By Bayo Ogunmupe
WINNERS of this year’s Nobel
prizes began to be announced on October 14, 2013. The winners of Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences were the last to be announced. The awards went to
Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago, USA, Lars Peter Hansen also of the
University of Chicago and Robert Shiller of Yale University, New Haven, USA.
The trio gained the award for their empirical analysis of asset prices. The Laureates
and their collaborators have demonstrated that stock prices could be predicted
over three to five years.
One approach interprets research in terms of the response by national
investors to uncertainty in prices. High future returns are then viewed as
compensation for holding risky assets during unusually risky times. Another
approach focuses on departures from rational investor behavior. So-called
behavioural finance takes into account institutional restrictions, such as
borrowing limits, which prevent smart investors from trading against any
mispricing in the market. The laureates have laid the foundation for the
current understanding of asset prices.
Other achievements being honoured in 2013 are as follows. The Nobel
Peace Prize went to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
which is currently destroying chemical weapons in Syria. The prize for
Literature was given to Canada’s Alice Munro, hailed by the award giving Swedish
Academy as a “master of the contemporary short story.” The 82 year old winner
is often called” Canada’s Chekhov.”
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to three U.S. based scientists
for developing computer models that predict complex chemical reactions that can
be used for tasks like creating new drugs. The winners are Martin Karplus of
both University of Strasbourg, France and Harvard University; Michael Levitt of
the Stanford University School of Medicine and Arieh Warshel of the University
of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The prize in Physics was awarded for a theory of how subatomic particles
get their mass. The prize was shared by two men who proposed the theory
independently of each other in 1964. Peter Higgs of Great Britain and Francois
Englert of Belgium.
The medicine prize honoured breakthrough in how key substances are moved
around within a cell. Disturbances in the delivery of the substances can lead
to neurological diseases, diabetes or immunological disorders. The prize was
shared by Americans James Rothman of Yale and Randy Schekman of the University
of California, Berkeley and German American Dr. Thomas Sudhof of the Stanford
University School of medicine.
However, the most important issue germane to the public is how to win
and be nominated for a Nobel prize. This prize is any of five prizes until 1969
when the sixth, the prize for Economic Sciences was added. The prizes are
awarded yearly by four institutions three Swedish, one Norwegian, from a fund
established under the will of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). Distribution was begun
on December 10, 1901 on the fifth anniversary of the death of the founder.
In his will, Nobel specified that the awards should be made “to those
who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on
mankind.” The six prizes are those enumerated above. The Economics prize was
set up in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden and the first award was given in 1969. The
awarding institutions are the Royal Swedish Academy, for physics and chemistry;
the Royal Caroline Medical Institute, for Physiology or medicine, and the
Swedish Academy for Literature, - all in Stockholm – Sweden; the Norwegian
Nobel Committee, for peace, located in Oslo, Norway– and appointed by the
Norwegian Storting (parliament).
Each award consists of a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a
sum of money, the amount depending on the income of the Nobel Foundation. The
selection of the prizewinners starts in the early autumn with prize awarding
institutions sending out invitations to nominate candidates. Those competent to
nominate are required to do so on the basis of professional competence and
international range-federal character basis in our own parlance.
Self nomination automatically disqualifies a person. Nomination must
reach the appropriate authority in writing by February 1. From the first of
February, six Nobel committees, one for each prize group, start their work on
the nominations received. If necessary, the committees may call in experts,
irrespective of nationality. During June and July, the committees submit
recommendations. The final decision by the awarders must be made by September
15. The committee recommendations are usually but not always followed.
The deliberation and voting are secret at all stages. Prizes may be
given only to individuals, except the peace prize which may also be given to an
institution. An individual may not be nominated posthumously, but a prize duly
proposed may be so awarded, as with Dag Hammarskjold (for peace in 1961) and
Erik Karlfeldt (for literature in 1931.) Awards may not be appealed against
because the awarders are independent of the state.
A prize is either given entire to one person, divided equally between at
most two works, or shared jointly by two or three persons. Sometimes a prize is
withheld until the following year. It also happens that a prize is neither
awarded nor reserved. Two prizes can be awarded in the same field in one year.
If a prize is declined or not accepted, the prize money goes back to the funds.
Motives for non-acceptance of prizes may vary, mostly the real reason
has been external, such as Hitler’s decree of 1937 which forbade Germans to
accept Nobel Prizes because the Peace Prize to Carl von Ossietzky in 1935 was
taken as an affront. Prizes are withheld or not awarded when no worthy
candidate in the meaning of Alfred Nobel’s will can be found or when the
world’s situation prevents the gathering of information required to reach a
decision, as happened during the two World Wars. Nobel Prizes, the greatest
accolade of achievement in the world are open to all, irrespective of nationality,
race, creed, or ideology.
They can be awarded more than once to the same recipient. The ceremonies
take place in Stockholm, Sweden but that of Peace takes place in Oslo, Norway
on December 10 the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The laureates usually receive
their prizes in person, each presents a lecture in connection with the award
ceremonies. The principles governing the awards were modified in 1900 to
clarify ambiguous words. The basis for the Economics Prize was scientific,
mathematical or statistical rather than political or social. The first two
economics laureates; Ragnar Frisch (Norway) and Jan Tinbergen (The Netherlands)
were given the prize for their work in econometrics – the analysis of economic
activity by means of mathematics. Which is why the scientific and medical
prizes have proved least controversial. The literature and peace awards have
been the most exposed to criticism.
A special regulation gave the right of nomination to members of the
Swedish Academy and other academies. Others so empowered are institutions and
societies similar to academics, university teachers, professors at universities
and university colleges. The right to nominate was also extended to previous
prize winners, or presidents of societies of authors and the like.
The statutes also provided for Nobel Committee to give their opinion in
matters of the award of the prizes, and for a Nobel Institute with a library
which was to contain a substantial collection of mainly modern literature.
For the founder Nobel, he was a Swedish chemist, engineer and
industrialist. He invented dynamite and many other explosives. Through his
mother, Nobel descended from the Swedish naturalist Olof Rudbeck. From his
father, Immanuel Nobel, he learned the fundamentals of engineering and like his
father, he was a versatile inventor, Educated mainly by tutors and was a
competent chemist by 16. He was fluent in English, French, German and Russian.
He spent a year learning chemistry in Paris and four years in the U.S.A
studying building under John Ericsson the builder of the warship-Morutor.
Nobel’s interests in explosives and his large holdings in the Baku oil
fields brought him immense fortune. He was a recluse and he never married.
Nobel had an abiding interest in literature, writing poetry in English, these
propelled him to leave his immense fortune in trust to establish this most
highly regarded of all awards, the Nobel Prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment