STOCKHOLM:The Nobel Prize winners will be announced next week.
The awards are considered among the world’s most prestigious honors for achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics and peace.
The winners will join the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa.
For the peace prize, US President Donald Trump has been nominated several times by people within the US as well as politicians abroad since 2018. His name also was put forth in December by a Republican congresswoman for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and some Arab states.
Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes:
A history of the Nobel Prizes
The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a 19th-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held more than 300 patents, but his claim to fame before the prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive more stable.
Dynamite — which became popular in construction, mining and the weapons industry — made Nobel a very rich man. Toward the end of his life he decided to use his vast fortune to fund annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
The first Nobel Prizes — in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace — were presented in 1901, five years after his death. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden’s central bank. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel, it’s always presented together with the others.
The Nobel nomination process
None of the nominations are announced by the prizes’ respective committees, and the Nobel statutes prohibit the judges from discussing their deliberations for 50 years. But those doing the nominating may choose to make their recommendations public.
A person cannot nominate themselves, though they can be nominated multiple times by others — including members of each prize’s panel.
Each prize’s committee operates slightly differently, but they all strive to honor Nobel’s wish that the winners have conferred benefit to humankind.
The peace prize committee is the only one that regularly rewards achievements made in the previous year — and the prize is the only one awarded in Oslo, Norway. For the science prizes, awarded in Stockholm, winners often have to wait decades to have their work recognized by the Nobel judges, who want to make sure that any breakthrough stands the test of time.
The program for this year’s Nobels
The 2025 Nobel Prize announcements kick off Monday with the medicine prize being announced by a panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 13.
The awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. Each prize carries an award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million), and the winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma. Up to three laureates for each award can share the prize money.
The Nobel Prize winners will be announced next week. What to know about the prestigious awards
https://arab.news/z8efw
The Nobel Prize winners will be announced next week. What to know about the prestigious awards
- The winners will join the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa
Egypt reveals restored colossal statues of pharaoh in Luxor
- Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt
LUXOR: Egypt on Sunday revealed the revamp of two colossal statues of a prominent pharaoh in the southern city of Luxor, the latest in the government’s archeological events that aim at drawing more tourists to the country.
The giant alabaster statues, known as the Colossi of Memnon, were reassembled in a renovation project that lasted about two decades. They represent Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt about 3,400 years ago.
“Today we are celebrating, actually, the finishing and the erecting of these two colossal statues,” Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said ahead of the ceremony.
Ismail said the colossi are of great significance to Luxor, a city known for its ancient temples and other antiquities. They’re also an attempt to “revive how this funerary temple of King Amenhotep III looked like a long time ago,” Ismail said.
Amenhotep III, one of the most prominent pharaohs, ruled during the 500 years of the New Kingdom, which was the most prosperous time for ancient Egypt. The pharaoh, whose mummy is showcased at a Cairo museum, ruled between 1390–1353 BC, a peaceful period known for its prosperity and great construction, including his mortuary temple, where the Colossi of Memnon are located, and another temple, Soleb, in Nubia.
The colossi were toppled by a strong earthquake in about 1200 BC that also destroyed Amenhotep III’s funerary temple, said Ismail.
They were fragmented and partly quarried away, with their pedestals dispersed. Some of their blocks were reused in the Karnak temple, but archeologists brought them back to rebuild the colossi, according to the Antiquities Ministry.
In late 1990s, an Egyptian German mission, chaired by German Egyptologist Hourig Sourouzian, began working in the temple area, including the assembly and renovation of the colossi.
“This project has in mind … to save the last remains of a once-prestigious temple,” she said.
The statues show Amenhotep III seated with hands resting on his thighs, with their faces looking eastward toward the Nile and the rising sun. They wear the nemes headdress surmounted by the double crowns and the pleated royal kilt, which symbolizes the pharaoh’s rule.
Two other small statues on the pharaoh’s feet depict his wife, Tiye.
The colossi — 14.5 meters and 13.6 meters respectively — preside over the entrance of the king’s temple on the western bank of the Nile. The 35-hectare complex is believed to be the largest and richest temple in Egypt and is usually compared to the temple of Karnak, also in Luxor.
The colossi were hewn in Egyptian alabaster from the quarries of Hatnub, in Middle Egypt. They were fixed on large pedestals with inscriptions showing the name of the temple, as well as the quarry.
Unlike other monumental sculptures of ancient Egypt, the colossi were partly compiled with pieces sculpted separately, which were fixed into each statue’s main monolithic alabaster core, the ministry said.
Sunday’s unveiling in Luxor came just six weeks after the inauguration of the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum, the centerpiece of the government’s bid to boost the country’s tourism industry. The mega project is located near the famed Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx.
In recent years, the sector has started to recover after the coronavirus pandemic and amid Russia’s war on Ukraine — both countries are major sources of tourists visiting Egypt.
“This site is going to be a point of interest for years to come,” said Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy, who attended the unveiling ceremony. “There are always new things happening in Luxor.”
A record number of about 15.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2024, contributing about 8 percent of the country’s GDP, according to official figures.
Fathy, the minister, has said about 18 million tourists are expected to visit the country this year, with authorities hoping for 30 million visitors annually by 2032.
