Maathai creates history with Nobel award

Royalty, scientists, business leaders and diplomats gathered in the capitals of Sweden and Norway today to honour this year’s 12 Nobel laureates from Kenya, Austria, Israel and the United States.

Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to receive the peace prize for her work fighting for the environment and the rights of women and children. She accepted a gold medal, a diploma, along with 10 million kronor (E1.2m), from Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

In her lecture, she warned that expanding peace was dependent on tackling threats to the world’s environment.

The other Nobel prizes – for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics – were awarded in the Swedish capital.

Bengt Samuelsson, chairman of the board of the Nobel Foundation, addressed the frequently heard criticism that too few women have received the Nobel Prize over the years. While only 31 of the 705 Nobel Prizes handed out since 1901 have gone to women, Samuelsson pointed out that three of this year’s laureates are women.

The awards ceremony at Stockholm’s concert hall was followed by a lavish banquet at nearby City Hall.

More than 1,300 guests, including the laureates’ families, Sweden’s royal family, government officials, ambassadors, scientists and business leaders, were invited to the Stockholm dinner, which – like the awards ceremony – was carried live on Swedish television.

Nearly 1,000 dignitaries, including the Norwegian royal family, attended the peace prize ceremony in Oslo with Maathai.

Noticeably absent this year in Stockholm was the literature prize winner, Austrian Elfriede Jelinek, who stayed away from the Nobel festivities this week citing a social phobia. Although she sent a pre-recorded video lecture, she did not send any prepared remarks for the banquet.

Presenting her award, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said the writer has “given new currency to a heretical feminine tradition and have expanded the art of literature.”

Americans Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck won the medicine prize for their work on the sense of smell. Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek won the physics prize for their explanation of the force that binds particles inside the atomic nucleus.

Their breakthrough came with a completely new mathematical theory, including a minus sign where previously tested theories gave an incorrect positive sign.

“Seldom has a negative result had such a positive effect,” said Lars Brink, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize.

The chemistry prize was awarded to Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose for their work in discovering a process that lets cells destroy unwanted proteins.

“We can now understand at molecular level how the cell controls a number of central biochemical processes,” said academy member Lars Thelander when presenting the award.

Norwegian Finn E. Kydland and American Edward C. Prescott received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for shedding light on how government policies and actions affect economies worldwide.

The economics prize was introduced in 1968 and is funded by Sweden’s central bank. The other awards are funded by the Nobel Foundation.

The Nobel Prizes are usually announced in October and are handed out every year on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. The first awards ceremony took place in 1901.