Pestaño: What do Nobel prize winners have in common?-A A +A
Thursday, February 2, 2012 ASIDE from being highly intelligent
and predominantly male (97.5 percent), you would be surprised to
know that a great number of Nobel laureates play chess as their
main hobby. Baruch Aba Shalev, author of a book on the Nobel
Prize, has said, “the Nobel Prize has come to be regarded as the
best-known and most prestigious award available in the fields of
literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace and economics.”
Surprisingly, there is no award for mathematics. The category
for peace was added in 1969, and is awarded in Oslo, Norway,
while the others are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. From the
start “The Prize” (as it was sensationalized in Irving Wallace’s
1960 novel) became one of the most sought-after awards in the
world, and eventually the yardstick against which other prizes
and recognition were to be measured. Each recipient, or
laureate, receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money
which depends on the Nobe