Copenhagen, October 1 (EFE).- The Nobel laureates will reissue this Monday, with the start of the laureate round, a new edition of the renowned prizes which, for the first time in two years, return to their usual format throughout of the process after the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Between days 3 and 10, the names of the winners will be known in the six categories in which the prizes are distributed: Medicine or Physiology, Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace and Economics, in that order.

The pandemic has not affected the selection process at this time, although it has imposed limits on announcements and, above all, on the double awards ceremony in December, in Stockholm and Oslo, which has been reduced to a minimum program and in virtual format, without the winners being able to travel to collect their rewards.

Thus, the Nobel Foundation has decided this year to also invite the winners of the two previous editions to the week of festivities in the Swedish capital in two months and to recover the usual ceremony at the Koncerthus and the banquet that follows at the hotel. of town.

It is also expected that the Norwegian Nobel committee, although there is still no official confirmation, will return to the usual format of the peace prize, which is decided and delivered in Oslo on the express wish of the creator of the prizes of the centenarian, the Swedish tycoon. Alfred Nobel, since Norway was then part of the Kingdom of Sweden.

Nobel (1833-1896) becomes a millionaire with his inventions, but the consequences of the most famous, dynamite, convince him to bequeath his fortune to create prizes rewarding achievements in the fields of knowledge, letters and the fight for the peace.

Thus, he provided in his will that his money be invested in real estate and insurance, and that the interests be divided into five equal parts to reward personalities in as many fields, whatever their nationality.

Six decades later, the Bank of Sweden instituted a sixth Nobel Prize, that of economics, awarded since 1969.

All Nobel laureates follow a similar election process: scientists, academics, or university professors nominate their nominees, and the various Nobel committees establish various criteria for choosing the laureate(s), up to three per award.

And they have the same financial endowment, this year of 10 million Swedish crowns (916,000 euros, 882,000 dollars).

CLEAR MALE PREDOMINANCE AMONG THE WINNERS

Since the first edition of the prizes awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prizes – which have been declared void 49 times – have awarded 943 people and 25 organizations, some of them repeatedly, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the American biochemist Linus Pauling or the scientist Marie Curie.

Curie won the physics prize in 1903, shared with her husband Pierre and Henri Becquerel, and the only chemistry prize in 1911, a rarity in the Nobel prize list, where women nevertheless had a marginal role.

Barely 6% of the total laureates are women (58 in total) and half of them (29) have been honored over the past two decades.

In the last edition, there was only one woman among the thirteen laureates: the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who shared the Peace Prize with the Russian Dmitri Murátov.

Women, however, hold a record among Nobel laureates, that of the youngest laureate in any category: Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who won the peace prize in 2014 at the age of 17.

OPEN FORECASTS FOR THE LITERATURE AND PEACE AWARD

Who will succeed Ress and Muratov among the winners of the peace prize and the Tanzanian-British Abdulrazak Gurnah in literature are the big unknowns in this year’s previous rounds for the two prizes which raise the most expectations.

Authors like the French Michel Houllebecq, the British Salman Rushdie, the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiongo, the Canadians Anne Carson and Margaret Atwood and the Russian Liudmila Ulítskaya are some of the names that ring on an endless list without any clear favorite.

The same panorama is presented for the Nobel Peace Prize, with candidates such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Belarusian opponent Svetlana Tijanóvskaya and Russian Alexéi Navalni.