Memorize the Nobel Prizes: 186 Flashcards on Laureates, Refusals and Records
Study the Nobel Prize Winners deck (OO1907): the four awarding bodies, double laureates, forbidden and refused prizes, and the 2017 statistics to update.
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The Nobel Prize Winners deck (code OO1907) has 186 cards, but they hold only about 60 distinct facts. John Bardeen's double Physics prize turns up four times (cards 21, 59, 114, 172), and the Swedish and Norwegian words for the prize take up six cards. That is useful to know before you start: drill the core facts once, then suspend the copies.
Study this deck: Nobel Prize Winners
1 / 10Who established the Nobel Prizes?
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
The cards that matter
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| Who established the Nobel Prizes? | Alfred Nobel, through his 1895 will |
| When was the Economics prize established? | 1968, by Sveriges Riksbank |
| Who awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine? | The Karolinska Institutet |
| Which Nobel Prize is awarded in Oslo instead of Stockholm? | The Nobel Peace Prize |
| Which organization has won the Peace Prize three times? | The International Committee of the Red Cross |
| Which Literature laureate voluntarily refused the 1964 prize? | Jean-Paul Sartre |
| Why did Lê Đức Thọ decline the 1973 Peace Prize? | No actual peace despite the Paris Peace Accords |
| Did the Germans forbidden by Hitler eventually get the medal? | Yes, but not the money |
| For how long are nominations kept secret? | 50 years |
What the deck covers
Five original categories plus the 1968 memorial prize in Economic Sciences; the four awarding bodies; December 10 as the ceremony date; prize money in SEK (150,782 in 1901, 11 million in 2023); the 1940-1942 wartime gap; the repeat winners (Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, Bardeen, Frederick Sanger, Karl Barry Sharpless, the ICRC, UNHCR); laureates forbidden to accept the prize (Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt, Gerhard Domagk, Carl von Ossietzky, Boris Pasternak, Liu Xiaobo); the two voluntary refusals; Gandhi and the 1948 Peace Prize that was never awarded; and the Literature prize delayed by the 2018 Swedish Academy scandal.
Learn it as four lists, not 186 questions
1. The awarding map. Most of the deck reduces to one grid:
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Economics
- Karolinska Institutet: Physiology or Medicine
- Swedish Academy: Literature
- Norwegian Nobel Committee (Oslo): Peace
Once you can redraw that grid from memory, cards 7-12, 103-106, 139-144 become free points.
2. The double winners. Use a single list: Curie (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911), Pauling (Chemistry, Peace), Bardeen (Physics ×2), Sanger and Sharpless (Chemistry ×2), the Red Cross (Peace ×3), UNHCR (Peace ×2). Curie and Pauling are the only two people who won in different fields.
3. The people who could not accept. Sort them by government: Nazi Germany (four: Kuhn 1938, Butenandt 1939, Domagk 1939, Ossietzky 1936), the Soviet Union (Pasternak 1958), China (Liu Xiaobo 2010). Keep Sartre and Lê Đức Thọ in a separate list, because they refused the prize themselves.
4. The anomalies. No prizes from 1940 to 1942, no Peace Prize in 1948, and two Literature prizes awarded in 2019.
Cards to fix before you trust them
- The statistics stop in 2017. The 892 individuals and 48 women (cards 17, 26, 77, 112) are out of date. By 2024, 65 women had received the prize. Tag these cards as of 2017, or look up the current totals.
- Card 40 / 164, prisoners. Ales Bialiatski (2022) and Narges Mohammadi (2023) were also in prison when they were awarded the Peace Prize, so three is now at least five.
- Card 62 gives no year. Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896, in Sanremo.
- Card 44 says the 1948 prize was left unassigned in Gandhi's honor. The committee's official reason was that there was no suitable living candidate.
For more science history, see the Science Trivia & Discoveries guide. To study this deck, open Flip It and search the library for OO1907 – Nobel Prize Winners.
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