Nobel Prize

Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), the greatest classical historian of the nineteenth century, was born in Garding, Schleswig, the son of a Protestant minister. He read law and classics at Kiel from 1838-43, and after a few years in France and Italy and a short career in journalism, he became a professor of law at the University…

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent’s office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre…

A single, homeless, circling satellite: Derek Walcott, 1992 Nobel Prize laureate in literature by Jöran Mjöberg This article was published on 26 June 2001. Background and youth Black and white ancestry Derek Walcott was born in 1930 on St. Lucia, an island then belonging to the British Empire, but which became independent in 1979. St.…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Permanent Secretary of the , at its regular meeting on December 14, 1939 The diploma of a Nobel Prize has just been given to you and you have heard the reasons which led the Swedish Academy to accord this distinction to your literary work. These reasons are very briefly stated…

Presentation Speech by Artur Lundkvist, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded by the Swedish Academy to the Australian Patrick White. In the – as always – brief citation, mention is made of “his epic and psychological narrative…

Swedish Biobibliografisk notis Elfriede Jelinek är född den 20 oktober 1946 i staden Mürzzuschlag i det österrikiska landskapet Steiermark. Fadern, med tjeckisk-judiskt ursprung, var kemist och under andra världskriget verksam som forskare i krigsviktig industri och undgick därigenom förföljelse. Modern kom från en välbärgad familj i Wien, där Elfriede Jelinek växte upp och gick i…

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No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the son of a Jewish musician and an English woman, was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy. After a teaching career as a schoolmaster in various secondary schools, Bergson was appointed to the École Normale Supérieure in 1898 and, from 1900 to 1921, held…

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