The Nobel Prize announcements 2020

What is the Nobel Prize?

The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural or scientific advances. The Nobel Prize is awarded by the following institutions for the respective categories:

• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the:
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry
  • Nobel Prize in Physics
  • Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
• The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the:
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• The Swedish Academy grants the:
  • Nobel Prize in Literature
• The Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the:
  • Nobel Peace Prize

Recipients of the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace were first awarded in 1901 per the will of the Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist, Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). The prizes are highly regarded as the most prestigious awards in their respective fields.

Who are the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prizes?

The 2020 Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace were announced between 05. – 12. October. The recipients are as follows:

• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced by Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General for the Nobel Assembly and the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. It was awarded jointly to:

Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice, for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.

• The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced by Göran K. Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It was awarded with one half to:

Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, UK for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany and University of California, Berkeley, USA, and to Andrea Ghez, University of California, Los Angeles, USA for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced by Göran K. Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It was awarded to:
  
  

Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany and Jennifer A. Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, USA for the development of a method for genome editing.

• The Nobel Prize in Literature was announced by Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. It was awarded to:

The American poet Louise Glück for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.

• The Nobel Peace Prize was announced by Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. It was awarded to: 

The World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.

• The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was announced by Göran K. Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on Monday 12 October.

Paul R. Milgrom, Stanford University, USA and Robert B. Wilson, Stanford University, USA for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.

For the full press releases to the 2020 Nobel Prizes, please visit: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/about/prize-announcement-dates/.

For students looking to find the best study programme for them, visit our study subjects pages to compare universities. U-Multirank offers personalised rankings across 28 study subjects, including three of the Nobel Prize categories: chemistry, physics and medicine.