The Nobel Prize announcements completed Monday, awarding prizes from medicine through economics and setting Dec. 10 ceremonies to mark Alfred Nobel’s death.
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The Nobel Prize announcements concluded Monday, with Dec. 10 set for the award ceremonies to mark the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, the founder of the prizes.
This year’s Nobel prizes carry a total of 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), awarded for an individual, a small group of laureates, or an organization.
In medicine, the prize awarded on Oct. 5 went to Dr. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for work that led to optogenetics—research combining light and genes to switch neurons on and off in living brains.
In physics, announced on Oct. 6, Belgian-born scientist Francis Halzen received the Nobel Prize for efforts to clarify a rare group of neutrinos. The prize citation highlighted neutrinos’ extremely small mass and lack of electric charge, and credited Halzen with an idea to use vast Antarctic ice as a detector to study neutrino collisions.
In chemistry, awarded on Oct. 7, Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai won for untangling mirror-image structures in molecules. The research described how chemistry can be directed to produce a desired mirror image, supporting reactions that favour one form over the other.
In literature, announced on Oct. 8, the Nobel Prize went to Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson. The prize citation described her as writing “bold and inventive” works that fuse the classical and the modern while blurring boundaries between poetry and prose.
The Nobel Peace Prize, announced on Oct. 9, was awarded to Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief. The committee said the award recognized efforts that promoted international law as it comes under attack.
Pillay also said that U.S. attacks on the International Criminal Court were “completely unlawful” and “negative and cruel,” after sweeping new sanctions were imposed by the Trump administration hours after the Peace Prize announcement in Norway.
Finally, Monday brought the economics prize to American economists Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford for models that help governments and central banks manage economic fluctuations, including energy crises and inflation. The work is described as providing a theoretical foundation for understanding how consumers decide whether to save or spend, helping policymakers stabilize economies after major changes.
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