Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life." In this interview she talks about her childhood, the road to becoming a Nobel Prize-awarded author, her love of fairytales and the process of writing.

“For want of any children’s books, I read my grandmother’s dictionaries. They were like a marvellous gateway, through which I embarked on a discovery of the world, to wander and daydream as I looked at the illustrated plates, and the maps, and the lists of unfamiliar words.”

In his Nobel Lecture, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio recalled his childhood books.

What did the Nobel Laureates read when they were young? In their autobiographies and lectures, Nobel Laureates reveal their reading habits: how they got started, who spurred them to read on, and where they spent their time losing themselves between the pages of a book. Find out and compare with your own experience, or simply get inspired!

Harvey J. Alter was awarded the Medicine Prize in 2020. In this interview he talks about receiving the Nobel Prize, his journey in science and the roles humour and poetry have played in his work.

Michael Houghton shared the Medicine Prize 2020 for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus. Here he talks  about his journey into science, his advice for students and the importance of persistence.

Jennifer Doudna grew up in a small town in Hawaii and loved the natural environment there. Nobody in her family was into sciences, but she soon decided that she wanted to be a chemist. She set off on that journey in college - and never looked back.

Andrea Ghez was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” Get to know her in this podcast episode.

Many Nobel 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.

“I was not always the best student with the highest grades, but my teachers saw something in me and tried to encourage me.” Medicine Laureate May-Britt Moser grew up in a small town on the west coast of Norway. Later, she would uncover one of the biggest mysteries of our brain - how we know where we are and how we navigate from one place to another.

In their journey towards the Nobel Prize, each Nobel Laureate has looked at a problem in a new way. They have used creativity to tackle existing problems, or identify new frontiers.

Throughout life we all rely on mentors to train us and guide us. It is a subject which many Nobel Laureates speak passionately about, pointing…

Shinya Yamanaka is a runner, a father and the man who first created stem cells from normal body cells. A pioneer of biomedical research, he describes how he was determined to find success in the face of all else.

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.

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".

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”.

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 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”.

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.

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”.

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.