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Nobel Prize 2020

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards every year in Stockholm on 10 December the Nobel Prize according to the last will and testament of Alfred Nobel.

The Nobel Prize is an international award given yearly since 1901 for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and for peace. In 1968, the Bank of Sweden instituted the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.

The Prize Winners are announced in October every year. They receive their awards (a prize amount, a gold medal and a diploma) on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Due to the ongoing pandemic this is a unique year in the history of the Nobel Prize and the medals and diplomas will be handed over to the laureates safely in their home countries. The traditional ceremony in Konserthuset Stockholm will be a digital Nobel Prize award ceremony that will be held from the City Hall in Stockholm. Only a small audience will be able to attend. The Nobel Banquet will not take place.

In Oslo, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize will be carried out on a smaller scale in the auditorium at the University of Oslo.

Both ceremonies will be televised in collaboration with SVT and NRK. They will also be distributed globally via the Nobel Prize’s official channels.

On Monday 5 October the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus".

More information: Physiology or Medicine

On Tuesday 6 October the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded divided, one half to Roger Penrose "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity", the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy".

More information: Physics

On Wednesday 7 October the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”.

More information: Chemistry

On Thursday 8 October the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”.

More information: Literature

On Friday 9 October the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Programme (WFP) “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”.

More information: Peace

On Monday 12 October the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020 was awarded jointly to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats".

More information: Economy

Last updated 12 Oct 2020, 8.17 PM