It’s that time again: Every year at the beginning of October, it is announced who will receive the Nobel Prizes – the highest and most prestigious award for scientists. Outstanding achievements in medicine, physics and chemistry are honored. There are other Nobel prizes for economics, peace and literature.
The origin of this annual award ceremony is the will of the chemist, dynamite inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel . According to his will, a foundation emerged from his fortune, which honors every year those “who have rendered the greatest benefit to mankind in the past year”.
Typically, the announcement of the Nobel Prizes is associated with great tension. As a rule, it is not even known who was nominated for the award. According to the regulations, a maximum of three people per subject can be awarded, and they must still be alive at the time the award is announced.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to Svante Pääbo, the pioneer and founder of paleogenetics. He and his team were the first to decode the genomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans, gaining valuable insights into these early humans and their relationship to us.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 goes to three physicists who have made significant contributions to the experimental study of quantum entanglement and its practical use: John Clausen and Alain Aspect for the experimental Bell test and Anton Zeilinger for the propagation of entanglement.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 goes to three scientists who invented and advanced what is known as “click chemistry” – a modular synthesis in which standardized reactions can produce almost any organic molecule from simple starting materials.
