English for Advanced

The Nobel Foundation: a mission towards prosperity of humanity

A. ______ The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organisation on 29 June 1900, specifically to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. It is based on Nobel’s last will and testament. At the time Nobel’s will led to much skepticism and criticism, and thus it was not until 26 April 1897 that his will was approved by the Storting ( The Storting is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. Soon thereafter they appointed the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that was to award the Peace Prize. Shortly after, the other prize-awarding organizations followed; Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The next thing the Nobel Foundation did was to try to agree on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900 the Nobel Foundation’s newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II.

B. ______ The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: Nobelpriset, Norwegian: Nobelprisen) are prizes awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributions to the field of economics. Each recipient, or “laureate”, receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money, which is decided annually by the Nobel Foundation.

C. ______ In 1905 the Union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved, which meant the responsibility for awarding Nobel Prizes was split between the two countries. Norway’s Nobel Committee became the awarder of the Peace Prize, while Sweden became the awarder of the other prizes.

D. ______ In accordance with Nobel’s will, the primary task of the Nobel Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left after him in a fund. Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to represent the Nobel Prize to the outside world and to take charge of informal activities and issues related to the awarding of the Nobel Prizes. The Nobel Foundation is not involved in any way in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates. In many ways the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company in that it invests money in various ways to create a solid funding base for the prize and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953). Since the 1980s, the Foundation’s investments began to earn more money than previously. At the beginning of the 1980s, the award money was 1 million SEK. However, in 2008, the award money had increased to 10 million SEK.