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Alfred NobelBorn in Stockholm in 1833 of Swedish p atomic number 18nts, Alfred Nobel moved with his familyto St. Petersburg, then the slap-up of Russia, at the age of nine. There hisenergetic and inventive father soon acquired a strong and respected position asan inventor and industrialist. Nobel subsequently lived in several countries andultimately came to regard himself as a citizen of the world. Even so, he nevergave up his Swedish citizenship.By virtue of the education he receive in many countries, Nobel read, spoke andwrote fluently in five European languages Swedish, Russian, English, French andGerman. His numerous handwritten letters demonstrate his remarkable proficiencyin all of them. He perfected his French when sent to Paris by his father in hislate teens to study chemistry. His letters in French are particularly elegant.Those in English approximatelytimes bear traces of the early nineteenth-century stylegenerally associated with Byron and Shelley (his two favourite po ets) and areremarkably free of grammatical and idiomatic errors. To his mother he alwayswrote in Swedish, which is also the language of the will he composed in Paris.The fields embraced by the prizes stipulated by the will gleam Nobels private interests. While he provided no prizes for architects, artists,composers or social scientists, he was generous to those working in physics,chemistry, physiology and medicinethe subjects he knew best himself, and inwhich he expected the grea mental test advances.Throughout his life he suffered from poor health and often took cures atwatering places, less to drink the water than to rest. But he expected greatimprovements in medicine, and the profession has since realized many of them.Once he employed a young Swedish physiologist in Paris to test his own theorieson blood transfusions. Although these efforts were not successful, problemsrelated to transfusions were later solved by an Austrian, Karl Landsteiner, whowon the 1930 Nobel Prize in Phys iology or Medicine.The Nobel Prize in Literature, too, reflects the donors personal predilections.From his early youth he had been a writer as well as an avid reader, but helater destroyed many of his insipid poems written in Swedish. He did, however,save a long autobiographical poem in English and occasionally gave copies of itto intimate friends. He was always an all-devouring(prenominal) reader of bo... ...ctiveprize-awarding bodies. After the merits of the candidates have been discussed,the bodies announce their final decisions in mid-October. All proceedings of theprize-awarding bodies are secret.The presentation ceremonies The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiologyor Medicine, Literature and the Prize in Economic Sciences are presented to thelaureates by H.M. the King at a ceremony generally held in the Stockholm ConcertHall on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobels death in 1896 at Sanremo,Italy. The Peace Prize presentation takes place on the same day at t he Oslo CityHall. Each laureate receives a Nobel Gold Medal and a Nobel Diploma. The prizemoney, which varies according to the net income of the fund capital, istransferred after December 10 according to the laureates wishes. In 1995, thevalue of the Nobel Prizes was some SEK 7.2 million per prize.The awards are widely recognized as the worlds highest civic honors. Besidesspurring recipients and possible candidates to new efforts, they have served tomake scientific and literary achievements, as well as humanitarian contributions,much more widely known than would otherwise have been the case.