On This Day in History...
Why are the Nobel Prizes always given out on the 10th of December?
Barack Obama
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Swedish chemist
Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896. In his will he left instructions for the establishment of a foundation which would award monetary prizes to people who did outstanding work in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and for the promotion of world peace. Today, Barack Obama becomes the third sitting American president to win the
Nobel Peace Prize. Elinor Ostrom becomes the first female laureate of the Prize in Economic Sciences. Other Nobel Prize trivia tidbits: the youngest laureate is Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 years old when he received the Nobel Prize in Physics along with his father, in 1915. Leonid Hurwicz was, at 90, the oldest recipient of a Nobel Prize — the 2007 Prize in Economic Sciences. Two Nobel laureates declined the honor: Jean-Paul Sartre, who on principle turned down all official honors, declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature; and Le Duc Tho, co-recipient, with Henry Kissinger, of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, declined the award saying that he could not accept a reward for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord, given the situation in Vietnam at the time.
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I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends." — José Saramago