Several million Swedish kronor, an honorary title, worldwide fame, authority and respect in society. This is a short summary of receiving in Stockholm or Oslo the most prestigious prize in the world - the Nobel Prize. The list of Nobel laureates, counting down since 1901, includes several dozen people who are directly or indirectly related to Russia / Soviet Union / RF.
Instructions
Step 1
The history of the Nobel Prize began at the end of the 19th century. In 1896, the famous Swedish industrialist, "arms king" Alfred Nobel died. Nobel is famous primarily for the fact that he received over 350 patents for his inventions. Including dynamite. By the way, several of his enterprises supplying weapons were located in Russia and worked for the tsarist army.
Step 2
Before his death, Alfred Nobel drew up a will, according to which part of his huge fortune - 31 million Swedish kronor - was to go towards the establishment of special prizes. They could be paid only for outstanding achievements in various fields of science and culture that benefited all of humanity and were not aimed at creating weapons.
Step 3
Four of the most respected scientific organizations in Sweden and Norway were charged with identifying the Nobel laureates. In their capitals, Stockholm and Oslo, the annual awarding of the Nobel Prize and Medal takes place. Moreover, the Swedish side presents awards for contributions to world literature, medicine and physiology, physics, chemistry and economics, and the Norwegian side - for strengthening peace on the planet. The debut ceremony took place on the day of the fifth anniversary of the death of the founder of the premium fund - December 10, 1901 in Stockholm.
Step 4
She did without the Russians. In particular, the Nobel Committee found it impossible to award the writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. Physicist and chemist Maria Sklodowska-Curie became the first laureate related to Russia two years later. Living and working in France, the Polish woman Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Therefore, from childhood she had her citizenship, and then her passport.
Step 5
In 1903, Maria received an award from the Nobel Committee for "outstanding achievements in joint research of radiation phenomena." The first Russian in the honorary list, and not only by residence and citizenship, but also by origin, is the outstanding researcher of conditioned reflexes Ivan Pavlov. The rationale for his award, received a year after Sklodowska, was the wording "For work on the physiology of digestion."
Step 6
Soon there was the first, but not the last, refusal to enter the stage of the traditional awards ceremony of the Stockholm City Hall. The 1906 prize flatly refused, this time himself, albeit through an intermediary, the classic of Russian and world literature Leo Tolstoy. The words of Lev Nikolayevich, almost 80 years old at that time, went down in history: "Money can only bring evil!" As a result, the prize for literature was given to the Italian poet Carducci.
Step 7
There are not very many "full-fledged" citizens of Russia and the USSR in the list of those awarded by the committee - 20 people who have won 16 awards in different years. By the way, 20 times less than Americans. Moreover, all our compatriots, with the exception of Ivan Pavlov and the 1906 Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine, biologist and immunologist Ilya Mechnikov, got into it after the end of World War II.
Step 8
The largest representation among Soviet and Russian physicists is eleven people. In particular, in 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Igor Tamm and Ilya Frank received the prize. In 1962, Lev Landau became the laureate. Two years later, the awarded colleagues from Scandinavia were Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. And in 1978, the triumph of Pyotr Kapitsa, the discoverer of the fluidity of liquid helium, took place.
Step 9
In modern Russian history, physicists Zhores Alferov (2000), Alexei Abrikosov and Vitaly Ginzburg (2003), who celebrated his only 40th birthday, Konstantin Novoselov (2010), made a solemn speech on the stage of the City Hall of the Swedish capital. It is known that the latter was accompanied at the awards ceremony by his teacher and colleague, a former citizen of the USSR, and now a Dutchman, Andrei Geim.
Step 10
The newly minted British sisters Game and Novoselov, natives of Nizhny Tagil and Sochi, respectively, invented graphene - a material that is a monatomic layer of carbon. By the way, another Soviet physicist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 was not only a world famous scientist, one of those who created the hydrogen bomb, but also a dissident human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.
Step 11
Prizes in literature were awarded to three Soviet writers - Boris Pasternak, who rejected it in 1958 (later it was transferred to his son), who refused, but later received another dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1970), as well as the author of Quiet Don, Mikhail Sholokhov (1965). By the way, the famous Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz was a citizen of Russia at the time of the award in 1905.
Step 12
In addition, the chemist Nikolai Semenov (1956), the economist Leonid Kantorovich (1975) and the 1990 Peace Prize winner, the only president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, received honorary medals and millions of crowns. The prestigious awards of Scandinavian scientists were awarded to the professional activity of several other Russians. Let them all left the country in due time, becoming emigrants.
Step 13
Among the latter, in particular, the writer Ivan Bunin (1933), who lived in France without citizenship, appears, the microbiologist and biochemist Zelman Waxman (1952), the economists Simon Kuznets (1971), Vasily Leontiev (1973) and Leonid Gurvich (2007), the politician Menachem Begin (1978), chemist Ilya Prigogine (1977) and poet Joseph Brodsky (1987).
