Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She founded the Green Belt Movement which led to the planting of over 50 million trees in Africa. She also played an active part in the struggle for democracy in Kenya. Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for ‘her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.’

During his career, which spans more than six decades, Fraser Stoddart who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has broken rules and, on occasions, upset the research establishment.

Early in life Esther Duflo got a sense that children had very different experiences growing up and “that gave us children a sense of how fortunate we were and maybe how responsible we were of doing something with this good fortune.” In this interview she shares her thoughts.

University professor and chemistry laureate Bernard Feringa is a firm believer that all children have a talent, it just needs to be found and encouraged. We spoke to him about how important that encouragement can be.

Some people manage to retain the relentless curiosity of a child into adulthood, keeping them on a constant quest of exploration. Meet Giorgio Parisi, who tells us about his journey of curiosity, which started by learning to read numbers at the age of three. In this podcast episode, Parisi describes his life journey and how he ultimately decided to dedicate his life to physics.

2021 literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s literature often focuses on the journeys and lives of refugees and people whose countries were occupied by colonialists. In this interview he tells us more about his literature and his own journey to the Nobel Prize.

Many Nobel Prize laureates have often faced times of enormous disruption. Rita Levi-Montalcini faced many challenges on her road to the Nobel Prize. Born in Italy in 1909, her father did not believe in professional careers for women and did not let his daughters enroll at university. But Levi-Montalcini insisted on studying. The long road to the Nobel Prize included having to build a laboratory in her bedroom during World War II.

“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public.”

Read the announcement of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov

“Every day, I live with the real threat of spending the rest of my life in jail just because I’m a journalist. When I go home, I have no idea what the future holds, but it’s worth the risk.”

Watch Maria Ressa deliver her powerful Nobel Prize lecture that she delivered on 10 December 2021.

Bringing extra star power to this year’s Nobel Prize Concert on 8 December will be German soprano Diana Damrau. Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck will lead the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the concert.

The Nobel Foundation has announced that funding has been secured to build the Nobel Center − a home for science, culture and dialogue to be located at Slussen in central Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Center will offer a broad range of public activities including exhibitions, school programmes, lectures and conversations about the major issues of the future.

Read more here

This year’s Nobel Prize announcements will take place 3–10 October.

See the full schedule

Discover the stories of four peace laureates – Malala Yousafzai, Wangari Maathai, Dalai Lama and Fridtjof Nansen – in the new Minecraft universe ‘Active Citizen’.

The game is available in 29 languages and has been created in partnership with Nobel Peace Center, Minecraft: Education Edition and Games for Change. Play the game at Nobel Peace Center

Now you can bring the achievements made by the 2021 Nobel Prize laureates into the classroom! The lessons are so easy to use that a teacher can look through the guide, watch the slides, print the texts for students and then start the class.