Alot of interesting things about The Nobel Prize.
It was set up by a Swede by the name of Alfred Nobel who made his fortune by inventing dynamite.
Anyway - towards the end of his life his younger brother died. But a Parisian newspaper got mixed up and published an obituary of Alfred Noble.
This meant Alfred Noble was one of the few people to get to read his own obituary. After a plane crash in Cuba - Ernest Hemingway was once thought dead. And he too got to read his own obituaries. And it was reported that he was pretty depressed his greatness as a writer wasn't fully recognised.
This reminds me of a funny story involving a member of the House of Lords (they are the UK equivalent of The Senate - but are appointed and not elected) here in England. A newspaper published his obituary by mistake. After no doubt dropping his toast on his newspaper - the Lord phoned up the editor of the newspaper.
'You have published my obituary, and I'm not happy!' he complained.
'I see your Lordship', replied the editor. Before adding, 'Now just to be clear, could you tell me
exactly where you are phoning from?'
Anyway - back to Alfred Nobel.
He was pretty distraught that the account of his career in chemistry and industry was focused on his invention of dynamite. And he didn't want to be remembered by history as the inventor of the most destructive explosive ever discovered (this was back in the nineteenth century) which would probably go on to cause distress and destruction to millions of people.
As such - he left his fortune to the Bank of Sweden and set up a number awards for the benefit of humanity.
The focus was on practical discoveries. Which is why theoretical physics is rarely rewarded (although that will change this year with the Higgs Boson). It also explains why Einstein never received the prize for his work in Relativity (instead he won the prize for his work on the photoelectric effect - no me neither).
It also explains why there is no award for Philosophy.
The focus on practical discoveries also explains why Mathematics doesn't have it's own Nobel Prize. Instead they have The Fields Medal (which is only awarded every other year).
Now - some of the awards of the Nobel Prize are a little odd.
In 1949 - the inventor of the lobotomy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Something worth remembering the next time you feel like questioning scientific orthodoxy.
And in 1978 - the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation. Although - there is a funny story behind this which Bill Bryson has described well (he is a favourite writer of mine). It turns out that the researchers who won the prize made the discovery by accident - and instead were convinced their equipment was playing havoc with them as a result of
bird shit.
http://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index...everything
As for Marie Curie. She won
two Nobel Prizes. One for Chemistry and one for Physics. However - her husband - Pierre - also won a Nobel Prize. And he is forgotten about today due to his not being a woman.
It is worth remembering that whilst Marie Curie discovered Radiation. She ended up dying from cancer which was induced by the experiments she did with Radiation. So - it is another example of an important discovery whose consequences were not fully understood at the time.
Alot of the awards for the Nobel Prize for Literature are pretty controversial. With a lot of greats being overlooked. And a lot of arguably poor writers being awarded the prize.
Lastly - lets look at some raw numbers...
Number of Nobel Prizes won by women - 41
Number of Nobel Prizes won by men - 772
So clearly men are better than women.
Anyway - most of the women won their prize in the Peace category or the Literature category. You don't have to be smart to win the peace category and the literature category is too subjective. Alot of shit people have won that prize - whilst most of the truly great writers have never won it. Seriously - as an experiment - name 10 great writers from the 20th century and I guarantee you that only 1/2 of them will have ever won the Nobel prize for literature.
So - if we kick out the anomalous cases - we are only left with 17 women who have won 'proper' Nobel Prizes.
Of course - we need to kick out all the men who have won the prizes for Literature and Peace as well. I am making a rough guess here - but I think we need to kick out about 160 men.
So that means men beat women in the 'proper' Nobel prizes by a score of 612 to 17.
Which means men win 97.3% of the 'proper' Nobel prizes.
At least that is my analysis. For a clear explanation of the reasons for the differences between the sexes. Check out the following written by a
female philosopher:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_10.html#cronin
![[Image: lol.gif]](https://www.rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/lol.gif)
