15 Curiosities about the Nobel Prizes awarded to women throughout history

The businessman Alfred Nobel, known for the invention of dynamite, was responsible for creating the award that bears his name and that the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden has given annually since 1901. Since then, until the 2019 edition, a total of 53 women ( among 866 men) were awarded in different categories: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace (the last one is the only one chosen by a Norwegian committee).

As a tribute to their effort and dedication, the awesome.club gathered interesting facts and facts about some women who shone in their areas and became courageous voices for a better world. Check out!

Marie Curie and the Nobel Prize are practically synonymous. The French nationalized Polish woman was the first woman to obtain this distinction in 1903, due to her studies on radiation. She is also the only person to have managed to obtain this award on more than one occasion, as in 1911 she won it in Chemistry (the previous one was in Physics) for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium.

Among the contributions of the scientist, who was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, the construction of portable x-ray machines that allowed radiological studies on the battlefront during the First World War stands out. He died at the age of 66, due to exposure to radiation during his work.

Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie (also winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903) had two daughters: Irène and Ève Denise. The second was a recognized writer, while the first received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for achieving the synthesis of new radioactive elements.

She studied physics and chemistry at the University of Paris, was a French government official in scientific research, and worked as her mother’s assistant. There she met her husband, Frédéric Joliot, with whom she jointly won the Nobel Prize. Her studies contributed to the construction of reactors to obtain nuclear energy.

The Chilean Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, in recognition of her poetry, which “made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”. She was the first Latin American woman to achieve the distinction and the second Latin American person after Argentine Carlos Saavedra Lamas, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.

The other representative of the region to win such an award was the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú, awarded in 1992 for her struggle to respect the rights of indigenous peoples. A political and human rights activist, she was a mediator in the peace process between her country’s government and the guerrillas.

The youngest Nobel Prize winner is Malala Yousafzai, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for women’s education in the world and especially in her home country, Pakistan. Earlier, this record among women was by Tawakkul Karman. The Yemeni journalist succeeded in 2011, aged 32, for her defense of women’s political rights.

Malala’s campaign got an international buzz in 2012 when, under a pseudonym, she began writing a blog for the British BBC about her life under Taliban occupation. Three years later, she was attacked by this fundamentalist group, and after recovering, she became an active representative of the United Nations and other international organizations.

One of the most particular cases among Nobel Peace Prize winners is that of Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi. She received it in 1991 “for the non-violent struggle for democracy” in her country, governed at the time by a military junta. There were two other people who distinguished themselves while in prison: German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo (2010).

But what makes this situation peculiar is that Aung San Suu Kyi went from being applauded to being criticized when she came to power in Burma in 2016. Other Nobel Peace Prize winners, human rights organizations and political leaders demanded that she away, accusing her of inaction in the face of the mass exodus of the Rohinyá, a Muslim minority.

The second woman to win a Nobel and the first to win it for peace was the Austrian Baroness Bertha von Suttner, in 1905. She grew up in an aristocratic environment that celebrated military traditions, but spent much of her life criticizing it. This was reflected in her most famous novel, Down with weapons!which became a classic of the international peace movement.

Her family’s economic problems and her refusal to marry a well-established person just for her wealth drove her to work. In 1976, for two weeks, she was secretary to Alfred Nobel, promoter of the award that bears her surname. Although it was only for a short time, both maintained a friendship and continued to exchange letters for several years.

Her name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, but the world knew her as Mother Teresa of Calcutta. His humanitarian work in India, helping poor, orphaned and sick people for over 45 years, has earned him several international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1979.

After her death, which occurred in 1997, Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2003, a process in which the Catholic Church certifies the virtues that a person had during their lifetime. It was the step before her canonization, approved by Pope Francis, in which she was declared a saint.

Only two women have won the Nobel Prize in Economics. The first was the American Elinor Ostrom, in 2009, for demonstrating the success that the so-called common goods, those controlled by communities or society, can have. It overthrew the traditional theory that held that these types of assets require state intervention or privatization in order to be well managed.

The second to get this same award was the French Esther Duflo, in 2019, for her “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. An adviser to the former US president, she has studied the impact that public policies have on low-income families. For example, the increase in vaccination of children was the result of the incentive to offer a packet of lentils in exchange.

Nadia Murad Basee Taha was 19 years old when she was kidnapped along with several young women by the Islamic State in her hometown of Iraq. She was a sex slave for several months until she managed to escape after her captor forgot to lock the door to the place where she was being held captive.

Now free, she became a central voice to denounce the abuses committed against her minority, called Yazidí, and human trafficking during the war. In 2018, the Norwegian Committee recognized the achievement and awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize “for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon in wars and armed conflicts”.

Although women remain a minority when it comes to Nobel Prize recognition, 2009 was the year they received the most awards, in all 5. In addition to the renowned Elinor Ostrom in Economics, biochemists Elizabeth Blackburn (Australian) and Carol Greider ( americana) took him into Medicine for his work on the functioning of chromosomes.

In turn, the chemist Ada Yonath (Israeli) was awarded in the Chemistry category for her study of cellular particles called ribosomes, and the novelist Herta Müller (born in Romania and naturalized German) won the prize in Literature for her ability to describe “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, the landscape of the dispossessed”.

Almost a third of the Nobel Prizes won by women are for Peace. In total, they have received 17 of these distinctions throughout history. Highlights include Jane Addams (feminist and social work pioneer), Emily Greene Balch (central figure of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire (led the process that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland) and Alva Myrdal (diplomat who promoted disarmament policies).

Others recognized are Jody Williams (worked to ban anti-personnel mines), Shirin Ebadi (women’s and children’s rights activist) and Wangari Maathai (contributed to democracy in her home country of Kenya). In 2011, there was an unprecedented event and 3 women were awarded together (pictured above): Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (former President of Liberia, first woman to hold this position in Africa), Leymah Gbowee (key in peacemaking also in Liberia) and Tawakkul Karman (face of the so-called Arab Spring in Yemen).

The last Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Polish Olga Tokarczuk, in 2018. The first one arrived 109 years earlier, in 1909, and went to the Swedish Selma Lagerlöf. Among them, there is a list of important authors: Grazia Deledda, Sigrid Undset, Pearl Buck, the Chilean Gabriela Mistral, Nelly Sachs, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Wisława Szymborska and Elfriede Jelinek.

One of the most internationally recognized writers to be awarded was Doris Lessing (pictured above), author of The Golden Notebook, among other novels. Herta Müller, Alice Munro and Svetlana Aleksiévich, author of the documentary book Voices from Chernobylwhich was translated into several languages ​​and became one of the testimonial bases of the recent HBO series.

The Curie family contributed 2 of the 5 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry won by women. Marie succeeded in 1911; her daughter Irène, in 1935, and the following in 1964, thanks to the work of the British Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, who, through X-ray techniques, managed to identify the structure of vitamin B12, penicillin and insulin

It took a long time for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to reward a woman again. It was in 2009, for the Israeli Ada Yonath, awarded for her study on cellular particles called ribosomes. The last one was delivered in 2018 and was received by the American Frances Arnold (pictured above) “for the directed evolution of enzymes”.

The recognition of women is less in the exact sciences. As in chemistry and physics there are few scientists awarded the Nobel Prize: only 3 and, in all…