Number of the Day
Nobel Winners Get a Raise, by the Numbers
Good news, future Nobel laureates, you’re getting a pay bump!
$110,000: That’s roughly how much more prize money winners of the Nobel Prize will take home this year, per Reuters. That’s right, expectant Nobel recipients, you’re getting a raise! Technically, the award is priced in Swedish krona, and the bump is from 9 million to 10 million krona (about $1.2 million). And it turns out this is actually just a return to an earlier baseline: According to Reuters, while the prize’s monetary component steadily rose from 1 million krona to 10 million krona between 1981 and 2001, it was dialed back following the 2008 financial crisis as the Nobel Foundation sought to “get its finances in order.” The payout has stood at 9 million krona since 2017. Surely this raise will incentivize the world’s great thinkers and leaders to try a little harder to come up with Nobel-worthy ideas, insights, and creative expression. The foundation, which has doled out its prizes in categories from the sciences to literature to peace since 1901, is announcing the latest batch of winners throughout the week.
So far, winners this year include Drs. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice in physiology or medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus; Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez in physics for their work on black holes.
It’s an honor just to be nominated… but there’s no money in that.
