Some of the recipients

Recipent of the Nobel prize for chemistry

Recipient  of the Nobel Prize for economics

Hayek, Friedrich August von (1899-1992), Austrian-born economist and Nobel laureate. Born in Vienna, von Hayek earned a doctorate at Vienna University in 1927 and spent some years in public service. He began a long academic career by holding the post of professor of economics and statistics at the University of London (1931-50); subsequently he was professor of moral and economic science at the University of Chicago (1950-62). An economic traditionalist, von Hayek won a wide reputation with The Road to Serfdom (1944), in which he argued that governments should not intervene in the control of inflation or other economic matters. He retired in 1962 but was later appointed professor of economics at the University of Freiburg, in West Germany (now part of Germany). Returning to Austria in 1969, he became visiting professor at the University of Salzburg. In 1974 he and the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal received the Nobel Prize in economic science for their “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic luctuations and for their pioneering analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena.   

The Recipient  of the Nobel Prize for literature

Galsworthy, John (1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was one of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century. He was born in Kingston Hills, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890 but soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early works under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned principally with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently find their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal, sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and with questions of social justice. Most of his novels deal with the history, from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th century, of an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The principal member of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the drive of his class for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive that often conflicts with human values. The Forsyte series includes The Man of Property (1906), the novelette “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (pub. in the collection Five Tales,1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening  (1920), and To Let (1921). These five titles were published as The Forsyte Saga (1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), which were published together under the title A Modern Comedy (1929). These were followed in turn by Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932), and Over the River (1933), published together posthumously as End of the Chapter (1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice  (1910), The Pigeon (1912), Old English (1924), and The Roof (1929). Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in literature.

The Recipient  of the Nobel Prize for physics

Landau, Lev Davidovich (1908-68), Soviet theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, noted chiefly for his pioneer work in low-temperature physics (cryogenics). He was born in Baku, and educated at the universities of Baku and Leningrad. In 1937  Landau became professor of theoretical physics at the S. I. Vavilov Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. His development of the mathematical theories that explain how superfluid helium behaves at temperatures near absolute zero earned him the 1962  Nobel Prize in physics. His writings on a wide variety of subjects relating to physical phenomena include some 100 papers and many books, among which is the widely known nine-volume Course of Theoretical Physics, published in 1943  with Y. M. Lifshitz. In January 1962, he was gravely injured in an automobile accident; he was several times considered near death and suffered a severe impairment of memory. By the time of his death he had been able to make only a partial recovery.

The recipient  of the Nobel Prize for peace

Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and formerly the ruler of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.

 The first to bear the title of Dalai Lama was Sonam Gyatso, grand lama of the Drepung monastery and leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect, who received it in 1578 from the Mongol chief Altan Khan; it was then applied retroactively to the previous leaders of the sect. In 1642 another Mongol chief, Gushri Khan, installed the fifth Dalai Lama as Tibet's spiritual and temporal ruler. His successors governed Tibet—first as tributaries of the Mongols, but from 1720 to 1911 as vassals of the emperor of China.

 When the Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950, they came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. He left the country after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1959 and thereafter lived in India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading the nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese rule in Tibet. In 1995 the Dalai Lama came into conflict with Chinese authorities over the identification of a new Panchen Lama (the second most senior Tibetan religious authority). In 1996 he published Violence and Compassion, in which he and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriиre consider topics of political and spiritual interest.