The peculiar history of the Nobel Prize
What did his will stipulate?
To his family’s horror, Nobel left 31 million Swedish kronor, more than 90% of his vast fortune, to set up the prizes. His handwritten will defined a precise system. The prize for medicine would be decided by a committee appointed by the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences would do the same for chemistry and physics, and the Swedish Academy for literature. The peace prize would be decided by a committee appointed by Norway’s parliament (Norway even then had a reputation for peacekeeping). The prizes were to be given to the most deserving candidate, “whether or not they are Scandinavian”. His executors set up the Nobel Foundation to manage his fortune and the prizes. They were first awarded in 1901, to great excitement around the world: the prizes’ global nature, the prize money and the lavish festivities soon made them the world’s most prestigious awards.
How well regarded are the prizes?
Generally, the Nobel’s record in chemistry, physics and medicine is impressive. Nobel Prizes are, for better or for worse, the epitome of scientific glory. Winners are transformed into public figures. For a few weeks every year, the newspapers are forced to grapple with G-protein receptors or black hole formation. But the committees have failed on many occasions. Dmitri Mendeleev, the deviser of the periodic table, never won a prize. Nor did the discoverers of nuclear fission. The Nobel was late to acknowledge Einstein, in 1921. More recently, it has been argued that limiting prizes to three individuals fails to recognise the way that science is actually done today, in large international research groups.
In 2018, no literature prize was awarded, due to a meltdown in the Swedish Academy. Until then, the institution known as “The Eighteen” (for the number
of chairs), represented the pinnacle of cultural achievement. At the end of 2017, however, JeanClaude Arnault, the husband of poet and Academy member Katarina Frostenson, was accused of sexual abuse and rape by 18 women. Arnault, a French author who boasted that he was the Academy’s 19th member, ran a cultural club partly funded by it, and was accused
of abusing its prestige and its Paris apartment to commit crimes; he also leaked the names of winners.
A bitter internal dispute over how to handle the accusations against Arnault led to the departure of seven of the Academy’s 18 members, including Frostenson. It was rendered incapable of making decisions. Eventually, the king had to step in to change the statutes so that new members could be appointed and prize-giving could resume. But the bad blood lingers: Arnault was sentenced to two-and-a-half
years in prison for rape, while Frostenson has published two divisive books denying his guilt and
calling his accusers bitter “revenge-spirits”.
What about the other prizes?
The economics, and particularly the literature and peace prizes, have long been very controversial. The peace prize failed to recognise Gandhi, but rewarded Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Ðuc Tho while their nations were still at war. Last year’s winner, Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed, is currently waging a civil war. In literature, the likes of Joyce, Tolstoy, Ibsen and Zola have all been overlooked. An overarching criticism of Nobel is that the committees have picked too many Europeans and Americans. More than a third of all laureates are Americans; as many literature prizes have been given to Swedes as to Asians. For all its wonders, the Nobel has rewarded a particular version of genius: solitary, male and Western, and after a century of glory, it may struggle in the future.