• The will of the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel established the five Nobel prizes in 1895.
• The Nobel Prizes are a set of recognition given to fields of Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine by The Nobel Foundation.
  • The Nobel Foundation is a private institution established in 1900, has ultimate responsibility for fulfilling the intentions in Alfred Nobel’s will.
• The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901.
• In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

• This is the first time climate scientists (Manabe and Hasselmann) have been awarded the Physics Nobel. Last year, the award was given for the research into black holes.
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 has already been announced.

• • Manabe and Hasselmann:
    • Awarded for work in physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.
      • Demonstrated how increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase global temperatures, laying the foundations for current climate models.
  • Parisi:
    • Awarded for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”
      • He “built a deep physical and mathematical model” that made it possible to understand complex systems in fields such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.
• Climate Science and Nobel Prize Recognition:
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had won the Peace Nobel in 2007, an acknowledgement of its efforts in creating awareness for the fight against climate change.
  • A Chemistry Nobel to Paul Crutzen in 1995, for his work on the ozone layer, is considered the only other time someone from atmospheric sciences has won this honour.

   The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.

• Last year, the honour went to Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna, for developing the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 - DNA snipping "scissors".
• Nobel prizes in physics and medicine for 2021 have already been announced.
• Development:
  • They have developed a new and ingenious tool for molecule building: organocatalysis.
    • Many research areas and industries are dependent on chemists’ ability to construct molecules that can form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or inhibit the progression of diseases. This work requires catalysts.
    • According to researchers, there were just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. Catalysts are any substance that increases the rate of a reaction without itself being consumed.
  • In 2000, they, independent of each other, developed a third type of catalysis. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and builds upon small organic molecules.
• Significance:
  • Its uses include research into new pharmaceuticals and it has also helped make chemistry greener.
  • Both these sets of catalysts (metals and enzymes) had limitations.
  • Heavier metals are expensive, difficult to mine, and toxic to humans and the environment.
    • Despite the best processes, traces remained in the end product; this posed problems in situations where compounds of very high purity were required, like in the manufacture of medicines.
    • Also, metals required an environment free of water and oxygen, which was difficult to ensure on an industrial scale.
  • Enzymes on the other hand, work best when water is used as a medium for the chemical reaction. But that is not an environment suitable for all kinds of chemical reactions.
• Organocatalysis:
  • Organic compounds are mostly naturally-occurring substances, built around a framework of carbon atoms and usually containing hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, or phosphorus.
  • Life-supporting chemicals like proteins, which are long chains of amino acids (carbon compounds containing nitrogen and oxygen) are organic.
  • Enzymes are also proteins, and therefore, organic compounds. These are responsible for many essential biochemical reactions.
  • Organocatalysts allow several steps in a production process to be performed in an unbroken sequence, considerably reducing waste in chemical manufacturing.
  • Organocatalysis has developed at an astounding speed since 2000. Benjamin List and David MacMillan remain leaders in the field, and have shown that organic catalysts can be used to drive multitudes of chemical reactions.
    • Using these reactions, researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells.
• Asymmetric Organocatalysis:
  • The process called asymmetric organocatalysis, has made it much easier to produce asymmetric molecules - chemicals that exist in two versions, where one is a mirror image of the other.
  • Chemists often just want one of these mirror images - particularly when producing medicines - but it has been difficult to find efficient methods for doing this.
  • Some molecules with mirror versions have different properties. An example is the chemical called carvone, which has one form that smells like spearmint and a counterpart that smells like the herb, dill.
  • Different versions of the same molecule might have different effects when ingested. Then it becomes important to be able to make only the mirror image of a drug that has the desired physiological effect.

 Recently, two United States-based scientists, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.

• They have focused their work on the field of somatosensation, that is the ability of specialised organs such as eyes, ears and skin to see, hear and feel.
• David Julius:
  • • He discovered TRPV1, a heat-sensing receptor.
    • His findings on the skin’s sense of temperature was based on how certain cells react to capsaicin, the molecule that makes chili peppers spicy, by simulating a false sensation of heat.
  • Ardem Patapoutian:
    • He discovered two mechanosensitive ion channels known as the Piezo channels.
      • The Piezo1 is named after the Greek word for pressure, ‘píesi’.
    • He is credited for finding the cellular mechanism and the underlying gene that translates a mechanical force on our skin into an electric nerve signal.
• Significance of Discoveries:
  • The findings have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world around us.
  • This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.

• Somatosensation is a collective term for the sensations of touch, temperature, body position, and pain recognized through neural receptors in the skin and certain internal organs.
  • It includes processes such as” mechanoreception, thermoreception, proprioception.
• Mechanosensitive channels are fascinating proteins, being able to serve both as sensors and effectors.
  • Embedded in membranes, they convert mechanical stimuli such as in-plane membrane tension and curvature into electrical or biochemical signals, leading to regulation of a wide repertoire of cellular processes allowing adaptive response.

    Recently, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.

• In 2020, the award was given to the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations (UN) agency.
• Other 2021 Nobel Prizes for Literature, Chemistry, Physics and Medicine have already been announced.
• Maria Ressa:
  • She is an investigative journalist, in 2012 she co-founded Rappler, a digital media platform for investigative journalism, which she continues to head.
  • Rappler has focused critical attention on President Rodrigo Duterte's regime's controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign.
    • In the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, the Philippines ranked 138 of 180 nations (India was ranked lower, at 142).
  • She has also authored Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center, and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.
• Dmitry Muratov:
  • Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions''.
    • Russia has ranked 150 in the 2021 World Freedom Index.
  • He along with around 50 colleagues started Novaya Gazeta (Newspaper) in 1993, as one of its founders. He has served as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief since 1995.
    • Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based non-profit, had felicitated Muratov as one of its International Press Freedom awardees in 2007.
  • Six of Muratov’s colleagues have been killed since the newspaper started, which has often faced harassment, threats, violence and murder from its opponents.
    • Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper’s independent policy.
• Significance:
  • Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda.
  • Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time.

    The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

• Last year, the award was given to Louise Glück "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
• Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. He was forced to flee to the UK, the former colonial power, at the end of the 1960s after a revolution occurred in Zanzibar.
  • Zanzibar is part of East Africa, a region known as the Swahili coast, stretching from present-day Somalia to Mozambique on the western shores of the Indian Ocean.
  • He has published ten novels and a number of short stories. The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work.
  • He began writing as a 21-year-old in English exile, and although Swahili was his first language, English became his literary tool.
  • Gurnah’s fourth novel ‘Paradise’ (1994), his breakthrough as a writer, evolved from a research trip to East Africa around 1990.
• Significance:
  • At a time when the global refugee crisis is exponentially on the rise, Gurnah’s work draws attention to how racism and prejudice against targeted communities and religions perpetuate cultures of oppression.