Nobel prize 2025: Celebration of shared glory in science with a hint of irony in peace

Indubitably the most prestigious prizes in the world, the Nobels, are awarded each year to individuals or groups for outstanding contributions across fields including Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences. Five of the six awards for 2025 have been announced, with only the Economics prize remaining, which will be made public on October 13. There were 338 candidates for the Peace prize alone this year, including 244 individuals and 94 organizations, which indicate that the field from which the six winners are ultimately selected is widening, and also the fact that the Nobels are being increasingly given to multiple winners who share the substantial prize amounts between themselves.

In accordance with such a trend, the 2025 Nobel for Physics went to three recipients, John Clarke, Michel H Devoret, and John M Martinis, all professors at American universities who were awarded for their pioneering work in quantum mechanics that paved the way for devices like the cellphone and camera.

Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M Yaghi were awarded the Chemistry Nobel for developing molecular structures used by researchers to "harvest water from desert air, extract pollutants from water, capture carbon dioxide and store hydro-gen". Kitagawa teaches at Kyoto University, Robinson at Melbourne University, and Yaghi at the University of California, testifying to the independent nature of their research.

The Nobel for Medicine was shared by Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their research on how the human immune system functions. Sakaguchi is an expert in immunology at Osaka University, Brunkow is a senior programme manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell is a co-founder of Sonoma Bio-therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco.

Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, a writer who belongs to a European literary tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess, received the Nobel for Literature. No Nobel award announcement has ever been unaccompanied by controversies, and the 2025 names had their share, albeit of a somewhat jocular nature.

Despite having a plethora of big guns firing away for him, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and the Pakistan government, US President Donald Trump, who had openly campaigned for the Peace prize, did not receive it!

Apparently, the self-styled 'President of Peace' might have stood a slim chance of getting the Peace Nobel had his peace plan for the Middle East come a month or so earlier. However, according to the Nobel Awards Committee, Trump can be considered for the award next year provided his plan is implemented in toto and does lead to abiding peace in that region.