October 16, 2019

Last week, World Book looked at the Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry. Today, we present the Nobel Prize winners in literature, peace, and economics. Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who—in keeping with the vision of the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel—have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

On October 10, the 2019 Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to the Austrian writer Peter Handke. Handke, an accomplished playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, was rewarded for his “influential work” and “linguistic ingenuity” in exploring human experience. On the same day, the 2018 literature prize (which was delayed over a scandal involving a foundation member) was given to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk for her “narrative imagination” and “encyclopedic passion” representing all walks of life.

On Oct. 11, 2019, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for his successful efforts to create peace between his nation and neighboring Eritrea. In July 2018, Ahmed negotiated “a joint declaration of peace and friendship” with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, resolving a dispute that had festered since Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia and became an independent nation in 1993. Since coming to office in April 2018, Ahmed has also restored democratic freedoms within Ethiopia.

On Oct. 14, 2019, the Nobel Prize for economics was given to the United States-based economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for creating an “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” Banerjee and Duflo (who are married and serve as professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) worked with the Harvard University academic Kremer to find scientific solutions to improve education and children’s health around the world. They broke large issues into simple questions and then searched for practical answers to those questions that could be instituted on a grand scale.

October 10, 2018

On Friday, October 5, gynecologist Denis Mukwege and human rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” On Monday, October 8, the Nobel Prize for economic sciences went to United States economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for integrating technological innovation and climate change with economic growth.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

Denis Mukwege has spent much of his life helping the victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Working from the Panzi Hospital in the far-eastern city of Bukavu, Mukwege and his staff have treated thousands of sexual assault victims. Most of the abuses were committed during a civil war that killed millions of people in the late 1990′s and 2000′s. Nadia Murad is a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. In 2014, Islamic State terrorists attacked Murad’s village, killed hundreds of people, and abducted Murad and other young Yazidi women and held them as sex slaves. Murad was repeatedly raped and abused before she managed to escape. Murad then began raising awareness of the horrors and traumas that she had experienced. Sexual violence in war and armed conflict is a grave violation of international law.

William Nordhaus is an economics professor at Yale University. He created an “integrated assessment model” that shows how economy and climate change together over time. Paul Romer teaches at the New York University Stern School of Business. He has demonstrated how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations.