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Nobel laureates who have won the prize twice

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3 years ago

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was a Swedish with vast interests ranging from science, inventions, entrepreneurship, literature, and peace work. He was said to held views that were considered radical during his time.

On November 27, he signed his third and last will, leaving much of his wealth for the establishment of a prize. His will, in part, dictates that his entire remaining estate be used to endow “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

However, according to the Nobel Prize website, his family opposed the establishment of the Nobel Prize, and the prize awarders he named refused to do what he had requested in his will. It was five years before the first Nobel Prize could be awarded in 1901.

The Nobel Prizes are in six categories of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences.

Except for the Peace Prize, other prizes are presented in Sweden, at the annual prize award ceremony on the 10th of December — the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The Peace Prize is presented in Norway, usually on the 10th of December.

Between 1901 and 2022, the Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (In 1968, the Central Bank of Sweden established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel) were awarded 615 times to 989 people and organisations.

Since the establishment of the prizes, the number of times each prize and number of laureates in each prize are as follow: Physic (116 times, 222 laureates), Chemistry (114 times, 191 laureates), Medicine and Psychology (113 times, 225 laureates), Literature (115 times, 119 laureates), Peace (103 times, 140 laureates), and Economic Science (53 times, 92 laureates).

Worthy of mention is the fact that in the 121 years of the prize, women have only been awarded the prize 60 times − which is less than 10 per cent of the total number of times the prize has been awarded. The statistics is broken down as follows: (1901 – 1925, four women), 1926 – 1950, eight women), 1951 – 1975, three women), (1976 – 2000, fifteen women), and (2001 – 2022, thirty-one women).

The Peace Prize has been awarded 30 times to organisations. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has received the Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and 1981; and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been honoured three times, in 1917, 1944 and 1963.

Furthermore, on individual level, since the history of the prizes only five laureates have been awarded the prizes twice, each on two different occasions. These laureates are Marie Curie, Linus Carl Pauling, John Bardeen, Frederick Sange, and Karl Barry Sharpless.

Marie Curie

Marie Curie (née Sklodowska) was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland). She was educated at the Flying University and the University of Paris.

She was a physicist and a chemist, the first woman — in 1906 — to become a professor at the University of Paris, and the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice in two scientific fields (Physics and Chemistry).

Curie received the Physics Prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. She co-won the 1903 Physics Prize with her husband, Pierre Curie, and the physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of “radioactivity”— a term she coined. She was the only person awarded the Chemistry Prize in 1911.

In Nobel Prize nomenclature, there is what is called the ‘Family Laureates’ and it is only the Curie family that has accomplished this feat. The Curie family has received the most prizes, with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates.

Marie and Pierre Curie’s daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie. According to the Nobel Committee, the motivation for Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie co-won Chemistry Prize was: “In recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements.”

In addition, the husband of Marie Curie’s second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on that organisation’s behalf.

Linus Carl Pauling

Linus Carl Pauling was born in 1901 in Portland, Oregon, United States. He was educated at the Oregon State University (BS) and the California Institute of Technology (PhD).

He was a chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. He was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology.

For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Peace Prize in 1962. He is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields – the other being Marie Curie.

According to the Prize’s website, the motivation for Pauling Chemistry Prize was: “for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.” The Peace Prize was awarded to him “for his fight against the nuclear arms race between East and West.”

John Bardeen

John Bardeen was born in 1908 in Madison, Wisconsin, United State. He was a physicist and engineer educated at the University of Wisconsin (BS and MS) and Princeton University (PhD).

After serving in World War II, he became a researcher at Bell Labs, and a professor at the University of Illinois. In 1990, Bardeen appeared on Life magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential Americans of the Century.”

He was the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956, with William Shockley and Walter Brattain, for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972, with Leon N. Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.

According to the Prize’s website, the motivation for the first Bardeen Physics Prize was: “for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect.”. the second Physics was: “for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory.”

At the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm in 1956, Bardeen brought only one of his three children to the ceremony. King Gustav chided him because of this, and he assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. He kept his promise in 1972 when he received the second Physics Prize.

Frederick Sanger

Frederick Sanger was born in 1918 in Gloucestershire, England. He was a biochemist educated at the University of Cambridge (BS and PhD).

He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. He was one of only three people to have done so in the same category (the others being John Bardeen in Physics, and Karl Barry Sharpless in Chemistry). He was awarded his first Chemistry Prize in 1958. In 1980, he shared half the Chemistry Prize, with Walter Gilbert, for the invention of the first-ever DNA sequencing technique, still in broad use today.

According to the Prize’s website, the motivation for the first Sanger’s Chemistry Prize was “for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin.” The second Chemistry Prize was: “for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids.”

In the course of Sanger’s career, he supervised more than ten PhD students, two of whom went on to also win Nobel Prizes.

His first graduate student was Rodney Porter, who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology with Gerald Edelman for his work on the chemical structure of antibodies. Elizabeth Blackburn did her PhD in Sanger’s laboratory, and shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, for her work on telomeres and the action of telomerase.

Karl Barry Sharpless

Karl Barry Sharpless was born in 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvaania, United States. He was a chemist educated at Dartmouth College (BA) and Stanford University (MS, PhD). He was once a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Kyushu University at different times.

He is best known for his work on enantioselective synthesis and click chemistry. As of the time he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, he was affiliated with the Scripps Research, La Jolla, California, United States.

According to to the Prize’s website, he was awarded half of the 2001 Chemistry Prize, jointly with William S. Knowles and Ryoji Noyori, “for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions”; and one-third of the 2022 Chemitry Prize, jointly with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Morten P. Meldal, “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”

Nobel laureates by country

Interesting to also know is the number of Nobel laureates in each country of the world. However, only few countries will be listed. They are as follow, from the highest number to the lower ones: United States (403), United Kingdom (137), Germany (112), France (72), Sweden (33), Russia (32), Japan (29), Canada (28), Switzerland (27), Austria (23), Netherlands (22), Italy (21), etc.

Nigeria has only won the Nobel Prize once, in the Literature category, which was awarded in 1986 to Wole Soyinka, “Who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”

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