07/12/2022

Why isn't there a Nobel Prize in mathematics?

Rio de Janeiro – Exposição sobre o Prêmio Nobel na Fundação Getúlio Vargas. (Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil)

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S. Paulo.

There are all sorts of legends about why there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics. It's said that Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), the Swedish industrialist who bequeathed most of his fortune to the creation of the famous prizes, disliked his compatriot, the mathematician Magnus Gustav Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927). That part is true, he really didn't like him. That he didn't create it for fear that someone else would win is a stretch. And that there's a story about a romance between the two. Which, according to my Swedish colleagues, is absurd.

The correct answer is also the simplest: Nobel couldn't create prizes for all areas of knowledge and activity! Based on his personal trajectory as a chemist and inventor, distressed by the military use of his greatest discovery, dynamite, he chose the five themes that seemed to him most directly linked to the progress of humanity: chemistry , physics , physiology or medicine , literature , and peace .

In fact, what we know as the "Nobel Prize in Economics" is not of his authorship . The official name is "Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" and it is a late creation of the Central Bank of Sweden, which finances it. It was first awarded in 1969, while the five prizes created by Nobel have been awarded since 1901. But, at this point, its prestige is comparable to that of the original prizes.

The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually, and their current value is 10 million Swedish kronor, a little over R$ 5 million, which can be shared by up to three people or, in the case of the Peace Prize, organizations. To date, the six prizes have been awarded on 615 occasions to 989 laureates, including 61 women.

It is possible to win more than once, but it is very rare: only five people and two organizations have achieved this feat to date. Among them, the scientist Marie Curie, awarded the Physics prize in 1903 and the Chemistry prize in 1911.

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website.