The 2022 Nobel Prizes are being announced this week after secret deliberations by the award committees. Here’s a look at which prizes have been announced so far, which ones are coming up and what’s next for the winners.
LITERATURE
The Swedish Academy on Thursday gave the Nobel Prize in literature to French writer Annie Ernaux for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” Ernaux, 82, has written more than 20 books, most of them very short, chronicling events in her life and the lives of those around her. Her work paints uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.
CHEMISTRY
The Nobel Prize in chemistry was jointly awarded on Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for their work on click chemistry, a field of research that can be used to design better medicines. Sharpless is a repeat winner: He won the chemistry prize also in 2001.
PHYSICS
The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger. The trio shared the prize for discovering the way that unseen particles, known as photons, can be linked, or “entangled” with each other, even when they are separated by large distances.
MEDICINE
The medicine or physiology prize is by tradition the first Nobel to be announced. This year's award went to Swedish scientist Svante Paabo for discoveries about human evolution achieved through analyses of the DNA of Neanderthals and other ancient relatives of modern humans.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The 2022 Nobel Prize announcements continue Friday with the Nobel Peace Prize. The final announcement comes Monday with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which is not an original Nobel Prize but was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968.
WHAT DO THE WINNERS RECEIVE?
Nobel Prize laureates are invited to receive their awards at prize ceremonies held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of award founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. The prize includes a diploma, a gold medal and a monetary award of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $900,000). The Nobel Peace Prize is handed out in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, while the other awards are presented in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, in line with Nobel's wishes.
