Donnelly Marks/Courtesy of Nobel Media Tawakkol Karman, a 2011
Nobel Peace Prize winner, is one of few women in the ranks of
Nobel laureates. As the last of this year's Nobel Prize winners
are announced and media focus shifts away from Sweden, two
things are clear about the winners. One: They have all done
laudatory work in their respective fields. Two: Aside from the
European Union, which was awarded the Peace Prize, all of this
year's Nobel laureates are men. They join the ranks of hundreds
of people who have received the awards over the past 111 years.
But what is surprising about the list of Nobel laureates is just
how few women are on it. In 1901, Alfred Nobel's will set up
funds for five prizes that celebrated great achievements in the
fields of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature
and peace work. A sixth prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, funded by Sweden's
national bank in 1969, is not technically a Nobel, but it's
generally counted as