Hitler was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize: 10 facts about the coveted awards

Last year, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) forced the Nobel Prize ceremony to go virtual.

The Nobel Foundation is set to announce the coveted prizes for six different fields starting Monday. All Nobel prizes, except the peace prize, are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden. A committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament awards the Nobel Peace Prize. Last year, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) forced the Nobel Prize ceremony to go virtual. While the pandemic isn’t over yet, the large-scale vaccination drives around the world, especially in rich nations, have helped the ceremony return to Sweden. However, it will a “mixture of digital and physical events”.

The Nobel Prize ceremonies will be reined in for a second year due to the coronavirus pandemic.(AP)

Since 1901, the Nobel prizes are awarded to individuals and organisations for work that has led to great advances for humankind after Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament. He gave the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.

Here are some facts about Nobel Prize you need to know:

• In 1968, Sweden’s central bank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The first prize in Economic Sciences was awarded in 1969.
• While the rewards for serving humanity, as per Nobel’s will, were to go for the work done “during the preceding year”, this was rarely followed given the true impact of discoveries often took years to become known.
• Born in 1922, John B. Goodenough became the oldest person to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Goodenough, who is now 99 and the older living Nobel laureate, received Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2019. Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan is the youngest laureate who received the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.
• Only two people had won the Nobel prize posthumously before the statutes of the Nobel Foundation were changed in 1974 to exclude posthumous awards. But individuals, however, may be awarded the honour if they die between the time of announcement and the ceremony.
• In 2011, Ralph Steinman of Canada was awarded Nobel Prize in chemistry posthumously as the committee was unaware that he had passed away three days before the announcement. The foundation decided to award him the prize.
• Adolf Hitler, the German dictator behind the Holocaust that killed about six million Jews, was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a Swedish MP when the world was on the brink of the bloodiest conflict in modern history.
• The Nobel prizes have not been awarded 49 times, most of them during World War I and World War II.
• To date, the Nobel prizes have been awarded 57 times to women.
• While two Nobel laureates have declined the prize, four were forced to decline.
• German pacifist and journalist Carl von Ossietzky, Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi, and Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, all of them peace prize laureates, were under arrest when they were awarded the Nobel prize.