Word: nobelity
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...Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was sure his creation would help bring about the end of war. "When two armies of equal strength can annihilate each other in an instant," he once wrote, "then all civilized nations will retreat and disband their troops." Things didn't quite go according to plan. What has worked out, however, is the annual set of awards, established in 1901, that bear his name. They remain the most prestigious intellectual awards in the world. On Dec. 11, 2009, President Obama will travel to Oslo to accept the 90th Nobel Peace Prize, an honor that...
...lifelong bachelor, Nobel lived a solitary life and spent most of his time tinkering with inventions, amassing 355 patents by the time he died in 1896. Following Nobel's death, his executors discovered that he had secretly created five annual prizes - for chemistry, physics, literature, medicine and peace - in his will to honor "the greatest benefit on mankind." It all came as quite a surprise. "It took five years to get the prizes started, because everyone had to figure it all out," says Hans Jornvall, secretary of the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden - the group that chooses...
Each award is decided by separate institutions which form assemblies to select the actual prize recipients. Some prizes (medicine) require Nobel assembly members to remain active in their fields, while others (literature) appoint members for life. The Peace Prize is actually decided by five members of the Norwegian parliament. Nobel Prize winners must be living; there are no posthumous awards. Each year, the Nobel committees distribute nomination forms to an undisclosed number of recipients - past winners, prominent institutions, respected members of the field - who are allowed to choose as many nominees as they want. Self-nomination is not permitted...
...Harvard activities, house life is by far the most mystifying. Harvard students love summer internships in finance, panels arbitrated by Nobel laureates, and painful comp processes. Yet unlike any of these, house life is not for anything. You can’t put the fact that you went to a house formal on your resume. “IM dodgeball” is not a marketable skill. And the people you play pool with in the basement are never going to secure you a position with Goldman Sachs...
Elie Wiesel Nobel Peace Prize--winning author and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University...