How Nobel Prize Winners are Selected

When the Nobel winners are announced each October, a year’s work is behind their selection. Selfishly, Norbert and I are partial to the Medicine and Physiology Prize and Chemistry Prize.  The winners are usually chosen based on paradigm changing work and work that advances humankind.  

Every September, before even the current winners are announced, nominations for the next year begin. For example, previous winners, professors, members of certain Nobel committees are allowed to nominate. You can’t name yourself or someone dead and by the end of January, the forms are due. Then experts in each field take eight months to review the nominations and produce a report.  

For the Chemistry prize, the reports are sent to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and Nobel Committee that September. The Committee then tries to reach consensus on the finalists. For the Medicine or Physiology Prize, the laureates are selected by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute.  No one is allowed to challenge these final decisions.  

US Nobel honorees get a personal call in the middle of the night since the news is announced in the afternoon in Sweden. In December, a ceremony is held at the Stockholm Concert Hall where the Swedish King hands out the Nobel Medal. Afterwards, a banquet is thrown in Stockholm City Hall where gold mosaic tiles adorn the room. There in the Gold Room the winners can contemplate their remarkable achievements backed by a million-dollar prize.