Peace Prize. When Henry Kissinger was awarded the prize in 1973 the American satirist, Tom Lehrer, observed that this had rendered political satire 'obsolete'. Many were outraged by the award to Yasir Arafat in 1994 and others were equally appalled by the prize being awarded to Menachem Begin in 1978 especially in the light of his involvement with the terrorist group Irgun Zvai Leumi. The oddity culminated in 2007 when Al Gore was given the peace prize for writing about Global Warming, a slap in the face to all other peace activists that year who truly tried to end conflicts to save lives.
One factor that may fan the flames of controversy is the speed of recognition with regard to The Peace Prize in relation to the prizes for science and literature which are often awarded decades after the work that is being recognized. In contrast The Peace Prize has often been awarded only a year or so after the political events that have merited the award, and often well before the long term consequences of those events have become clear (and Arafat's award is particularly controversial in this respect).
Whatever the controversies The Peace Prize has, on many occasions, provided much needed recognition for a struggle against oppression that might have otherwise been ignored. Particularly clear examples of this have been the award in 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi for her heroic struggle against the brutal military dictatorship in Myanmar (Burma) and the award in 1996 to Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Belo of East Timor in recognition of their struggle against the oppressive and, at times, genocidal occupation of that country by the Indonesian government.
Anti-American bias in Literature award
In 2008, Horace Engdahl, the head of the Swedish Academy, was reported to have said that American novelists would never win the Nobel Prize for Literature, as the American novel was "too isolated and insular."
External links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Nobel Foundation: History
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 The Nobel Foundation: Nomination Facts
- ↑ The Nobel Foundation: Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate
- ↑ The Nobel Foundation: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2003
- ↑ The Chronicle: Prize Fight
- ↑ The Why Files: Nobel Prizefight
- ↑ Creation on the Web: Super-scientist slams society’s spiritual sickness!
