1. Alfred Nobel was an industrialist, engineer, and inventor, who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. His construction work inspired him to research new methods of blasting rock. What did he invent for this purpose?
2. In 1888 Alfred’s brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes and a French newspaper erroneously published Alfred’s obituary. How did this lead to the creation of the Nobel Prize?
3. What were the five fields in which Nobel Prizes were initially awarded?
4. Which prize is unique because it is awarded by a five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament rather than the Swedish institution?
5. Which is the most recently created Nobel Prize? Name the organisation that selects the winner.
6. Name the father and son duo who jointly won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays’.
7. A number of families have won Nobel Prizes. Which is the most successful family to have won a total of five nobel prizes?
8. Who won the following Nobel Prizes: (a) For Physics in 1956, for the invention of the transistor and for Physics again in 1972 for the theory of superconductivity? (b) Chemistry 1958, for structure of the insulin molecule; and for Chemistry in 1980, for virus nucleotide sequencing?
9. This person won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954, for his research in the nature of chemical bonds and its application in finding the structure of complex substances; and for Peace in 1962 for his activism supporting the nuclear test-ban treaty. Name this scientist who is the only person to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes.
10. The Nazis had attempted to lock down Germany’s gold supply by making export of the metal a State crime. During the 1930s, two German physicists, the Jewish James Franck and the outspoken Hitler critic Max von Laue, smuggled their Nobel medals to Bohr’s lab for safekeeping. The lab made a perfect hiding spot until the Nazis rolled into Copenhagen in April 1940. Bohr was suddenly in a very tight spot. His reputation as a Jewish sympathiser guaranteed his interrogation, and the names engraved on the medals would mean death for the physicists who had trusted him. How did his friend George Charles de Hevesy, a Hungarian radiochemist and a 1943 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, come to his aid?
11. What does this list describe: particle physics, biochemistry, genetics, macroeconomics, prose?
12. Four Nobel laureates have been forced by their state authorities to decline the Nobel Prize. Hitler forbade three German Nobel Laureates, Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk, from accepting the Nobel Prize. All of them later received the Prize but not the money. Name the Russian who was the 1958 Nobel laureate in Literature and the author of Dr Zhivago and was coerced by the Soviet authorities to decline the Nobel Prize?
13. Only two awardees voluntarily declined the Nobel Prize. (a) He declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature because he had consistently declined all official honours. (b) Awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord, he declined the award citing the situation in Vietnam as his reason.
14. On which day are the Nobel Prizes given out and why?
15. For the first time in its history, the official Nobel Peace Prize banquet was cancelled in Oslo in 1979. Why?
16. 14 Nobel Laureates were Heads of State or Government at the Time of the Award. All but one received the Nobel Peace Prize. Which Prime Minister won the 1953 Nobel Prize in an entirely different category?
17. Which is the only international organisation that has won three Peace Prizes?
18. The Greek god Apollo is shown wearing a wreath made of the branches and leaves of which tree on his head? What does it have to do with the Nobel Prize?
19. One of the greatest pacifists the world has ever seen never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. Decades later in 2006, Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “The greatest omission in our 106-year history is undoubtedly that ________ never received the Nobel Peace Prize. ______ could do without the Nobel Peace Prize, but whether the Nobel committee can do without ______ is the question”. Who was this person whose name fills all the blanks?
20. Can you name these Nobel Prize winners who are/were either Indian citizens, or of Indian origin?
1913, Literature
1930, Physics
1968, Medicine
1979, Peace
1983, Physics
1998, Economics
2009, Chemistry
2014, Peace
Answers
1. Dynamite, which was the first safely manageable explosive stronger than black powder
2. The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (The merchant of death is dead). It went on to say, “Dr Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Alfred was concerned about being remembered only as the inventor of dynamite. This urged him to make the decision of leaving a better legacy after his death in the form of the prizes
3. Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Physiology, Literature and Peace
4. Peace
5. Economics; Sveriges Riksbank (or Central Bank of Sweden)
6. Sir William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg
7. The Curies: Marie Curie (Physics,1903; Chemistry,1911), her husband Pierre Curie (Physics,1903), their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie (Chemistry,1935), and their son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie (Chemistry in 1935)
8. (a) John Bardeen, and (b) Frederick Sanger — These are the only persons who have won the Nobel Prize twice in the same field.
9. Linus Pauling
10. He dissolved the gold medals in aqua regia, a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. When the German soldiers came to the lab all that remained of the medals was a reddish liquid. The Nazis did not recognise the inconspicuous bottle of reddish liquid. After the war, de Hevesy precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold
11. These are the most common fields for Nobel Prizes given for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, and Literature
12. Boris Pasternak
13. (a) Jean-Paul Sartre, (b) Le Duc Tho
14. December 10, which is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death
15. Because the laureate, Mother Teresa, refused to attend, saying the money would be better spent on the poor. Mother Teresa used the US$7,000 that was to be spent on the banquet to hold a dinner for 2,000 homeless people on Christmas Day.
16. Sir Winston Churchill for Literature
17. International Committee of the Red Cross in 1917, 1944, and 1963.
18. Apollo is shown wearing a wreath made out of the bay laurel tree (Laurus nobilis). In Ancient Greece, laurel wreaths were awarded to victors as a sign of honour -- both in athletic competitions and in poetic meets. This is why the Nobel awardees are called ‘laureates’.
19. Mahatma Gandhi
20. (a) Rabindranath Tagore (b) C V Raman (c) Har Gobind Khorana (d) Mother Teresa (e) Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar (f) Amartya Sen (g) Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (h) Kailash Satyarthi