Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.
“To this undaunted champion of peace the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament has awarded the Peace Prize for the year 1964”
Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s Nobel Lecture.
Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo in Norway on 10 December 1964.
The first nomination arrived to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in January 1963. Not until 2014, the nominators were revealed.
Nobel Prize Lessons
Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work are a fascinating part of an important stage of 20th-century history. His ideas extend far beyond his own time and the society in which he lived. Discrimination and conflicts because of skin colour or ethnicity manifest themselves in a variety of contexts in our own world.
Check out this Nobel Prize Lesson - ready to use in the classroom.
Martin Luther King Jr. marching past Browns Chapel in Selma, Alabama.
Photo © Flip Schulke/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Nobel Prizes and laureates
All Nobel Peace Prizes
The traditional costume Kailash Satyarthi wore when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 2014.
Photo: Nobel Prize Museum
Watch the documentary series
A team of female Yazidi deminers in Iraq attempting to clear their land of mines left behind by ISIS. A team of scientists on an extraordinary mission in Mozambique to help better our understanding of climate change. A man building prosthetic legs to help victims of war walk again in South Sudan ... All are inspired by Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Learn more
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) has become the strongest symbol of non-violence in the 20th century. It is widely held – in retrospect – that the Indian national leader should have been selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was nominated several times, but was never awarded the prize. Why?
Mahatma Gandhi laughing.
Photo: Public domain.
Nobel Minds 2020
Nobel Laureates in discussion
The 2020 Nobel Laureates talk about their research and careers in a unique roundtable discussion, 'Nobel Minds', moderated by Cecilia Gralde. They are discussing the theories, discoveries and research behind their awards, and the value of science in dealing with the global pandemic.
Participating Nobel Laureates: Physics laureate Andrea Ghez, Chemistry laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier, Medicine laureate Michael Houghton, Assistant Executive-Director Valerie Guarnieri representing Pecae Prize laureate World Food Programme and laureate in Economic Sciences Paul Milgrom.
Nobel Prize conversations
”When a politician gets up and says that we are following the science, the question needs to be what science? Because there are more than one scientific conclusion out there”
What is life? This is a question that has puzzled scientists for centuries, one of the most famous being Erwin Schrödinger. In the newest episode of ’Nobel Prize Conversations’, we meet 2001 Medicine Laureate Paul Nurse and hear his thoughts on the matter.
Nobel Week Dialogue
Nobel Prize Concert 2020
The world-renowned pianist Igor Levit performed at the 2020 Nobel Prize Concert on 8 December. At his side, he had conductor Stéphane Denève leading the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.
Igor Levit and Stéphane Denève at Konsterthuset Stockholm, Sweden, on 8 December 2020.
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Niklas Elmehed
Nobel Prizes 2020
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was awarded with one half to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity" and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy".
© Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”.
© Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2020 was awarded jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus”.
© The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Ill. Mattias Karlén
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 was awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”.
© Nobel Media. Ill. Niklas Elmehed.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 was awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.
© Nobel Media. Ill. Niklas Elmehed.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020 was awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”.
© Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize Lessons
From genetic editing to combatting world hunger. An unmistakable poetic voice to black holes. New treatments for hepatitis C to the quest for the perfect auction. Now you can bring the discoveries and achievements made by the 2020 Nobel Laureates into the classroom.
The lessons are free and so easy to use that a teacher can look through the manual, watch the slides, print the texts for students and then start the class.
The Nobel Prize Medal
Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
Coming up
Alfred Nobel - Established the Nobel Prize
On 27 November 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will in Paris, France. The Swedish dynamite millionaire, who thought that his invention would end all wars, had now realised that it was a very deadly product. Wanting to make amends, he did what no man of such wealth had done before ...
On 10 December 1901 the first Nobel Prizes were awarded, in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Read more about the first prizes.
Chemist, engineer and industrialist Alfred Nobel left 31 million SEK (today about 265 million dollar) to fund the Nobel Prizes. Read more about his life and work.
What are you looking for? Search the website.
Nobel destinations
Stockholm, Sweden
The museum showcases the discoveries and creativity of the Nobel Laureates.
Photo: Åke Eson Lindman
Oslo, Norway
The story of each Peace Laureate is told at the museum.
Photo: Johannes Granseth / Nobel Peace Center
In memoriam
Martinus J.G. Veltman, was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions concerning electromagnetic and weak interactions of the building blocks of matter. He passed away on 4 January at age 89.
Physicist Jack Steinberger passed away on 12 December. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 after managing to create a beam of neutrinos using a high-energy accelerator.
Masatoshi Koshiba passed away on 12 November. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2002 "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos."
Chemistry Laureate Mario Molina has passed away aged 77. He received the Nobel Prize for research concerning the ozone layer, which shields the Earth from dangerous solar radiation.
