Nobel Prize winners of 2011

On November 27, 1895, a year before he died, Alfred Bernhard Nobel signed his last will and testament at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris. Eight years before his death the Swedish chemist, inventor and engineer who held 355 patents and made his fortune in armaments and explosives (he invented dynamite and ballistite, and owned the gun-making firm Bofors) had an unexpected change of heart. In 1888, a French newspaper erroneously published Nobel’s obituary – it was actually his brother Ludvig who had died – in which it described the inventor as “the merchant of death.”

Concerned at how he might be remembered, Nobel attempted to right his wrongs: He bequeathed 94 percent of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes to recognize scientists and inventors whose achievements conferred “the greatest benefit on mankind” in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. In 1968, the Sveriges Riksbank (the National Bank of Sweden) instituted a prize for Economic Sciences in Nobel’s memory.

Laureates receive a medal, a diploma and a sum of money that varies in relation to the Nobel Foundation’s income that year – in 2011 each prize was worth about $1.45 million. The awards are presented annually in Stockholm, Sweden (except for the Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo, Norway).

Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman, one of three recipients of
the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, at her tent in Change Square in
Sanaa, Yemen. Karman's Nobel Peace Prize draws attention 
to the role of women in the Arab Spring uprisings; they have
rebelled not only against dictators but against a traditional, 
conservative mindset that fears women as agents of change.
Women have participated in all the protests sweeping the 
Arab world, working both online to mobilize, and on the 
ground to march, chant and even throw themselves into 
stone-throwing clashes with security forces side by side 
with men. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Leymah Gbowee of Liberia is one of three 2011 
Nobel Peace Prize winners. Gbowee campaigned 
against the use of rape as a weapon in her country's 
brutal civil war. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia's current president and 
presidential candidate of the Unity Party (UP), is the third 
Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Liberia's October 11 general 
election will be the first domestically organised vote since 
an on-off 1989-2003 civil war and a test for a West African
country struggling to close the book on its bloody past eight
years after the fighting ceased. REUTERS/Luc Gnago

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded on Thursday
to poet and author Tomas Transtromer of Sweden, whose
surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind 
won him wide recognition as the most influential Scandinavian
poet of recent decades. (AP Photo/Scanpix, Maja Suslin)

Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Israeli scientist Dan 
Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 
the secret of quasicrystals, an atomic mosaic whose discovery 
overturned theories about solids. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

Astronomer Adam Riess in his office at Johns Hopkins 
University in Baltimore, USA. The Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences has announced that American Saul Perlmutter, 
US-Australian citizen Brian Schmidt and US scientist Adam
Riess will share the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. The trio were
honored "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the
universe through observations of distant supernovae."
(AP Photo/The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur 
Foundation, Gail Burton)

Australian Academy of Science Professor Brian Schmidt is
one of three US-born scientists to win the Nobel Prize in 
Physics for discovering that the universe is expanding at an 
accelerating pace. (AP Photo/AAS Irene Dowdy)

Saul Perlmutter, one of three winners of the Nobel Prize for 
Physics, poses with his daughter's telescope at his home in 
Berkeley, California after hearing he had won. The Royal 
Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Perlmutter would 
share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with 
US-Australian Brian Schmidt and US scientist Adam Riess. 
Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s, 
Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other, the 
scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing
a particular type of supernova, or exploding star. 
(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Dr. Bruce Beutler, director of the Center for the Genetics of 
Host Defense at UT Southwestern Medical Center, 
acknowledges applause from attendees at an event announcing
Beutler as a recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology 
or Medicine in Dallas, Texas. Beutler is one of three scientists
chosen to share the prize for discoveries about the immune 
system. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Canadian-born scientist Ralph Steinman died three days 
before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 
"his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive 
immunity". Steinman died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 68,
having extended his life using a kind of therapy he designed. 
This is the first time in history, that the Nobel Prize, which is 
never awarded posthumously, will go to a dead person. 
(AP Photo/Mike Groll)