Nobel Prize history from the year you were born

Since 1901, Nobel Prizes have honored the worlds best and brightest and showcased the work of brilliant and creative minds, thanks to Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel, who made his fortune with the invention of dynamite.

The Prize in Physiology or Medicine often honors those whose discoveries led to medical breakthroughs, new drug treatments, or a better understanding of the human body that benefit us all.

The Prize in Literature celebrates those skilled in telling stories, creating poetry, and translating the human experience into words. The Prizes in Chemistry and Physics remind most of us how little we understand of genetics, atomic structures, or the universe around us, celebrating the scientists who further knowledge. A later addition to the award roster, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is not an original Prize, but was established by the Central Bank of Sweden in 1968 as a memorial to Alfred Nobel. It applauds those who can unravel the mysteries of markets, trade, and money.

The Peace Prize celebrates, in Nobels words, the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses, sometimes risking their lives to do so.

So precious are the awards that the medals of German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck, stored away for safekeeping in Copenhagen during World War II, were dissolved in acid to keep them away from approaching Nazi troops. After the war, the gold was reconstituted from the acid and recast into new medals.

But Nobel history has not been entirely noble. In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, known for his policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany, was nominated for the Peace Prize. In an act of irony and protest, members of the Swedish Parliament nominated Adolf Hitler. That nomination was withdrawn. Some recipients have ordered oppressive crackdowns on their own people or ignored genocides, either before or after receiving the Prize. The 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Germanys Fritz Haber, who invented a method of producing ammonia on a large scale, which was helpful in making fertilizer. But the same chemist helped develop the chlorine gas that was used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

Stacker looked at facts and events related to the Nobel Prizes each year from 1931 to 2020, drawing from the Nobel Committees recollections and announcements, news stories, and historical accounts.

Take a look, and see what was happening with the Nobel Prizes the year you were born.

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Erik Axel Karlfeldt was the first Nobel winner to be awarded posthumously. The Swedish poet was alive during the nomination and deliberation process but died six months before the Literature Prize was announced. As of 1974, the rules were changed so that awards can only be given posthumously if the winner dies after the announcement but before the formal award is bestowed.

John Galsworthy, author of The Forsyte Saga, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The chronicle of English life became a hugely popular miniseries in 1967 on American public television.

Ivan Bunin, the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, departed Russia after the 1917 revolution and settled in France as a permanent exile. His books were banned by Soviet authorities due to his anti-Bolshevik writing. To accept his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Bunin had to travel through Germany, where he was arrested by the Nazis and falsely accused of smuggling jewels. The Nazis forced him to drink a bottle of castor oil before letting him go.

Three Americans shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research into anemia, when the bodys red blood cell count is low. George Whipple found dogs formed new blood cells by eating diets of liver, kidney, meat, and apricots, and George Minot and William Murphy applied those findings to humans with pernicious anemia. They also delved into the cause of pernicious anemia: a shortage of vitamin B12.

The 1935 Peace Prize was awarded to Carl von Ossietzky, a journalist and critic of Nazi Germany who was being held in a concentration camp. Hitler would not allow him to accept the prize. He died in 1938 in a prison hospital. Also in 1935, married couple Frdric Joliot and Irne Joliot-Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Joliot-Curie was the daughter of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, also Nobel Prize winners.

The Norwegian royal family chose not to attend the Nobel ceremony following the controversial choice of German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky to win the Peace Prize. Critics said the prize decision would provoke Germany. The royal family offered no official explanation for skipping the ceremony, but it was widely believed that Norway wanted to distance itself from the prize selection.

American physicist Clinton Davisson won the Nobel Prize partly by accident. When he was testing the hypothetical relation between particle velocity and wavelength, he bombarded a nickel block with electrons and measured how they scattered. But when the nickel was baked at high heat after accidental contamination, the structure of its atoms changed, as did the patterns of the electrons, proving the hypothesis.

No Nobel prizes were awarded in 1940 due to World War II. Norway was occupied by German forces, and Adolf Hitler was angry about the 1936 Peace Prize awarded to Carl von Ossietzky, a journalist who disclosed that Germany had been secretly rearming, a violation of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. Ossietzky was tried and convicted of treason.

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Not only were no Nobel Prizes awarded while the world was locked in war, but a significant brain drain was underway that would see Europe lose many of its brilliant thinkers. By 1941, a dozen Nobel-winning scientists had left for England and the United States, including physicists Niels Bohr, a winner in 1922, Albert Einstein, who won in 1921, and Enrico Fermi, who won in 1938.

Ralph Bunche was principal secretary of the United Nations Palestine Commission when he was awarded the Peace Prize for his role in mediating the 1949 cease-fires between Israel and Arab states after the partition of Palestine. Bunche, an academic and U.S. State Department advisor, was the first Black person to receive a Nobel Prize.

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The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden. It was created to mark the banks 300th anniversary. The first recipients would be awarded in 1969.

The first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was shared by Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch and Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen, who helped develop the study of economics based upon mathematics. Tinbergen created a model of macroeconomics, placing economic variables in mathematical relationships to each other. His younger brother, Nikolaas Tinbergen, was one of three scientists awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their studies of animal behavior, particularly how animals communicate and care for their young.

Swedens Ulf von Euler discovered the bodys neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which is involved in the fight-or-flight process, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His father, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1929 for his research in the fermentation of sugar and the enzymes involved in the process.

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Physicist Dennis Gabor won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the holograph, and German Chancellor Willy Brandt won the Peace Prize for helping ease relations between East and West Germany. Under his administration, West Germany signed a nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, reached a nonviolence deal with the Soviet Union, and laid the groundwork for making family visits easier in the divided city of Berlin.

In awarding the Prize in Literature, the Nobel Committee honored German writer Heinrich Bll, saying his a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature." After World War II, Bll was part of the Gruppe 47, a number of influential writers who would meet over the course of three decades as they dealt with the wars destruction and the aftermath of the Holocaust.

In a controversial decision, the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam for the Vietnam ceasefire negotiations. But the North Vietnamese leader refused to accept the prize, on grounds that the war was ongoing and the United States violated terms of the agreement. Kissinger did not travel to Norway to accept the prize and said he wanted to return it but was told he could not do so.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Snchez is credited for his leadership in encouraging five presidents in Central America to sign a peace agreement ending the regions civil wars. The peace plan signed by Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua called for human rights safeguards, free elections, and an end to interference by other countries.

The winners of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine brought relief to millions with their drug discoveries. The work of Sir James Black led to the use of receptor-blocking drugs to treat heart disease, hypertension, and peptic ulcers, and collaborators Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings made discoveries that led to drugs for the treatment of leukemia, malaria, gout, and herpes virus infections.

Myanmars human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest when she was awarded the Peace Prize. In 2015 she was released and elected to national office, but she has come under strong criticism for her countrys treatment of its Muslim Rohingya minority and its possible genocide. Calls were made for her Nobel Prize to be revoked, but the head of the Nobel Foundation said it would not be withdrawn for events that took place after it was awarded.

South Africa took the spotlight when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk for their roles in ending the apartheid system of racial separation. Mandela was imprisoned 27 years for his political activism, and de Klerk, the president of South Africa, released him in 1990. They went on to work together to end apartheid and design a new constitution that allowed universal voting rights, regardless of race.

American John Nash was one of three winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on game theory. Nashs struggle with schizophrenia was portrayed in the 2001 Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as the Princeton-educated mathematician. His work, which became known as the Nash equilibrium, is used in understanding the processes of chance and decision-making.

Joseph Rotblat, a physicist and longtime opponent of nuclear weapon development, won the Nobel Peace Prize 50 years after atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He withdrew in 1943 from the Manhattan Project, which was producing nuclear weapons. He worked with the anti-nuclear Pugwash movement, a series of conferences with which he shared the Peace Prize.

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Southeast Asias East Timor was highlighted when the Peace Prize was awarded to Carlos Belo and Jos Ramos-Horta. Ramos-Horta was a leader of resistance in East Timor to the occupation by Indonesia and helped build international support for self-determination, and Belo, a Roman Catholic bishop, demanded the United Nations and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights take notice. The Peace Prize is considered a major factor in East Timor achieving independence in 2002.

Citing the more than 100 million anti-personnel landmines estimated to be strewn around the world, the Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and to its coordinator Jody Williams for their accomplishments in banning and clearing mines. Their work culminated in the United Nations Mine Ban Convention, adopted in 1997, that prohibited the stockpiling and use of landmines and required countries to clear mines.

Two political leadersDavid Trimble and John Humein Northern Ireland shared the Peace Prize for helping bring about the Good Friday Agreement that laid out plans for governance of Northern Ireland. Key to the agreement were the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, led by Trimble, and the Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party, led by Hume.

The Nobel Committee applauded Mdecins Sans Frontires, known as Doctors without Borders in English, for its extensive humanitarian work across several continents. It said the organization maintained a high degree of independence, helped build public opinion in opposition to humanitarian abuses, and helped forge contacts between sides in conflicts.

Understanding our relation to money earned the Nobel Prize for two American economists. James Heckman researched factors that affect statistical sampling, and his findings have been used to understand how early life experiences influence earnings potential and economic status. Daniel McFadden studied how people make decisions, developing so-called discrete choice models that can explain and predict behavior and are applied to such real-life uses as public transportation systems and senior housing.

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Americans George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their work on markets with asymmetric informationmarkets in which one side has better information than the other. Akerlof looked at the consequences of such markets in areas like developing world lending and medical insurance, Spence demonstrated how market participants convey information, and Stiglitz showed how asymmetric markets work in areas like unemployment and credit.

Jimmy Carter was commended for decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development. The Committee cited his foreign policy achievements including the Panama Canal treaties, Camp David Middle Eastern accord, and SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union as well as his founding afterward of The Carter Center, which specialized in international conflict mediation and election monitoring.

The creators of magnetic resonance imagining, or MRI, took home the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Paul Lauterbur of the United States and Britains Sir Peter Mansfield researched the behavior of atoms and molecules in a magnetic field to develop interior imagery of the human body.

Wangari Maathai, the first female professor in Kenya, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Already active in the nations democratic movement, Maathai launched a grassroots movement that mobilized women to plant trees to fight deforestation. Called the Green Belt Movement, it spread elsewhere in Africa and led to the planting of more than 30 million trees.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Australians J. Robin Warren and Barry Marshall discovered the bacterium that causes gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Their discovery ran counter to the commonly held belief that peptic ulcer disease was caused by lifestyle and stress. The revelation influenced research into the causes of other chronic inflammatory conditions and the links between chronic infection, inflammation, and cancer.

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The winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, American Roger Kornberg, researched the structure and role of an enzyme called RNA polymerase in a genetic process essential to building and maintaining molecular and cell structure. His father Arthur Kornberg won the 1959 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work in genetics.

Doris Lessing, author of dozens of books including the novel The Golden Notebook, became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature at age 88. She told reporters from her doorstep in London that she was not that surprised because her name had been under consideration for decades. Either they were going to give it to me sometime before I popped off or not at all, she said.

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in international trade patterns and economic geography. Krugman was instrumental in the development of New Trade Theory, which concerns factors in international market patterns such as economies of scale and the network effect, when goods become more valuable with wider use.

U.S. President Barack Obama was presented the Peace Prize during his first year in office. The Committee said it recognized Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. Critics questioned whether Obama, the countrys first Black president, had earned such a distinction so early in his term.

Chinas Liu Xiaobo was in prison when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The human rights activist had been jailed following the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, imprisoned again for criticizing Chinese policies toward Taiwan and the Dalai Lama, and sentenced to prison again in 2009 for seeking political reform. He died in 2017.

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When the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced, the Foundation learned that one of the winners, Ralph Steinman, had died three days earlier of cancer. Although the rules say the awards are not given posthumously, it was decided that the Canadian immunologist should be a Nobel Laureate because the Nobel Assembly had announced the winners without knowing he was dead.

Sir John Gurdon of England and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan, winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, researched the way cells and organisms develop. They discovered how mature specialized cells could be reprogrammed to become immature cells, a major medical breakthrough applicable to stem cell research.

The three American economists who shared the Nobel Prize made discoveries that help predict the long-term prices of stocks and bonds. Eugene Famas research was used in the development of stock index funds, Robert Shiller discovered certain dynamics about stock prices and dividends, and Lars Hansen looked at theories of risks and returns that are used in asset pricing.

At age 17, Malala Yousafzai was the youngest Nobel Laureate when she was awarded the 2014 Peace Prize. Yousafzai, an outspoken advocate for girls education and rights, survived an attempted assassination in 2012 by the Taliban in Pakistan. She shared the Peace Prize with Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi, who was honored for his work fighting child labor.

Jeffrey Hall, who shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work understanding the human body clock, had left science about a decade before winning his prize. He was outspoken about his frustration with what he saw as an inadequate, wasteful, and unfair research funding process.

At 96 years old, Arthur Ashkin became the oldest Nobel Laureate until he was surpassed by a 97-year-old winner the following year. Ashkin invented optical tweezers, sharp laser beams that can grab particles, atoms, molecules, and bacteria. The Nobel Prize in Literature was postponed due to scandal involving sexual misconduct, conflicts of interest, and financial malpractice at the Swedish Academy.

At 97, John Goodenough became the oldest Nobel Laureate when he won the Prize for Chemistry. His work led to the development of lithium-ion batteries, which had higher voltage than previous batteries, and are used to power mobile telephones and electric cars.

The three winners of the Prize in PhysicsBritains Roger Penrose, Germanys Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez of the United Stateswere honored for research into the existence and formation of black holes in the Milky Way. Penrose proved how the theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes, while Genzel and Ghez discovered the role of a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy in affecting the orbits of stars.

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Germanys Adolf Butenandt won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into sex hormones that would be used in the development of oral contraception. Like Richard Kuhn in 1938, he was forced by the Nazis to decline the prize but was able to accept the certificate and medal in 1949. Germanys Gerhard Domagk, whose research led to the development of antibiotics, also had to turn down the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine but got it after the war.

While no Nobel Prizes were awarded, 1942 was the year that the name United Nations was coined by President Franklin Roosevelt in a declaration by 26 nations to stand together against the Axis powers. Founded three years later, the United Nations, along with its agencies, programs, and staff, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a dozen times. The U.N.s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has won it twice, and most recently, the U.N.s World Food Programme won in 2020.

Henrik Dam and Edward Doisy shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in the discovery of vitamin K, which the human body uses for clotting and healing. Dam determined that Vitamin K is needed for blood to coagulate, and Doisy found ways to produce it artificially, which was useful in stopping bleeding in small children.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Committee of the Red Cross for the work it had done during the war on behalf of humanity. It was the first Peace Prize bestowed in five years; the prizes were not given out from 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II, to 1943.

Two American activists shared the Nobel Peace Prize. One was Emily Greene Balch, co-founder of the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom and a professor at Wellesley College for 22 years until she was fired for her activism. John Raleigh Mott, head of the Young Mens Christian Association, promoted international youth programs, worked with relief programs for prisoners of war, and was an outspoken critic of colonial oppression and race discrimination.

Gerty Cori, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was honored with her husband Carl Cori for their work in understanding the metabolism process. When the couple moved to America in 1922 from Austria, Carl Cori was hired as a biochemist at a New York research institute. Gerty Cori could only find work as an assistant pathologist, despite having the same degrees and research experience, because she was a woman. She was finally allowed a position equal with her talent and experience at Washington University in St. Louis in 1938.

Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is considered to honor a writers body of work, the Nobel Academy singled out The Old Man and the Sea when it chose American author Ernest Hemingway. It said the novel demonstrated his mastery of the art of narrative.

The winner of the Chemistry Prize, Vincent du Vigneaud, studied biochemical sulphur compounds, including oxytocin, a hormone involved in sexual intimacy and reproduction. Sometimes called the cuddle or love hormone, it is released when people bond, including as couples or parents with children. Vigneaud isolated oxytocin, calculated its chemical composition, and determined how to produce it artificially.

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The king of Sweden goodnaturedly reprimanded John Bardeen for leaving most of his family homehis children were in schoolwhen he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The American physicist told the king he would bring his family the next time. Sure enough, Bardeen won a second Nobel Prize in 1972, and he took his whole family to theceremony.

Biochemists Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornbergs work on DNA and RNA earned them the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ochoa discovered how to create RNA, and Kornberg, formerly a student of Ochoas, found ways of making DNA. Kornbergs son, Roger, a chemical physicist, also conducted genetic research and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally used pig brains and lamb brains in their research on hormonal roles and structure. They shared the prize with Rosalyn Yalow, a nuclear physicist who developed radioimmunoassay, a method that can measure extremely small amounts of bodily substances. It was used in helping determine the cause of type 2 diabetes.

In awarding the Peace Prize to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel Committee singled out its Soviet founder Yevgeny Chazov and American founder Bernard Lown to accept the award because of their cooperative influence. The IPPNW consists of tens of thousands of medical professionals, now in 64 countries, who banded together in hopes of preventing and averting nuclear war.

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Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, the final time being in 1948 not long before he was assassinated. That year, the Nobel Committee chose not to bestow any award, declaring there was no suitable living candidate.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Portugals Egas Moniz, invented the lobotomy. He discovered how a surgical incision into the brains prefrontal lobe could alter behavior. Lobotomies were used widely to treat mental illness in the 1940s and 1950s until they were widely recognized as dangerous, and medication for mental illness became more commonly prescribed.

The awarding of the Peace Prize to Dag Hammarskjld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, was only the second time a Nobel was given posthumously. The first occasion was the posthumous literature prize awarded to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931. The rules were changed in 1974 so that prizes could not be awarded posthumously unless the winner dies after the announcement but before the award ceremony.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to American James Watson, would later sell it at auction at Christies in 2014 to raise money for charity. Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov paid $4.7 million, then said he was returning the award to the scientist. Watson won for discovering the structure of DNA along with Francis Crick.

Free-market economist Friedrich von Hayek, a critic of central planning, shared the Nobel Prize with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal. Hayek argued for a decentralized market system with open competition and disagreed with the use of government fiscal policy to moderate movements of the economy as promoted by economist John Maynard Keynes.

American economist Milton Friedman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on monetarypolicy. Friedman advocated for free markets and opposed government economic intervention. His views influenced the conservative fiscal policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was a major proponent of school vouchersusing public tax funds to pay for students to attend private schoolsa system that remains hugely controversial to this day.

Mother Teresa of the Missionaries of Charity was given the Nobel Peace Prize for her work assisting the poor in Kolkata, especially its orphans, lepers, and terminally ill. Pope Francis declared the Albanian nun a saint in 2016. She started the Missionaries of Charity with a dozen nuns and it had nearly 5,000 at the time of her death in 1997.

Marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in the Americas, Mayan Rigoberta Mench Tum of Guatemala was hailed for her campaign for human and Indigenousrights. Taking a global approach, she facilitated the use of international intermediaries in negotiations between guerrilla forces and the government, culminating in a 1996 peace agreement that ended a 36-year civil war.

Max Theiler of South Africa was honored for his research on yellow fever, a deadly disease found in subtropical and tropical South America and Africa and spread primarily by mosquitoes. Theiler discovered how to transmit the yellow fever virus to mice, helping produce weaker forms of the virus that could be used as a vaccine for humans.

For his role in the discovery of streptomycin, Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Streptomycin was the first antibiotic found to be effective against tuberculosis. Waksman studied how the bacteria that causes tuberculosis interacted with microorganisms in soil and found that a bacterium called Streptomyces griseus blocked its growth.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his works that included an autobiography, several volumes about the First and Second World Wars, and his notable speeches during World War II. From 1946 to 1953, Churchill was nominated in seven years for the Literature Prize and twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ending conflict in the Middle East was the focus of Canadian historian and diplomat Lester Pearson, who won the Peace Prize for his role in ending violence that erupted in 1956 over control of the Suez Canal. The conflict among the major superpowers could have had severe global consequences. Thanks to Pearsons efforts, a United Nations Emergency Force was dispatched to oversee a cease-fire.

Russias Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he at first accepted but later was forced to turn down by Soviet authorities who banned his novel Doctor Zhivago. The only novel the poet wrote, Dr. Zhivago was deemed to be anti-Soviet and remained forbidden until the late 1980s.

Frances Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded, and declined, the Nobel Prize in Literature.He explained that he always declined official honors and that as a writer, he felt he should remain distinct from any institution.

The United Nations Childrens Fund, better known as UNICEF, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. UNICEF started out in 1946 providing food, clothes, and medicine to children and mothers but expanded to promote nutrition, school attendance, and health care in developing countries. The Nobel Committee honored UNICEF for its effort to enhance solidarity between nations and reduce the difference between rich and poor states.

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Peyton Rous won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine when he was 87, the oldest winner ever in the category. The American studied the role of viruses in cancer cells and transmission. His work was based on research begun in the early 1910s.

Contributions to understanding how the human eye functions earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for a scientific trio. Finnish scientist Ragnar Granit researched the types of cones responsible for seeing color; American Keffer Hartline analyzed how the eye processes contrasts; and American George Wald studied the role of light in visual impressions.

Danish physicist Aage Bohr won the Nobel Prize for his experiments on the structure of atoms. His father, Niels Bohr, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, also for work on atomic structure. The elder Bohr created a theory that explained how moving electrons cause atoms to emit light.

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The Camp David Agreement, which laid out a framework for peace in the Middle East, earned the Nobel Peace Prize for Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. U.S. President Jimmy Carter was to have been a third recipient, but a technicality prevented him from being nominated within the Committees deadline. But he won the Peace Prize nevertheless in 2002.

Alva Myrdal, along with Mexicican diplomat Alfonso Garca Robles, won the Nobel Peace Prize for working toward nuclear disarmament. Myrdal was a Swedish scientist, government official, and diplomat, and she was married to Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist who was awarded an Economics Nobel in 1974.

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Nobel Prize history from the year you were born - Herald & Review