Scientists, writers and brokers of peace around the world will be holding their breath for a potentially life-altering, US$1.5 million phone call from Scandinavia this week.
Goran Hansson will dial the first one.
"Sometimes they think that I'm joking," said Hansson, secretary of the Nobel Prize committee for medicine. He will announce the first of the 2011 Nobels today, after he calls the winners.
"I usually speak to them a few minutes," he said. "And tell them a little bit about the ceremony and so on and then I advise them to make some coffee, catch their breath and prepare a little bit before the media starts calling them."
The Nobel Prizes, given out annually since 1901, reward groundbreaking achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize is strictly speaking not a Nobel Prize, because it was not in the 1895 will of award creator Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist. It was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank in Nobel's memory.
All prizes are announced in Stockholm except for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, in line with Nobel's wishes. During his lifetime, Norway was in a union with Sweden.
While the literature and peace prizes generate the most buzz, the science awards can have a bigger impact on the recipients. Many of them have toiled for decades with little recognition outside their fields of research, when suddenly they are thrust into the global media spotlight.
Speculation surrounding this year's peace prize revolves around the revolutions sweeping Arab countries.
Writers typically considered among the favorites for the literature prize include Syrian poet Adonis, Canadians Margaret Atwood and Alice Munroe, South Korea's Ko Un and American authors Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and Thomas Pynchon.
Goran Hansson will dial the first one.
"Sometimes they think that I'm joking," said Hansson, secretary of the Nobel Prize committee for medicine. He will announce the first of the 2011 Nobels today, after he calls the winners.
"I usually speak to them a few minutes," he said. "And tell them a little bit about the ceremony and so on and then I advise them to make some coffee, catch their breath and prepare a little bit before the media starts calling them."
The Nobel Prizes, given out annually since 1901, reward groundbreaking achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize is strictly speaking not a Nobel Prize, because it was not in the 1895 will of award creator Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist. It was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank in Nobel's memory.
All prizes are announced in Stockholm except for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, in line with Nobel's wishes. During his lifetime, Norway was in a union with Sweden.
While the literature and peace prizes generate the most buzz, the science awards can have a bigger impact on the recipients. Many of them have toiled for decades with little recognition outside their fields of research, when suddenly they are thrust into the global media spotlight.
Speculation surrounding this year's peace prize revolves around the revolutions sweeping Arab countries.
Writers typically considered among the favorites for the literature prize include Syrian poet Adonis, Canadians Margaret Atwood and Alice Munroe, South Korea's Ko Un and American authors Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and Thomas Pynchon.
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