Who was Alfred Nobel, and how did he develop the idea for the Nobel Prizes? Who are the Nobel Prize winners of 2024?
Alfred Nobel was an entrepreneur and an inventor. He signed his last will in Paris on Nov. 27, 1895. He specified that the bulk of his fortune should be divided into five parts and used for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. In Stockholm, Sweden, the Nobel Prize is administered by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel strongly believed in the potential for human progress and the importance of fostering innovation and collaboration. Furthermore, Nobel wanted to be remembered for contributions to humanity rather than personal wealth or family legacy. By creating the prizes, he aimed to reward those who made significant advancements in various fields, including peace, literature and science.
In 2024, Nobel Prizes were presented by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. The Nobel Peace Prize is a completely Norwegian affair, with the winners selected and announced by a Norwegian committee. The Peace Prize even has its ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10—the anniversary of Nobel's death—while the other prizes are presented in Stockholm.
The award in the field of peace was won by Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization. Nihon Hidankyo attended thousands of witness accounts, resolutions and public appeals and sent annual delegations to the UN and distinct conferences to recall the world's pressing need for nuclear arms control.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Physics Prize for 2024 to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton. To start with Hopfield claims that using artificial neural networks inspired by the structure of the brain. Hopfield invented a network that uses a method for saving and recreating patterns. He found inspiration in physics models of how many small parts in a system affect the system as a whole. Geoffrey Hinton has similar ideas as Hopfield. In 1983-1985, Hinton used tools from statistical physics to create the Boltzmann machine which recognizes characteristic elements in a set of data. Their work has led to the current explosion of AI applications in different areas such as medical diagnostics, self-driving, image recognition and facial recognition technologies.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. They broke the code for proteins’ structures. Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Hassabis and Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024 was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. Victor Ambros and Ruvkun discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Normally, rRNA, mRNA and tRNA are known to be responsible for protein synthesis.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Literature Prize for 2024 to Han Kang from South Korea. Through novels and short stories, Kang faces historical traumas and reveals the fragility of humanity. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose. Among her works are “The Vegetarian,” “Human Acts” and “We Do Not Part.” “We Do Not Part’’ illustrates a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson. Their work challenges traditional views of economic development, suggesting that the structure of political and economic institutions, rather than geography or culture, is the primary factor in explaining differences in wealth and economic success across countries.
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