The Nobel Prize in Psychology or Medicine this Monday is known | Science and Technology

The Nobel Prizes On Monday, they will open with the usual round of winners a new edition featuring the coronavirus epidemic, which will again be reduced to a minimum, like last year, the awards ceremony, the central point of the program to be held in three months.

Between October 4 and 11, the winners will be known in the six categories into which the most prestigious awards are divided: medicine or physiology, chemistry, physics, literature, peace and economics.

Although the process for selecting and announcing the winners will follow the usual pattern, the same will not happen with their delivery: the Nobel Foundation announced two weeks ago that the December 10 ceremony will be in a reduced format and that the prizes will be delivered in the countries of origin or residence of the laureates.

It remains to be seen whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee will do the same with the Peace Prize, which is awarded and awarded in Oslo at the express desire of the creator of the Centennial Prizes, the Swedish Pole Alfred Nobel, since Norway was part of the Kingdom of Sweden.

Nobel (1833-1896) became a millionaire with his inventions, but the consequences of the most famous dynamite convinced him to bequeath his fortune to create prizes recognizing his achievements in the fields of knowledge, letters, and the struggle for freedom.Peace.

And so he arranged in his will that his money be invested in real estate and insurance papers, and that the benefits be divided into five equal parts to reward personalities in many areas, regardless of their nationality.

Six decades later, the Bank of Sweden created the sixth Nobel Prize, the Economics Prize, which has been awarded since 1969.

All Nobel Laureates follow a similar electoral process: Scientists, academics or university professors nominate their nominees and the various Nobel committees create several screens to select the winner or winners, up to three screens for each award.

And they have the same financial endowment, this year at 10 million Swedish kronor (980,000 euros, $1.1 million).

There are no clear favorites in the Literature and Peace Prize

The two Nobel Prize winners who generate the most expectations each year, Literature and Peace, are presented this time with no clear preferences in the previous groups.

Thus, for literature, the classics of speculation have appeared in recent years, such as the Japanese Haruki Murakami, the Kenyan Ngogi wa Thiongo and Guadalupan Maris Konde.

Among those who succeeded American poet Louis Gluck in the award list are also Canadian Anne Carson, compatriot novelist Margaret Atwood, and Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

The Nobel Peace Prize groups, awarded last year to the United Nations World Food Programme, are dominated by candidates associated with advocacy for journalists, environmental and health issues.

Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg are some of the names that will win this prestigious award.

Only 6% of the winners are women

Since the failure of the first version of the prizes in 1901, the Nobels—who have been abandoned on 49 occasions—have distinguished 930 people and 25 organizations, sometimes, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, American biochemist Linus Pauling or the scientist Marie Curie.

Curie won physics in 1903, shared it with her husband, Pierre and Henri Becquerel, and chemistry alone in 1911, a rarity on the list of Nobel laureates, with women playing a marginal role.

Only 6% of all winners are women (57 in total), and about half (28) have been featured in the past two decades.

In the last edition there were four winners: the American Andrea Ghez (physics), her compatriot Jennifer A. Doudna and the French Emmanuel Charpentier (chemistry), and the American Louise Gluck (literature).