Who Invented the Nobel Prize?

The Nobel Prize is an international prize awarded to individuals who have exemplary contributions to medicine or physiology, peace, literature, chemistry as well as physics. The award is presented by different educational institutions including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Karolinska Institutet. The prizes, except for the Nobel Peace Prize, are given at the yearly Prize Award Ceremony at Stockholm in Sweden every December 10. On the other hand, the Nobel Peace Prize is given at Oslo in Norway. To know more about the awards, let us start with knowing the history of the prestigious international prize.

History

Who invented the Nobel Prize? Outstanding Swedish chemist and high explosive dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prize. The awards were cited in his 1895 final will. In the will, Nobel detailed that 31 million Swedish Konor and 94 per cent of his assets would be allotted for the development of a fund. He intended to use the fund to recognize the outstanding contributions of five individuals annually to international peace and different fields including chemistry, physics and medicine. The final will was not finished so it took several years before the Nobel Prize was founded. The award was established in 1900 and the first set of awardees were recognized on December 10, 1901.

Additional Information and Other Important Details

For the nomination as well as selection of awardees, the award giving body assigned members of different committees to do the tasks. For instance, awardees for the prizes in economics, chemistry and physics are selected by the chosen members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Literary awardees are chosen by the elected committee members of the Swedish Academy. The recipients of the Prize in Medicine or Physiology are selected by some of the members of The Nobel Assembly. Finally, the recipients of the Peace Prize are chosen by the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Aside from the monetary prizes received by the awardees, they also get the Nobel Prize medals. The medal features the registered trademarks of the award giving body, which are the Mint of Norway as well as the Myntverket. Engraved in the medals is Alfred Nobel. The medals are made from gold, which made these prone to medal theft. One of the criticisms against the award giving body is that it failed to recognize contributions to other fields like mathematics. Many people also complained about the focus of the Nobel Prize on inventions or discoveries.