More than a century ago, the Nobel Prize consecrated the theorist of global warming

The 2022 Nobel Prizes will be awarded from October 3 until October 10 in Stockholm and Oslo.

Since 1901, and the first award ceremony, the Nobel Prizes have punctuated the lives of researchers, artists and politicians by distinguishing each year those who have distinguished themselves in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature but also those who campaign for peace.

A look back at the history of the most prestigious prize through five anecdotes about those who work for the "

", according to the wish of the creator of these trophies, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel.

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gold for the brave

The Nobel Prizes are endowed with the tidy sum of ten million crowns per category (about 900,000 euros), and an 18-carat gold medal.

But Nobel Peace Prize winner and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has managed to turn gold into fortune, for the benefit of Ukrainian children.

In June, the 196-gram medal received by the 2021 co-winner soared to $103.5 million, disbursed by an anonymous philanthropist and donated to a Unicef ​​program.

That is 21 times more than the previous record.

Read alsoRussia: Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov attacked on a train

The Figaro

at the origin of the prices?

On April 12, 1888, Alfred Nobel's older brother, Ludvig, died in Cannes, France.

But

makes a mistake and announces Alfred's death on the front page,

What torments could this – premature – obituary cause Alfred?

because the incident is not mentioned in his correspondence, underlines his biographer Ingrid Carlberg.

As for the visitors who came to offer their condolences to the Parisian mansion of the inventor, they were surprised to be welcomed by a living Alfred, as

, the day after.

Direct consequence of this mistake?

Many then attributed to him the authorship of the creation of the prizes, pointing to the formula chosen by Nobel to reward those who have contributed

.

No more Nobel posthumously unless...

Since 1974, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that a prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death occurs after the announcement of the name of the winner.

Until the rule of use was written in black and white, only two deceased personalities, Swedes, had been rewarded: the poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt (literature in 1931) and the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, presumably assassinated (Peace Prize in 1961).

It also happened that a prize was not awarded, in the form of a tribute to a deceased winner, as in 1948, after the death of Gandhi.

A recent winner will never have had the chance to receive the famous phone call announcing a Nobel: after the 2011 medicine prize to Canadian Ralph Steinman, we learn of his death three days earlier.

A global warming theorist consecrated in 1903

Talented in a number of fields, the Swedish physicist and chemist Svante Arrhenius was awarded the prize for Chemistry in 1903 for his "

".

But it was other pioneering work that earned him pioneering status today: at the end of the 19th century, he was the first to theorize that the combustion of fossil fuels - at the time, especially coal - led via sending CO2 into the atmosphere causing global warming.

According to his calculations, a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide would warm the planet by five degrees - modern models today give a range of 2.6 to 3.9°C.

Far from suspecting the increasingly enormous quantities of fossil fuels that humanity would consume, Arrhenius underestimates the speed at which this level will be reached, and predicts that this warming will occur under the effect of human activity. ... in 3000 years.

Silicon Valley wants to compete with the Nobel

With more than 120 years of history and a name known around the world, the Nobel Prize winners still have something to look forward to.

But some consider them a bit outdated or even dusty, because, according to its detractors, the Swedish Academy rewards discoveries that are sometimes old.

Seeking to be an alternative Nobel, the Right Livelihood award was created in 1980 by a wealthy German-Swedish after the Nobel Foundation refused his proposal to create two new prizes for environment and development.

But the Nobels have also found a new rival from Silicon Valley, very richly endowed: the Breaktrough Prizes.

Already nicknamed the "Oscars of science", these Californian competitors of the august Swedish committees are endowed with 3 million dollars, or about three times more than a Nobel.