Awards and Honors

On October 14, 2024, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson for their research on how institutions are formed and their impact on a nation’s prosperity. Their work demonstrates that societal institutions, especially those introduced during European colonization, play a crucial role in determining a country’s long-term economic success or stagnation.

They found that inclusive institutions, which benefit society as a whole, promote growth, while extractive institutions, which exploit the population for the benefit of those in power, hinder development. The laureates’ research also explains why reforms are often difficult to implement in countries with extractive institutions and why, in some cases, democratization occurs as a solution to this problem. Their work sheds light on the challenge of reducing global income disparities by emphasizing the critical role of institutions.

On October 11, 2024, Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization representing atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha) from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized their efforts to advocate for a nuclear-free world and their powerful witness testimonies, highlighting the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons.

The Hibakusha, as survivors of the only nuclear bombs ever used in conflict, have devoted their lives to the anti-nuclear cause. The award follows the Nobel Committee’s past focus on nuclear disarmament, including its 2017 award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The prize, valued at around $1 million, will be presented in Oslo on December 10, 2024, in honor of Alfred Nobel.

Q.: What is the full name of the organization that won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize?

a) Nihon Hidankyo
b) International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
c) United Nations
d) Greenpeace

Answer: a) Nihon Hidankyo
On October 11, 2024, Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization representing atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha) from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang for her powerful poetic prose that addresses historical traumas and highlights the fragility of human life. The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Han Kang is renowned for her novel The Vegetarian, which consists of three parts, and she is the first South Korean writer to receive this prestigious award. She began her literary career in 1993 with poems published in Literature and Society and made her prose debut in 1995 with the short story collection Love of Yeosu, followed by several other novels and short stories.

David Baker, John Jumper, and Demis Hassabis were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking contributions to protein structure research.

Baker received half of the prize for his work in computational protein design, where he developed new types of proteins. The other half was jointly awarded to Jumper and Hassabis for their role in creating an AI model that solved a long-standing challenge in predicting complex protein structures. Baker is based at the University of Washington, while Jumper and Hassabis are part of Google DeepMind in London.

U.S. scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work that laid the foundation for machine learning. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlighted that their discoveries, rooted in physics, have contributed to the development of artificial neural networks, which are revolutionizing various fields.

Hopfield, a Princeton professor, created an associative memory model that stores and reconstructs patterns, while Hinton, from the University of Toronto, developed methods that autonomously detect properties in data, enabling tasks like identifying elements in images.

Hinton, an AI pioneer, quit Google in 2023 to freely address the dangers of AI, expressing concerns about computers potentially surpassing human intelligence sooner than expected.

The prize includes 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million), shared between the winners. The Nobel Prize, established by Alfred Nobel’s will in 1901, is one of the most prestigious global honors for scientific achievements.

On October 7, 2024, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. This discovery is crucial for understanding how gene activity is regulated and how organisms develop and function.

The Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute made the announcement, highlighting the discovery’s fundamental importance. The winners will receive a prize of $1.1 million. This is the 115th Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine since 1901, with only 13 women among the 229 laureates.