What to know about Nobel Prize ceremonies 2020 - held online for the first time due to Covid-19

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Nobel laureates receive prizes at home amid Covid-19 pandemic

This year, 12 Nobel laureates were named across the six categories. All but the Peace Prize had been awarded over the past days at low-key ceremonies across Europe and the United States where the winners live, Usnews reported.

A Nobel prize comes with a 10-million krona ($1.1 million) cash award — to be shared in some cases — diplomas and gold medals.

Traditionally, the Nobel ceremonies are all held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Albert Nobel in Stockholm, except for the Peace Prize that is held in Oslo, in neighboring Norway. Nobel wanted it that way, for reasons that he kept to himself.

The Norwegians at first had planned a scaled-down event with 100 guests instead of the traditional ceremony with roughly 1,000 guests. But in November the WFP and the Norwegian Nobel Committee said that an in-person award ceremony would not be held.

The Oslo-based committee added that depending on how the pandemic develops, Beasley could maybe give his Nobel lecture at the Oslo City Hall in 2021.

Later Thursday, in place of the traditional glitzy ceremony in Stockholm, a webcast event was held with members of the different prize-awarding institutions presenting the discoveries and achievements being awarded.

A national library employee shows a gold Nobel Prize medal in Bogota, Colombia Photo: AP

“A pandemic knows no borders," Nobel Foundation chairman Carl-Henrik Heldin said in his opening remarks. It meant, he said, that laureates couldn't travel to the Swedish capital to receive the prize. “Nevertheless, you will all be honored and celebrated here today in the City Hall.”

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who traditionally would hand over the prizes, and Queen Silvia at his side, also appeared in a separate video, said the pandemic “has also shone a light on the important role of science.”

“While countries have been focused on closing their borders, scientists around the world have been working together like never before to understand the COVID-19 virus and to develop a vaccine,” the monarch said.

In between the speeches, there were brief videos with ceremonial presentations of the prize to the laureates. And framing the whole event were musical interludes with performances from City Hall.

The 50-minute event ended with late English singer-songwriter David Bowie's 1977 song “Heroes" to suit one of the laureate's music tastes, presenter Stefan Forsberg said.

“You are all heroes,” he said.

UN food agency to receive Nobel Peace Prize in online event

The World Food Programme received its Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. Because of the global pandemic, the event was without the traditional pomp-filled celebration in the Norwegian capital.

In the acceptance speech delivered by the head of the organization, David Beasley, the threat of starvation of around 270 million people globally - the equivalent to the combined populations of Germany, the UK, France, and Italy - was highlighted. The WFP has coordinated medical logistics during the covid-19 pandemic and had been announced the winner of the award for 2020 back in October, reported.

"Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse - 270 million people are marching toward starvation," Beasley said from the WFP headquarters in Rome.

"Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of covid. And if that's not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival," he added.

Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen makes a statement at the Nobel Institute as part of the digital award ceremony for this year's Peace Prize winner, the World Food Program (WFP), in Oslo, Norway, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020. Photo: AP

Instead of the usual ceremony at the Oslo City Hall before dignitaries including Norway's King Harald, WFP officials stayed in Rome due to the coronavirus pandemic. They are, however, expected to travel to Oslo at a later stage to deliver the traditional Nobel lecture.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, its contribution to better the conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas, and efforts at preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.

Nobel Prize for chemistry 2020 awarded to Charpentier and Doudna

Speaking ahead of Thursday's live-streamed ceremony crowning the Nobel awards week, Emmanuelle Charpentier described winning the prize as "life-changing" but said she still had many ambitions.

"One ambition would be to win another Nobel prize, of course!" she told AFP.

"But if I want to one day make another discovery, I know I'll need to isolate myself for some years, and I think that's pretty much impossible at the moment," Charpentier said.

Another medal would see Charpentier echo the achievement of scientist Marie Curie, whose 1911 chemistry prize made her the first person in history to be awarded a second Nobel, eight years after her award for physics.

Along with Jennifer Doudna of the US, Charpentier won the Nobel chemistry prize for the gene-editing technique known as the CRISPR-Cas9 DNA "scissors", a tool that allows scientists to snip DNA and edit the genetic code of animals, plants, and microorganisms.

The discovery has huge implications for creating new medicines and for scientists' understanding of the role of genes in biology and disease.

Charpentier received her Nobel diploma and medal from Per Thoreson, the Swedish ambassador to Germany, in Berlin on Monday

Although she has received dozens of professional distinctions and awards in the years since her research was first published in 2011, Charpentier said the Nobel felt special because it is "held in the highest regard by the public".

When the award was announced in October—the first time a Nobel science prize has gone to an all-female team—the pair said they hoped it would inspire a new generation of women in science.

Charpentier also said she believed the pandemic had increased the understanding of the importance of science among the public and governments, although she feared that funding would suffer in the economic downturn sparked by the coronavirus.

Research "is expensive but science benefits everything around us," she said.

"Everything is science and I hope people understand that."

Because of the pandemic, the traditional Stockholm ceremony honoring the Nobel laureates has been replaced by an online event Thursday, featuring pre-recorded segments of the laureates receiving their prizes in their countries of residence.

Charpentier accepted her Nobel gold medal and diploma on Monday at a ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Berlin, where she is the director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens.

Three win Nobel medicine prize for discovering the hepatitis C virus

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that led to cures for the deadly disease and tests to keep the scourge out of the blood supply, according to AP.

Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton were honored for their work over several decades on an illness that still plagues more than 70 million worldwide and kills over 400,000 each year.

“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world,” the Nobel Committee said in announcing the prize in Stockholm.

The challenge now is to make these still-expensive drugs more widely available and to stem the spread of the disease among drug users, whose sharing of needles has led to spikes in cases.

Harvey J. Alter, Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, holds his Nobel Prize medal after a ceremony at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, on Dec 8, 2020. Photo: AP

“What we need is the political will to eradicate it” and to make the drugs affordable enough to do it, Alter said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Rice said he is most proud that the group’s work quickly led to a test to screen donors and make the blood supply safer.

“We take it for granted that if you get a transfusion, you’re not going to get sick from that transfusion. That was not the case before but is certainly the case now,” Rice said.

Rice, 68, worked on hepatitis at Washington University in St. Louis and now is at Rockefeller University in New York. Alter, 85, worked for decades at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and remains active there. Houghton, 69, was born in Britain and worked on hepatitis at the Chiron Corp. in California before moving to the University of Alberta in Canada.

What has the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics been awarded for?

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, said Indian Express.

On Tuesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for furthering the understanding of black holes, the most “enigmatic” objects in the universe.

The winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics presented on the screen: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez. Photo: TT News Agency

“This year’s prize is about the darkest secrets of the universe,” said Göran K. Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, at a press event. The academy recognized Penrose for his “discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” Hansson added, while Ghez and Genzel were awarded “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”

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