Nobel prize cash raised to $1.1M

(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 10, 2019, a visitor stands in front of a bust of the Nobel Prize founder, Alfred Nobel prior to the Nobel awards ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden. – The Nobel ceremony in Stockholm has been canceled and replaced with an online event the Nobel Foundation announced on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The cash envelope that accompanies each Nobel prize will be increased this year from nine to 10 million kronor ($1.1 million), the Nobel Foundation said Thursday.

“The work done in recent years to strengthen the Nobel Foundation’s financial standing has made it possible to increase the prize sum,” the foundation said in a statement.

This year’s prizes in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and economics will be announced during the week of October 5.

The prize sum was reduced from 10 to eight million Swedish kronor in 2011 when the foundation launched a program to improve its finances.

Since the beginning of 2012, its investment capital has risen from just under three billion kronor to 4.6 billion, while the return has been close to nine percent per year thanks to generally good market performance and good results from the foundation’s own asset management, it said.

Prize creator Alfred Nobel, an inventor, and scholar who made a vast fortune from his invention of dynamite in 1866, decreed in his 1895 will that the bulk of his estate — about 31.5 million Swedish kronor, equivalent today to about 2.2 billion kronor ($222 million, 203 million euros) — be invested to fund the prizes.

The Nobel Foundation has previously announced that the traditional award ceremony and banquet in Stockholm have been canceled this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, replaced by a televised event with laureates receiving their prizes in their home countries.

The Peace Prize ceremony, which takes place in Oslo, will go ahead albeit in a scaled-back version — with the traditional banquet canceled.

/MUF