INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS DETAILED LIST

INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS AND HISTORY OF NOBEL PRIZE:

There are 10 INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS as of now.out of 10 persons 5 are Indian citizens and 5 are Indian descents. Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to receive the Nobel prize in literature. Mother Teresa is the only woman from India to receive the Nobel prize. Mahatma Gandhi was nominated three times for Nobel prize for peace.

Before going to the topic let us know the history of the Nobel Prize.

HISTORY OF NOBEL PRIZE

NOBEL PRIZE FOUNDATION:

• The Nobel Prize was established in 1895 in five categories viz.PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, PEACE, PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICIN, AND LITERATURE on the name of Alfred Nobel who was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 21, 1833, into a family of engineers. He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor, who invented dynamite. He spared $9 million funds to establish by way of will to establish Nobel awards. The first Nobel Prize won in 1901 is still the world’s most prestigious.

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NOBEL PRIZE CATEGORIES:

• The Nobel Prize comprises a series of annual international prizes awarded for academic, cultural and scientific advances in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions. 

• The awards were first granted in 1901 in the fields of CHEMISTRY, LITERATURE, PEACE, PHYSICS, AND PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE.

• In 1968, the Swedish Central Bank, Sveriges Riksbank introduced Nobel prize for ECONOMICS.
• Thus the Nobel Prize is awarded in 6 categories every year.

• The awards are widely recognized in their respective fields as the best awards available in the world.

INTRODUCTION OF NOBEL PRIZE IN THE FIELD OF ECONOMICS:

• In 1968, the Swedish Central Bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in memory of Alfred Nobel, founded the Riksbank Sveriges Award for Economic Sciences.
• This prize was awarded by Sveriges Riksbank to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the bank in 1968 by the Nobel Foundation.
• In 1969, Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen received the first prize for economics.
• The Economics Prize is awarded in line with the same criteria as for the Nobel prizes that have been presented since 1901 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.

NOBEL PRIZE AWARDING BODIES:

INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS:

INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER OF INDIAN CITIZENS

Below are the Nobel Laureates who were Indian citizens when they won the Nobel Prize.

1.RABINDRANATH TAGORE – 1913 – LITERATURE 

• Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861–7 August 1941) who was also known for his sobriquets Gurudev, Kabi guru, and Biswakabi. 
• A polymath, writer, musician and artist from the Indian subcontinent.

• In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he revived Bengali literature and music and Indian art with historical modernity. 
• He became the first non-European and first Indian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for his work of Gitanjali’s “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”
• He is occasionally called the Bard of Bengal
• Two nations picked the compositions for his national anthems: Jana Gana Mana of India and Amar Shonar Bangla of Bangladesh. 
• His work also inspired the Sri Lankan national anthem.

2.CHANDRASHEKAR VENKATA RAMAN (C.V.RAMAN) – 1930 – PHYSICS

• Sir Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman (7 November 1888 –21 November 1970)was born in India (Tamil Nadu state).
• A physicist carried out groundbreaking work in light scattering which earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 and he was the first person in Asia to achieve this award.

• He pointed out that some of the deflected light changed wavelength and intensity as light passed through a transparent material.
• It was the Raman effect that caused this phänomenon, which was then called Raman scattering.
• In 1954, the Indian government awarded him the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civil honour.

 3.MOTHER TERESA – 1979- PEACE

• Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu born in Albanian on 26 August 1910  commonly known as Mother Teresa.
• After living in Skopje(now the capital of North Macedonia) for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to Calcutta in India in 1929, where she lived for most of her life.

• she honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
• In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for her service to people who are suffering from leprosy and those dying destitute through her charitable organization Nirmal Hridaya.
• Mother Teresa received the Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize in 1962.
• Mother Teresa was honoured with Bharat Ratna, prestigious and highest civilian award in India, by the government of India in 1980.

4.AMARTYA SEN – 1998 – ECONOMICS

• Amartya Kumar Sen was born 3 November 1933 is an Indian economist and philosopher.

• He was awarded the For his work in the fields of welfare, particularly poverty, democracy, growth and social welfare of people.
• Prof. Amartya Sen is the first person in Asia to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
• Prof. Amartya Sen was honoured with Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1999.

5.KAILASH SATYARTHI – 2014 – PEACE

• Kailash Satyarthi was born on 11 January 1954 in vidisha, a small town in the Madhya Pradesh.
• He is a well-known children’s rights activist from India.

• He is the founder of various movements aginst child rights in India and across the world, which includes Bachpan Bachao Andolan, Global Campaign for Education, Global March Against Child Labour.
• He has also founded  Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, and Rugmark is now known as GoodWeave International.
• Satyarthi was one of the 2015 Fortune magazine’s “World’s Greatest Leaders”.
• Kailash Satyarthi shares 2014 Nobel Prize in peace with Pakistani child activist Malala Yousafzai, Both of them are given this Nobel Peace Prize for their fight against the suppression of young people and children.

INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER OF INDIAN DESCENTS

The following Nobel laureates were born Indian, but they were citizens of a different country.

6.Dr. HAR GOBIND KHORANA – 1968 – MEDICINE

• Har Gobind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 in Raipur, India.
• He was an American biochemist who won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research in RNA.

• The 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared among Har Gobind Khorana, Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley.
• The United States honoured him with the prestigious  National Medal of Science in 1987.

 7.Dr. SUBRAMANIAN CHANDRASHEKAR- 1983 – PHYSICS

• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar  (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indo-American astrophysicist of Indian origin.

• He shares the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics with William A. Fowler for his theoretical studies of the structure and evolution of the stars,
• The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.
• The “Chandrasekhar limit,”  is now known as 1.4 times the mass of our sun, and a key to understanding evolution star in our universe. Beyond the limit, stars erupt into a supernova and crash into a neutron star or black hole at the end of their life.

8.Dr.VENKATARAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN – 2009 – CHEMISTRY

• Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born on 1 April 1952 a South Indian-born American and British structural biologist.

• He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath” for their study on  Ribosomes structure and function”. He was elected President of the Royal Society for a five-year term beginning in 2015.
• In 2010 Padma Vibhushan was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.

9.ABHIJIT VINAYAK BANERJEE – 2019 – ECONOMICS

• Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, born 21 February 1961 is an American Indian economist and professor of economics at the Institute of Technology of Massachusetts, a Ford Foundation. 

• Banerjee shared with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer the Nobel Prize in Economics for the experimental approach to global poverty alleviation in 2019. 
• He is the 6th married couple to win a Nobel Prize together with his wife Esther Duflo.

10.SIR VIDIADHAR SURAJPRASAD NAIPAUL – 2001 – LITERATURE 

• V.S. Naipaul was born on 17 August 1932. 
• He was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian English author of fiction and nonfiction.

• He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad.
• A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend In The River are very famous novels written by him.

S. Naipaul’s award list:

• 1971- the Booker Prize for his novel In a Free State
• 1989-  he was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago’s highest national honour.
• 1990- knighthood in Britain 
• 2001- the Nobel Prize in Literature.

INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS MIND MAP

Pictorial mind map of the INDIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS is provided to memorise easily .

SOME FACTS OF NOBEL PRIZE:

• The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to Henry Dunant (Switzerland) and Frédéric Passy (France).
• Madame Marie Curie shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with her husband Pierre Curie, they are the first couple to receive the Nobel Prize., Madame Marie Curie again won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, Switzerland received the Nobel Prize for Peace three times in 1917, 1944 and 1963

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• . Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan received the Nobel Prize for peace in 2014 is the youngest Nobel Laureates at the age of just 17 years.
• John B. Goodenough received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2019 is the oldest Nobel Laureates at the age of 97 years.
• John Bardeen is the only Nobel prize winner who received the Nobel Prize in Physics two times, in 1956 and 1972.
• Frederick Sanger is the only Nobel prize winner who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, in 1958 and 1980.
• All the Nobel prizes are presented to the awardees in Stockholm except the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel peace prize is presented in Oslo, Norway in the presence of the King of Norway on December 10, in memory of the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel.
• The award can be given to a maximum of three persons in the same field at the same time.
• Because of the world war -2, the Nobel prize was not awarded in 1940 and in 1942.

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