South Africa’s Nobel Prize laureates

Today, people all over the world celebrate National Nobel Prize Day by honouring those who have received this auspicious award.

According to an online report, On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his third and last will at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris which caused a lot of controversy from the public.

It also resulted in the first Nobel Prize to be awarded five years later, which was in the year 1901.

Since then, many people who are deemed worthy have been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize is apparently awarded to those who for example, create solutions to the world’s problems or create paradigm shifts.

Here are a list of South African Nobel Prize laureates:

• FW De Klerk – Received the award in 1993 for his role in ending Apartheid.

• Nelson Mandela – Also received the award at the same ceremony as F.W. de Klerk for his bravery in fighting to end Apartheid.

• John Maxwell Coetzee – In 2003 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his exceptional novelist, essayist, linguist and translating skills.

• Desmond Tutu – Because of actively fighting for human rights and has a high profile to campaign for the oppressed, he received the award in 1984.

• Nadine Gordimer – She was a South African writer and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She was recognized as a woman “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity.”

• Albert Lutuli – He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid.

• Aaron Klug – He is the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing crystallographic electron microscopy (a method to determine the arrangement of atoms in solids using a transmission electron microscope (TEM).

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