The 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to three scientists, Harvey J. Alter (American), Michael Houghton (British) and Charles M. Rice (American), for discovering the Hepatitis C virus, announced this Monday the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
In 2019, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to three scientists William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries about how cells react and adapt to the availability of oxygen.
Tomorrow the Nobel Prize for Physics will be known and, on Wednesday, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. On Thursday, the 8th, the Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded and on Friday the name of the new Nobel Peace Prize will be known.
The last announcement will be made on October 12 and will determine the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The Nobel prizes, the most prestigious in the world, awarded in the areas of Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Economics and Peace, are now being announced, fulfilling a wish that the inventor of dynamite left in his will in 1895.
The Nobel prizes were born out of the desire of the Swedish scientist and industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) to bequeath much of his fortune to people who work for “a better world”.
The international prestige of the Nobel prizes is due, in large part, to the amounts awarded, which currently amount to SEK 9 million (about 830,000 euros).
Alfred Nobel determined his will in a will made in Paris in 1895, a year before his death.
According to the terms of the testament, about SEK 31.5 million, equivalent to the current 2.2 billion crowns (€ 203 million), were allocated to a type of fund whose interest should be redistributed annually “to those that, during the year, have rendered the greatest services to humanity ”.
The will provided for the interest on the capital invested to be distributed to the author of the most important discovery or invention of the year in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and the most outstanding work of Literature of idealistic inspiration.
–
