The Nobel Prize

“My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who’s influencing me at any time.” Playwright and political activist Wole Soyinka has been characterised as one of the finest poetical playwrights to have written in English. His works are rooted in his native Nigeria and the Yoruba culture, with its legends, tales, and traditions. His writing also includes influences from Western traditions—from classical tragedies to modernist drama. His literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words. Learn more about Wole Soyinka and his literature in our interview with him: https://lnkd.in/eE7sBFUP

Wise words on love by poet Gabriela Mistral. Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, aka Gabriela Mistral, born in Vicuna in Chile, was South America's first ever Nobel Prize laureate in literature. The daughter of a school teacher and poet, she began working as a teacher herself at the age of just 15 until her poetry became known. Her pseudonym, Gabriela Mistral, was taken from her favourite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Nobel Prize laureate Frédéric Mistral. Have you read any of Mistral's poems?

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." - Rabindranath Tagore, awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature for his sensitive, fresh and beautiful poetry. He became the first non-European literature laureate.

“Without him [Nobel Prize laureate James Allison], without my oncologist, my kids wouldn’t be here. My husband wouldn’t have a wife.” - cancer survivor Sharon Belvin. She was one of the first patients to benefit from an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug invented by Allison, which is one form of immunotherapy widely available today. At the age of 22, she was looking forward to getting married but was instead diagnosed with a type of skin cancer called metastatic melanoma that had spread to her lungs, lymph nodes and brain. Belvin was offered the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial for immunotherapy and received a checkpoint inhibitor called ipilimumab, which was the first treatment of any type with the ability to offer the hope of survival for patients with metastatic melanoma. “It worked textbook,” she said. Belvin’s tumours grew smaller until there was no evidence of cancer after one round of treatment.  Belvin and several other cancer survivors who have benefitted from immune checkpoint therapy were in Stockholm, Sweden in December 2018 to help Allison and his co-laureate Tasuku Honjo celebrate receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Read more of Belvin’s remarkable story and how immune checkpoint therapy was born: https://lnkd.in/gv9rBfzg

Who has made the biggest impact on your life and work? From an early age, Svante Pääbo's mother supported his interest in the ancient world and encouraged him to pursue his interests. In 2022, he received the medicine prize for his discoveries concerning human evolution. Watch our interview with Pääbo here: https://bit.ly/432BLon

Which Nobel Prize laureate has a NASA observatory named after them? (Check the comments for the right answer.)

Einstein, Curie, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrödinger… how many Nobel Prize laureates can you spot? Some of the world’s most notable physicists participated in the 1927 Solvay Conference on Electrons and Photons. In fact, 17 of the 29 scientists attending were or became Nobel Prize laureates – including Marie Skłodowska Curie, who was awarded the Nobel Prize twice. — Back row: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules-Émile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Howard Fowler, Léon Brillouin. Middle row: Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr. Front row (seated): Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Skłodowska Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugène Guye, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Owen Willans Richardson. Photo: Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Physique Solvay, Leopold Park, Brussels, Belgium. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

"First, dream. And when you dream, you should make your dream as big as you can." Tawakkol Karman's dream for a more just world with freedom of expression and equal rights for all individuals, positioned her as a courageous leader in Yemen during the Arab Spring. Despite imprisonment and persecution for her journalism and advocacy for democracy and freedom of speech, she continued to stand firm in her beliefs under an oppressive regime. She was awarded the peace prize in 2011 for her non-violent efforts to promote peace and her struggle for women’s rights. Watch Karman's Nobel Prize lecture here: https://bit.ly/3a19mHr #NobelPrize

"I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love." - Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." #NobelPrize

"It just so happens that people who value freedom the most are often deprived of it" – Ales Bialiatski's 2022 Nobel Peace Prize lecture. The human rights activist is currently imprisoned in one of the harshest prisons in Belarus, having been jailed for 10 years without trial or conviction in the wake of demonstrations against President Lukashenko's dictatorship in 2021. It is not the first time that Bialiatski has been targeted by the country’s authorities. He has worked to promote democracy and human rights in Belarus since the 1980s and been imprisoned before. In response to a crackdown on protests, he founded Viasna (Spring) to provide support for the incarcerated demonstrators and their families. Last year, it was reported that Bialiatski had been denied contact with his lawyer and relatives, and was being held in a cell-type room. Recently it has been reported that his health is deteriorating yet medicines being provided by his family are not reaching him in jail. Learn more about Bialiatski's work: https://lnkd.in/g9-cXpAv