Nobel Prize 2020: Uniquely Significant for Social Welfare, Women Empowerment, and Gender Equality

One of the most esteemed awards given for intellectual achievements in the world is nothing but the Nobel Prize, which is awarded annually from a fund granted for the purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel.

Every year, this prestigious award is announced in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Economics, and the distinguished service to humanity, commonly known as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Physiology/ Medicine: This year, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to American medical researchers and virologists – Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice and British scientist Michael Houghton to discover Hepatitis C Virus.

And this discovery has revealed the unknown causes of Chronic Hepatitis. As a result of this discovery, highly sensitive blood tests for the virus and new medicines are available now. Now, we are hopeful that one day this infectious disease would be eradicated.

Physics: The Nobel Prize winners of 2020 for Physics are three astrophysicists – Roger Penrose from the UK, Reinhard Genzel from Germany, and Andrea Mia Ghez from the USA.

One half of the prize has been given to Roger Penrose to discover that a black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.

And the other half of the prize has been given to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Mia Ghez to discover a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky way galaxy.

Andrea Mia Ghez is the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Chemistry: Researchers Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Anne Doudna of the USA have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, which is one of the sharpest tools of gene technology and will help to improve cancer therapies.

And the most important and exciting thing about the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 2020, is that a women team has been awarded a Nobel Science Prize for the first time.

Peace: This year, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the World Food Programme or WFP (which is an agency of United Nations) for their remarkable efforts to combat hunger, bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas, and preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict. And WEP’s efforts have made a remarkable instance to eradicate hunger, which is one of the UN’s missions.

Economic Sciences: The Nobel Prize winners for Economic Sciences, 2020, are none other than the American economist’s Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for their work on commercial auctions, i.e., improvement of the auction theory and invention of new auction formats for the auctioning of many interrelated objects.

Literature: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 has been awarded to the USA poet Louise Glück ‘for her unmistakable voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.’

Her poetry focuses on the unfortunate realities of being human, dealing with themes such as death, childhood, and family life.

Louis Glück is the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and the sixteenth woman Nobel Laureate.

The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and One Million Swedish Crowns, but this year the prize money has increased to Ten Million Swedish Crowns.

Traditionally, in the earlier years, the coveted prize winners were invited to the Swedish capital Stockholm for talks and the award ceremony. Still, this year the ‘Nobel Banquet’ has been canceled for the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic situation. The award winners will be honored, especially in their own countries, by the Nobel Committee.

And finally, it is imperative to discuss the significance of The Nobel Prize, 2020, on the ground of not only social welfare but also on the field of Women Empowerment.
Earlier, women were not allowed to take science subjects as the society thought they could not do well in Science. So, for many, many years, the science subjects were beyond the women learners’ reach.

But, this year’s Nobel Prize Ceremony and the four women Nobel Laureates have shown us that a woman can shine in the field of Science as well as in the field of Literature.

So, which matters is not the gender rather the effort and the skills to shine in any field.

And so, we must not be gender-biased in any case, and obviously, in the case of education; instead, we must give every learner equal opportunity for humanity’s welfare.

Moreover, this year’s Nobel Prize will inspire every woman, every person, and also the upcoming generations to achieve their utmost achievements through their skills.

Written by Dyuti Banerjee.

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