Nobel prize season kicks off with Medicine award

The 2004 Nobel Prize season opens on Monday with the announcement of the prize for Medicine, kicking off a series of coveted awards.

The 2004 Nobel Prize season opens on Monday with the announcement of the prize for Medicine, kicking off a series of coveted awards culminating in the prestigious honours for Literature and for Peace.

HT Image

Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo are abuzz with speculation, and a feeling emerged that the Literature prize could go to a woman this year, while efforts to limit nuclear build-up and proliferation may be rewarded by the Peace award.

The Peace prize, the only honours to be bestowed in Oslo and not in Stockholm, went to Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi in 2003.

There is no clear favourite ahead of this year's Peace announcement, scheduled for Friday, but if those tipping the nuclear sector are correct, then it may be the turn of the International Atomic Energy Commission and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei.

After playing a vital role in the inspections of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal and the search for his suspected nuclear program, the IAEA is currently struggling to get Iran to halt controversial uranium enrichment-related activities and to get to the bottom of North Korea's secretive nuclear program.

According to Stein Toennesson, head of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), ElBaradei and his UN atomic agency would be the perfect candidates, although he admitted that the uncertain outcome of the ongoing Iran nuclear conflict might hurt their chances.

With a record 194 candidates to choose from this year, the Nobel Committee can pick up to three laureates to share the coveted award.

Women writers, long overlooked by the Swedish Academy, could be well-placed to take home the Literature honours this year, observers said, citing Algeria's Assia Djebar, Joyce Carol Oates of the United States and Dane Inger Christensen as potential winners.

The prize will be awarded either this Thursday or the Thursday after.

Among the usual suspects whose names have surfaced year after year are US novelist Philip Roth, Albania's Ismael Kadare, Czech author Milan Kundera, Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis and Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer.

All of them worthy men, no doubt, but perhaps not what the Nobel committee is looking for this year.

"In Stockholm there has been a lot of talk, and it has intensified this year, that there are so few women who have won the prize," Svante Weyler, chief editor at Norstedts, one of Sweden's biggest publishing houses, told AFP.

The Academy has honoured only nine women since the prize was first handed out more than a century ago. Most recently, it went to Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.

Last year, the honours went to J.M. Coetzee of South Africa, and the year before to Hungary's Imre Kertesz.

The scientific and economics prizes have less popular appeal than the two big ones, as the deep level of specialization found at the cutting edge of physics, medicine, chemistry and economics often seems beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals.

This makes the pre-prize guessing game less fun, but one thing seems likely: The bulk of the science prizes will go to scientists based in the United States, where funding for research is unrivalled in the world.

After Medicine on Monday, the Physics prize will be announced on Tuesday and Chemistry on Wednesday. The Economics prize, awarded by Sweden's central bank, the Riksbank, is scheduled for October 11.

Nobel prizes, founded by Sweden's Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, were first awarded in 1901.

Laureates receive a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (1.1 million euros, 1.3 million dollars), which can be split between up to three winners.

The formal awarding of the prizes will take place at Stockholm's City Hall in December.