This year’s Nobel Prize season approaches as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered decades of near-unbroken peace in Europe and raised the risk of a nuclear disaster.
The secretive Nobel committees never hint at who will win the prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics or peace. It’s anyone’s guess who might win the awards announced starting Monday.
Yet there is no shortage of pressing causes that deserve the attention that comes with winning the world’s most prestigious prize: wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia, disruptions in energy and food access, rising inequality, the climate crisis, the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic.
The science awards reward complex achievements beyond most people’s understanding. But the recipients of the prizes in peace and literature are often known to a global audience, and the choices β or perceived omissions β have sometimes provoked emotional reactions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chairs a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council in Kyiv on September 30, 2022.
Members of the European Parliament have called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to be recognized this year by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for their resistance to the Russian invasion.
While that desire is understandable, that choice is unlikely because the Nobel committee has a history of honoring people who end conflicts, not wartime leaders, said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Smith believes more likely peace prize candidates would be those fighting climate change or the International Atomic Energy Agency, a previous recipient. Honoring the IAEA again would recognize its efforts to prevent a radioactive disaster at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant amid fighting in Ukraine, and its work to combat nuclear proliferation, Smith said.
“This is a really difficult period in world history, and not a lot of peace is being made,” he said.
Promoting peace is not always rewarded with a Nobel. India’s Mohandas Gandhi, a prominent symbol of nonviolence, was never so honoured.
In some cases, the winners have not lived out the values ββfound in the peace prize.
Just this week, the Vatican admitted imposing disciplinary sanctions on Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo following allegations that he sexually abused boys in East Timor in the 1990s.
FILE – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addresses lawmakers in parliament in Addis Ababa, July 7, 2022.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea. A year later, a largely ethnic conflict erupted in the country’s Tigray region. Some blame Abiy for creating the tensions, which have resulted in widespread atrocities. Critics have called for his Nobel to be revoked, and the Nobel Committee has issued a rare admonition to him.
Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi won in 1991 for her opposition to military rule but decades later has been seen as failing to oppose atrocities committed against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.
For some years, no peace prize has been awarded. The Norwegian Nobel Committee paused them during World War I, except to honor the International Red Cross in 1917. It did not award any from 1939 to 1943 because of World War II. In 1948, the year Gandhi died, the committee made no award, citing the lack of a suitable living candidate.
The peace price does not always provide protection either.
Last year, journalists Maria Ressa from the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov from Russia were awarded “for their courageous fight for freedom of expression” in the face of authoritarian governments.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has cracked down even harder on independent media, including Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s best-known independent newspaper. Muratov himself was attacked on a Russian train by an assailant who poured red paint over him and injured his eyes.
The Philippines government this year ordered the shutdown of Ressa’s news organization, Rappler.
Meanwhile, the literary prize has been anything but predictable.
Few had bet on last year’s winner, Zanzibar-born, UK-based author Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose books explore the personal and societal effects of colonialism and migration.
Gurnah was only the sixth Nobel laureate for literature born in Africa, and the prize has long faced criticism for being too focused on European and North American writers. It is also male-dominated, with just 16 women among its 118 laureates.
FILE – Author Salman Rushdie talks about the start of his writing career, during the Mississippi Book Festival, in Jackson, Miss., Aug. 18, 2018.
One clear contender is Salman Rushdie, the India-born author and free speech advocate who spent years in hiding after Iran’s clerical rulers called for his death over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie, 75, was stabbed and seriously injured in August at a festival in upstate New York.
The list of possible winners includes literary giants from around the world: Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Japan’s Haruki Murakami, Norway’s Jon Fosse, Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid and France’s Annie Ernaux.
The awards to Gurnah in 2021 and American poet Louise Gluck in 2020 have helped the literary prize move on from years of controversy and scandal.
In 2018, the prize was postponed after allegations of sexual abuse rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel Literature Committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy renewed itself but drew more criticism for awarding the 2019 literature prize to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.
Some researchers hope the prize in physiology or medicine honors colleagues who have contributed to the development of the mRNA technology that went into COVID-19 vaccines, which saved millions of lives around the world.
“When we think of Nobel prizes, we think of things that are paradigm-shifting, and in a way I see mRNA vaccines and their success with covid-19 as a turning point for us,” said Deborah Fuller, a professor of microbiology at the University of Washington.
Physics can sometimes seem mysterious and difficult to understand for the general public. But for the past three years, the physics Nobel has honored more accessible subjects: computer models of climate change, black holes and planets outside our solar system.
Some harder-to-understand topics in physics – such as stopping light, quantum physics and carbon nanotubes – could win a Nobel Prize this year.
The Nobel announcements start on Monday with the prize in physiology or medicine, followed by physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 7 and the Economics Prize on October 10.
The awards have a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (closer to $900,000) and will be presented on December 10.