Published 13:06 IST, October 14th 2019
Nobel awards season comes to an end with economics prize
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce last Nobel winner on Monday when it awards prestigious economics prize, officially called Bank of Sweden Prize.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the last Nobel winner later Monday when it awards its prestigious economics prize. The prize — officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — wasn’t created by the prize founder, but it is considered to be part of the Nobel stable of awards. The prize was created by Riksbanken, the Swedish central bank, in 1968, and the first winner was selected a year later. So far, 81 Nobel laureates in economic sciences have been awarded.
Nobel prizes in various fields
With the glory comes a 9 million-kronor ($918,000) cash award, a gold medal, and a diploma. Last week, six Nobel prizes were given — medicine, physics, and chemistry plus two literature awards, and the coveted Peace Prize. The literature prizes — one for 2018 and one 2019 —were given to Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk and Austria’s Peter Handke, after no prize was awarded last year due to sex-abuse allegations that rocked the Swedish Academy. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Peace Prize in recognition of his efforts to end his country’s two-decade border conflict with Eritrea. All but the winner of the Peace Prize receive their awards on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896 — in Stockholm. The winner of the Peace Prize receives the award in Oslo, Norway.
Nobel prize for literature
Nobel Prizes for literature were awarded Thursday to two writers enmeshed in Europe’s social and political fault lines: a liberal Pole who has irked her country’s conservative government and an Austrian accused by many liberals of being an apologist for Serbian war crimes. The rare double announcement — with the 2018 prize going to Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 award to Austria’s Peter Handke — came after no literature prize was awarded last year due to sex abuse allegations that rocked the Swedish Academy, which awards the literature prize. Yet if prize organizers hoped to get through this year’s awards without controversy, they will likely be disappointed. The Swedish Academy called Handke “one of the most influential writers in Europe” and praised his work for exploring “the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
Updated 13:17 IST, October 14th 2019