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NOBEL PRIZES 2015

NOBEL

Bets on for Sweden’s Nobel Prize in Literature

One of the most hyped prizes of the week, the Nobel literature award, will be handed out in Stockholm on Thursday, with an author from Belarus among the favourites to win it.

Published: 8 October 2015 08:25 CEST
Bets on for Sweden's Nobel Prize in Literature
Avid Swedish readers at Gothenburg book fair last month. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus is among the top names being mooted to win Thursday's Nobel Prize in Literature but could see herself snubbed by the Swedish Academy, the awarding body that likes to surprise.

Alexievich is the top choice among literary observers on betting sites.

Other names mentioned this year are Americans Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth, and Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

“Her work is on the border between documentary and novel, a genre that hasn't been rewarded,” said Björn Wiman, the culture editor of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

He is not the only expert to suggest the writer, who was recently reissued in Swedish, could win.

“I want Svetlana Alexievich to win for her visionary and hopeful journalism,” journalist Maria Lundström said in a video posted on the Instagram account of public broadcaster Swedish Radio.

Still, the pundits could be wrong as “what is for sure is that the Swedish Academy likes to surprise”, Gustav Källstrand, a curator at the Nobel Museum, said.

In February, the academy compiles a secret list of all nominations submitted by an exclusive group of “qualified people” that includes literature professors and former laureates. This year there were about 220 names.

By May, the list has been whittled down to five names, whose works Academy members study in detail during the summer. The winner is then traditionally announced in mid-October.

Neither the public nor the writers know anything about what is said during the deliberations.

“There are of course people that hope and wish that they are on the list but they never know,” said the academy's administrative director, Odd Zsiedrich.

“Only individuals receive the prize. … Nation, gender, religion means nothing. Geography is not our subject,” a member of the academy, Per Wästberg, wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

“Can an author get the prize in spite of his political orientation? Of course. Can you get it because of this orientation? Never!” he wrote.

Since the prize was first handed out in 1901, only 13 out of 111 laureates have been women.

The dearth of female winners means some say a woman is more likely to succeed last year's French laureate Patrick Modiano, given that the academy is based in Sweden, a country known for its feminist policies.

“Over the past ten years the statistics, which are still not great, show a significant improvement … which shows that they are now aware” of the problem, said Madelaine Levy, a literary critic.

It shows that the jury “strives to make fairer choices”, she added.

The last woman to win, Canada's Alice Munro, was handed the award in 2013.

READ ALSO: Five essential facts about Nobel winner Patrick Modiano

In addition to Oates and Roth, betting sites are listing Japan's Haruki Murakami, Norway's Jon Fosse and Ireland's John Banville as some of this year's favourites.

Swedish experts say they would prefer Romania's Mircea Cartarescu, Italy's Umberto Eco, Somalia's Nuruddin Farah or Nigeria's Ben Okri.

“I want to be surprised, just as I was pleasantly surprised when Dario Fo got it,” radio journalist Gunnar Bolin wrote on Instagram.

This year's Nobel Literature Prize winner will be announced on Thursday at 1pm local time (11 GMT).

NOBEL

US duo win Nobel for work on how heat and touch spark signals to the brain

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch.

Published: 4 October 2021 13:42 CEST
US duo win Nobel for work on how heat and touch spark signals to the brain
Thomas Perlmann (right), the Secretary of the Nobel Committee, stands next to a screen showing David Julius (L) and Ardem Patapoutian, winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

“The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world,” the Nobel jury said.

The pair’s research is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases and conditions, including chronic pain. Julius, who in 2019 won the $3-million Breakthrough Prize in life sciences, said he was stunned to receive the call from the Nobel committee early Monday.

“One never really expects that to happen …I thought it was a prank,” he told Swedish Radio.

The Nobel Foundation meanwhile posted a picture of Patapoutian next to his son Luca after hearing the happy news.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival, the Nobel Committee explained, and underpins our interaction with the world around us.

“In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.”

Prior to their discoveries, “our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system.”

Grocery store research

Julius, 65, was recognised for his research using capsaicin — a compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation — to identify which nerve sensors in the skin respond to heat.

He told Scientific American in 2019 that he got the idea to study chili peppers after a visit to the grocery store.  “I was looking at these shelves and shelves of basically chili peppers and extracts (hot sauce) and thinking, ‘This is such an important and such a fun problem to look at. I’ve really got to get serious about this’,” he said.

Patapoutian’s pioneering discovery was identifying the class of nerve sensors that respond to touch.

Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and the 12-year-younger Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

The pair were not among the frontrunners mentioned in the speculation ahead of the announcement.

Pioneers of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which paved the way for mRNA Covid vaccines, and immune system researchers had been widely tipped as favourites.

While the 2020 award was handed out in the midst of the pandemic, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

Media, Belarus opposition for Peace Prize?

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.

For the Peace Prize on Friday, media watchdogs such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been mentioned as possible winners, as has the Belarusian opposition spearheaded by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Also mentioned are climate campaigners such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement.

Meanwhile, for the Literature Prize on Thursday, Stockholm’s literary circles have been buzzing with the names of dozens of usual suspects.

The Swedish Academy has only chosen laureates from Europe and North America since 2012 when China’s Mo Yan won, raising speculation that it could choose to rectify that imbalance this year. A total of 95 of 117 literature laureates have come from Europe and North America.

While the names of the Nobel laureates are kept secret until the last minute, the Nobel Foundation has already announced that the glittering prize ceremony and banquet held in Stockholm in December for the science and literature laureates will not happen this year due to the pandemic.

Like last year, laureates will receive their awards in their home countries. A decision has yet to be made about the lavish Peace Prize ceremony held in Oslo on the same day.

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