The Nobel Prize is an annual, international prize first awarded in 1901 for achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace, with an associated prize in Economics awarded since 1969. [1] As of November 2022, Nobel Prizes had been awarded to 954 individuals, [2] of whom 17 were black recipients (1.7% of the 954 individual recipients).
Black people have received awards in three of the six award categories: twelve in Peace (70.6% of the black recipients), four in Literature (23.5%), and one in Economics (5.9%). The first black recipient, Ralph Bunche, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. W. Arthur Lewis became the first black recipient of a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1979. The most recent black laureate, Abdulrazak Gurnah, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021.
Among the black Nobel laureates, three served as heads of state or government of their respective countries upon receiving the Nobel Prize, while one was awarded the prize before taking office. Those include Barack Obama of the United States and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, who were presidents, along with Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, who was prime minister; all of them were awarded the Peace Prize. In addition, Nelson Mandela of South Africa became a Nobel Peace laureate before being elected president.
Four black people have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
| Year | Image | Laureate | Country | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 |  | Wole Soyinka |  Nigeria | First black man to win the Nobel Prize for Literature [3] |
| 1992 |  | Derek Walcott |  Saint Lucia | |
| 1993 |  | Toni Morrison |  United States | First black woman to win a Nobel Prize [4] |
| 2021 |  | Abdulrazak Gurnah |  United Kingdom | Gurnah moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee following the Zanzibar Revolution [5] |
12 black people have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
| Year | Image | Laureate | Country | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 |  | Ralph Bunche |  United States | First black person to win a Nobel Prize [6] |
| 1960 |  | Albert John Luthuli |  South Africa | First black African to win a Nobel Prize |
| 1964 |  | Martin Luther King Jr. | United States | Youngest African American to win a Nobel Prize, at age 35 |
| 1984 |  | Desmond Tutu | South Africa | |
| 1993 |  | Nelson Mandela | South Africa | |
| 2001 |  | Kofi Annan |  Ghana | |
| 2004 |  | Wangari Maathai |  Kenya | First environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize |
| 2009 |  | Barack Obama | United States | |
| 2011 |  | Ellen Johnson Sirleaf |  Liberia | |
| 2011 |  | Leymah Gbowee | Liberia | |
| 2018 |  | Denis Mukwege |  Democratic Republic of the Congo | |
| 2019 |  | Abiy Ahmed |  Ethiopia |
One black person has been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
| Year | Image | Laureate | Country | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 |  | W. Arthur Lewis | Saint Lucia | First and (so far) only black person to win a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; first West Indian to win a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences [7] |
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes awarded to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind, as established by the 1895 will of Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist Alfred Nobel, in the year before he died. Prizes were first awarded in 1901 by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel's will indicated that the awards should be granted in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. A sixth prize for Economic Sciences, endowed by Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and first presented in 1969, is also frequently included, as it is also administered by the Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901, the others being the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Physics is traditionally the first award presented in the Nobel Prize ceremony.
Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He is the first black Nobel laureate and the first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations (UN), and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations.
The Nobel Foundation is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning for Literature, is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics award funded by Sveriges Riksbank and administered by the Nobel Foundation.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation, and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on proposal of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry which consists of five members elected by the Academy. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
Up to the second half of the 20th century, Tanzanian literature was primarily oral. Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. The majority of the oral literature in Tanzania that has been recorded is in Swahili, though each of the country's languages has its own oral tradition. The country's oral literature is currently declining because of social changes that make transmission of oral literature more difficult and because of the devaluation of oral literature that has accompanied Tanzania's development. Tanzania's written literary tradition has produced relatively few writers and works; Tanzania does not have a strong reading culture, and books are often expensive and hard to come by. Most Tanzanian literature is orally performed or written in Swahili, and a smaller number of works have been published in English. Major figures in Tanzanian modern literature include Shaaban Robert, Muhammed Said Abdulla, Aniceti Kitereza, Ebrahim Hussein, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Penina Muhando.
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy on 5 October 2017.
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah who the Swedish Academy members praised "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." The winner was announced on October 7, 2021, by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
An additional award, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden and was first awarded in 1969
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1 Nobel Memorial Prize (not one of the original Nobel Prizes). | |||||||||