Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and philanthropist who gave away a lot of his money to charity. He invented the dynamite and smokeless gun powder among many other things. Using his invention, explosives of all kinds were being manufactured all over the world. This way, he became very rich. He was worried about what people would think of him because of how he made his fortune. He had no wife or children to give his fortune to. So, before died in 1896, he made a will and donated all his fortune to a prize fund named after him.
The Nobel prize was set up to recognize curiosity, creativity, courage and outstanding achievements that brought the greatest benefit to humankind. The winners are called Nobel Laureates. It is given in five categories: Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Literature and Peace. A 6th prize for economics was added to the list in 1969. Every year, each Nobel Prize is announced on different dates. These dates fall in the second week of October. The prizes are awarded in December. The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. All other prizes are awarded at a banquet in Stockholm, Sweden. Each category can be won by up to three people. Only the Peace Prize can be awarded to an organization. Each winner gets a unique gold medal, a hand-crafted diploma and a large sum of money.
This year’s Laureates are:
The most optimistic player would estimate a large value and pay an amount much more than the true value of the jar to buy it. This is called a “winner’s curse." The person that won the estimate is actually one that lost because they paid much more than the actual worth of the jar. Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson have worked to improve this bidding process.
Why is all this relevant for us to know? The Nobel Prize website has lots of resources that explain all the outstanding contributions in a kid-friendly way. Learning about this can be very inspiring to us and we can aspire to make contributions to humankind in our own unique way!
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