Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize is the first international award given yearly since 1901 for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a prize amount.

http://www.nobel.se and http://www.nobel.no

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TomLehrer announced he was giving up satire when HenryKissinger won the Nobel peace prize. And well he should --- but the Peace prize has been broken for a long time and this isn't the only insane example.

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There is no NobelPrize in mathematics. Instead there is the FieldsMedal. I would be interested in genuine references as to why this might be so.

The Fields Medal is not really equivalent. It is harder to get (every 4 years instead of every year), and is given to young mathematicians who have done important work. The Nobels tend to be career-capping (some would say ending). There is a school of though that Nobel left mathematics out due to a personal disagreement. The reasoning below `would one day be of practical use' is spurious --- mathematics has been crucial to the sciences for as long as they (the sciences) have existed.

Other than Nobel didn't specify there should be? I'm not sure what more there needs to be. There's no biology prize either - Nobel created prizes for the areas he wanted to. It was his money

Nobel created the prizes to further the advance of knowledge that was of practical benefit to humanity. When Nobel wrote his will, it was obvious that physics, chemistry and medicine were of practical benefit (he was a chemist by trade), but he didn't realise that mathematics or non-human biology would one day be practically useful. This also explains why there are Nobels for literature, economics and peace.

Actually, the Nobel Prize for economics was not one of the prizes originally created by Nobel. It was added in the 60s, and is funded by the Swedish central bank. In fact, at least according to A BeautifulMind (the book by Sylvia Nasar, not the movie), there is still a great deal of controversy regarding whether the prize should continue to exist. -- MikeSmith

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Illustrating the image of the Nobel Prize as a universal recognition, LouReed? says in The Great Defender (Down At The Arcade):

        The president called to give me the news
        I've been awarded the Nobel Prize in rhythm and blues

http://ww21.tiki.ne.jp/~wildside/tabs/the_great_defender.html -- OleAndersen

-- ChrisGarrod refactoring other mentions of the prize to point here. There are 13 pages with NobelPrize within the following SearchResults?

Searching for Nobel ... AlbertEinstein AmartyaSen AnthropicPrinciple ArrowsTheorem AustriaEurope BeautifulMind BoseEinstein BoycottAmazon CalTech CambridgeUniversity ConstitutionalPattern CorporateCommunists CriticizeBluntly CrossToolTypeAndObjectSharing -- that page has too much ThreadMode, seems too fragile to edit

CudChewers DanielKoning -- a HomePage that was beWikiZened

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