The Importance Of The Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the highest awards that a researcher in physics, chemistry, or medicine can receive, and the award honors scientists that have made revolutionary discoveries or explanations in their field. This award was presented to Anthony Hewish, and his mentor, Martin Ryle in 1974 for the innovations they made in astronomy, and specifically the discovery of pulsars. Although they were the only two that were awarded, Jocelyn Bell Burnell played a significant role in pulsar detection. In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a graduate student under Anthony Hewish at Cambridge University. As a part of Burnell’s doctoral research, she built a receiver for Hewish that scanned the sky looking for radio waves. While analyzing the results,

Nobel made a name for himself in the scientific community, but he was not the only scientist in his family that made significant contributions to physics, chemistry and medicine. His grandfather on his mother’s side of the family discovered lymph nodes in the human body. Also, Alfred Nobel’s father invented the submarine torpedo among other inventions (Leroy, 2003). Nobel had many siblings, but instead of giving his brothers and sisters his fortune when he passed away, Nobel decided to make another ever-lasting impact on science. He donated his money to start the Nobel Peace Prize, so that he was assured the funds would be used properly. Upon his death, the Nobel Foundation was launched with the amount of money that would be equivalent to twenty-five million dollars in 2002 (Leroy, 2003). Each recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize receives the recognition and a cash stipend for their work. The prize is still being awarded today, and Alfred Nobel’s legacy of encouraging innovations and peace is still carried

According to Slate.com, women have earned 20% of the physics degrees up to date, which is a huge leap from 2% in 1966 (Popkin, 2014). The increase in women in the field logically should parallel an increase in the number of women Laureates in physics, but it has not. This disproportion of women to men Nobel Laureates should not be solved though awarding the prize to women simply because the are women—that would destroy the prestige of the award—but there should be some changes made in the committee selection process. Women physicists should be held to the same standard of achievement that men are. This gender disparity in the award is not because women are unable to think at the same level men. There are women who are just as deserving of the award as men, and who may not be awarded because of her gender and