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Tag: Nobel prize

  • Nobel Prize winners to receive more money

    Nobel Prize winners to receive more money

    Nobel Prize winners will receive one million Swedish kronor more in prize money this year, bringing the total to 11 million kroner (985,000 dollars), the Nobel Foundation has said.

    The extra cash is not as valuable as it might have been in the past, as the Swedish kronor has lost ground against the U.S. dollar and the euro in the last year.

    Nobel laureates will be announced from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9.

    Read Also: Experts to address misinformation at Nobel Prize Summit

    Category medicine-physiology traditionally kicks off the awards, followed by  physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

    The prestigious awards were  traditionally handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of the prize Founder and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).

    The Nobel Peace Prize is the only one that is not awarded in Stockholm, but in Oslo. (dpa/NAN)

  • Africa and the Nobel prize

    As humans, when we have something to look forward to or look ahead to something worth celebrating, we have the deep sense of reminiscing through the sweats of the past on the path of success. However, while we keep growing and advancing periodically as humans, it requires the unpleasantness of unlearning too.

    There are times when we must deal with new data, strange ideas and innovative thinking. We can draw comfort from the fact that celebrating intellectual work, regardless of its origin, is the common heritage of all humanity.

    Over a thousand Nobels have been awarded since the prize was established in 1901. Most of those have been in sciences but there’s also the literature prize and most famously, the peace prize. According to statistics, 83 percent of all Nobel laureates have all emanated from the Western countries such as Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

    However, the Almighty ‘Africa’ in its majestic sense and splendor has had only 25 Nobel laureates so far in the history of the prize. Asia, despite being the largest and most populous region in the world have recorded only 49 Nobel laureates – All of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East combined have only 104 Nobel laureates in total. These regions hold 81 percent of the world’s population but only 10 percent of its Nobel laureates.

    According to statistics, the top 10 countries with the most Nobel laureates are United States (347), Britain (120), Germany (104), France (65), Sweden (30), Russia (27), Switzerland (26), Canada (23), Austria (22), Italy (20) while 25 Nobel awards in total since inception has been won in Africa. These are South Africa (10), Egypt (six); other countries are Algeria, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, and Nigeria. However, the first person from Africa to win a Nobel Prize was ‘Max Theiler’, a South African man who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951.

    The last time Africa won the Nobel Prize was in 2011.

    Though many might opine that the barriers to entry are many for Africa such as limitation of imaginations, underfunded research institutions, negative orientation, controversy between science and myths or superstitious claims, there’s need to think outside the imaginary box, break the barriers little by little and be a researcher trying to make a difference.

    Down the memory lane, some notable Africans dating back to Albert Luthuli in 1960, have won the Peace Prize probably because we have had more than our fair share of conflict resolution. Some of them were worthy winners. The literature prize has been won by a few African writers, the first being Wole Soyinka. The question that keeps running through an average mind especially that of an African is – why are there no African winners of the Nobel Prize in science related field such as physics, chemistry, medicine or economics? Do we have scarce or shortage of scientists on Africa?

    Looking at the fundamental basis of the problem, many African countries do not conduct enough research or we do not have enough research institutions because of the nature of universities in many African countries.

    Most of these universities are merely seen as teaching institutions with no reference for research output. Research institutes do exist, but only to answer the day to day questions of existence and not for discovery purposes.

    The blame game for the dearth in advanced researches in institutions across Africa cuts across the respective quarters. The government however end up using the potential researchers who are best brains from universities by making them heads of government agencies or simply bring them to do routine administrative work.

    Beyond the blurred spectacles towards Africa’s rise, there’s need for some essential instruments to re-engineer Africa towards attaining a topshot such as availability of technology, increased funding, complete and continuous interest in research activities, the harnessing the right opportunities and seeing the need for research.

    • Alao Abiodun, Alaojoshua200@gmail.com

  • When Nobel Prize winner Naipaul visited Nigeria

    The world woke up last Saturday to the news of the death of Trinidad-born British author, V.S. Naipaul. The Nobel Prize winner passed on at his London home at the age of 85. About 10 years ago, the controversial writer and his wife, Nadira were guests of the Chairman of the board of The Nation Newspaper, Mr. Wale Edun, where the Chairman of the editorial board of the newspaper had a rare interview with him. Excerpts from the rare encounter are reproduced below.

    ONCE in a rare while, a journalist comes upon a scoop, a delightfully subversive editorial idea, or a personage of earthquake proportions. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul came to Nigeria in the form of a genius and SAM OMATSEYE, editorial board chairman of The Nation, engaged him for about an hour and a half. Naipaul, winner of the Booker Prize and Nobel Prize for literature among several others, is a treasure some critics have described as the greatest novelist in English writing today.

    This treasure arrived in a Mercedes Benz car in the broad verdantly lush and ornate Ikoyi residence of Wale Edun, former Lagos State Finance Commissioner and Chairman of the board of The Nation Newspaper. Treasures are rare, but few are laden with so much great narratives, pithy prose, range of vision, panoply of genres and, of course, controversy as V. S Naipaul.

    He alighted from the car into the mellow Ikoyi morning air, betraying some of the unkindness of age. The over 74-year-old, in a jacket – a T-shirt underneath – was helped out of the car by his wife, both of them exuding instant bonhomie as they walked with Edun and Omatseye, a few metres into Edun’s library that Naipaul, who has gulped many a tome, described as impressive.

    With tea, coffee, tables and the ambience of books, Omatseye set out to propound questions about his writings, his reason for visiting Nigeria, his views on African writers and writing, his poetics, his preliminary impressions of Nigeria, his Nobel prize, and of course his controversies. He raked up a few in this interview, not least the piece about Nigeria’s prose doyen, Chinua Achebe.

    His wife, Nadira, also chipped in some brilliant words during the conversation, showing her fervor for her husband’s activity. She sometimes evinced her awe about the writer’s accomplishments and genius. On Achebe, Naipaul made it clear prior to the questioning that if Achebe had made comments about him in the past, he had not. This interview is his first comment on Achebe’s writings. He tried to restrain his words, but his irrepressible instinct to express himself left out some comments that are published in this interview. But the Naipaul that emerges is a thinking, engaged mind, ever ready to spar, deploying the sparkles resources of a genius. Excerpts

     

    Sir, it is my pleasure to have this interview with you, could you tell us why you are here and your impression of Nigeria?

    Naipaul: I am here to see what I can find and have to write about for a chapter of a book I am writing about Africa. I am being selective about the countries. I am not going everywhere. I have already done a piece about Uganda, the first chapter, quite long. I’d like to do an equivalent thing about Nigeria. That requires finding material which should carry on from what I have done in Uganda and not repeat it.

    Is it fiction or non-fiction?

    Naipaul: It can’t be fiction. I just arrived. How can I make things up?

    Some people have had to research for novels and you have had to do that quite a bit. You travelled to the Congo and Asia…

    I went to Congo in 1975. I went for the simple reason it would be safe to go there. Let me go back a little bit. I came from a very small place, the island of Trinidad where I was born and spent my early life. It’s 1800 square miles, nothing to compare to Nigeria. I have always been fascinated by size. One of the first things I did when I left Trinidad was to make long journeys in the same country, and in those days it meant travelling from Paris to Barcelona. That was a pretty long journey. Later that ambition grew, and later I wanted to see big rivers and Congo was big river…. That is the start of that. And I went and did a piece for the New York Review of Books. You know if you are a writer and you are living by your writing, you need people to back what you do. That was an article… the material later resulted in A Bend in The River.

    And In a Free State

    Naipaul: In a Free State was much earlier. It was a book about a people without a place. A people losing their place, about placelessness. It was a very big subject to me at the time I began it in 1969. And it hadn’t been explored by other writers. And the idea of doing this sequence about people who had lost their place came to me and at the heart was a novel was about a place like Uganda, Rwanda, a little bit of Kenya. When the book fortunately won the Booker Prize in 1971, it was an early Booker. It was before the Booker became very commercial. In those days when the Booker began in 1969, it was to acknowledge those books that were of quality that had been overlooked. It was not meant to create commercial sellers. So, I crept in under that banner. I think the very fact that it was so ambitious in that way, with different pieces, with different countries adding up t the point about people without a place.

    It disadvantaged the book.

    Nadira: Yes, disadvantaged the book. So, we have now removed the preceding stories and we have now reintroduced the novel, In a Free State. It’s a very powerful book. The other stories, too.

    Yes, it is. There was the story about the tramp.

    Nadira: Yes.

    Now, the impression you have about Nigeria so far.

    Naipaul: You mustn’t go by what I say. What will happen is that I will think a lot more about what I’ve seen and reflect, and I will know more clearly in about a month or so while working on it.

    What are your preliminary impressions?

    Naipaul: It’s unlike other colonial places; that should be said. And an important thing is its size. Size matters. We see in the news about small countries. They don’t have proper leaders because in our global world, talents go away to bigger countries, to Harvard or places like that. They leave there to their home bases…the difference in size matters. It is as people say about, eh, you know Gulliver’s Travels?

    Yes

    Naipaul: When it began small and the grass is a particular height (Jonathan) Swift doesn’t make the grass smaller. So, size matters and increasingly this will become a problem for small places. Absence of talent, the diminution of talent, the training of talent and then goes away. I don’t think that will be your problem here. Nigeria is a big country and it should be treated by its people as a big country. It should not be treated like a village. It is hard sometimes not to do so. Like in India, many politicians sometimes treat India as though it is a village. So they miss the point about the country. That’s the main point about Nigeria. There is another important point, too, is that they (Nigerians) are a very urbane people.

    (Laughter)

    Nadira: Why do you laugh?

    Naipaul: Because he is very urbane

    I can say that for myself

    Naipaul: they have a wonderful sense of humour and urbanity is a marvelous quality to have as a people. It will see you through. The rest I don’t know the economics and things like that. These will come.

    What other countries are you visiting for this book?

    Naipaul: I’ve gone to Uganda, I spent six weeks there. I will spend a little less here. There are special reason for that. I want to go to Ghana, to go to the Ivory Coast. I wanted to check what has happened to Houphet Boigny’s capital, Yamasoukro. This is a man who has made up a religion for himself.  He built a palace with its rituals, he built a moat and filled it with crocodiles and turtles and he had them fed by a man with a long white gown from Morocco every afternoon. He also built great buildings and great roads. I also wanted to go to Senegal briefly. I went to Senegal though for a short time. I have forgotten the year now to consider the nature of their religion. But it was not interesting enough at the time to persevere with the theme and now something else has come up. I think I will go to Gabon (Libreville). After that I will go to the Congo, after that South Africa. I will also go to Swaziland. That’s my itinerary. It’s amazing how much of Africa I’ve been to. I went to Mozambique on which I wrote Half a Life.

    How long will all of these take?

    Naipaul: I am writing in between the segments of my travels. But I would like to give the publisher the book by the end of next year. The book will come out at 2010.

    Some people said you won the Nobel Price many years after you should have won it. Why do you think that was the case?

    Naipaul: Because there are lots of people who think I don’t write optimistically enough and there are a lot of people from the left who thought that for a modern world this was not the kind of writing. I never think like that. I tend to write what I see. And that early novel we talked about in 1969 (Miguel Street) and 1971, In a Free State, is about a colonial country considering the expatriate. You can write that today. Now you have to write from an African point of view, which will require another kind of angle. Many people require you go against what your eyes tell you. You outline a very terrible situation and the last paragraph you say yes there is hope. It (Nobel Prize) came much later than it should, but that’s good for me because it didn’t affect me. I think it might have affected me if it had come when I was 45.

    Wole Soyinka has been writing a lot of non-fiction after the Nobel Prize. Is there something about the prize that say it’s time to concentrate on non-fiction?

    Naipaul: I consider my non-fiction became a lot long time ago an important part of my work.  I think the idea has built up in the last hundred years that writing is writing fiction.  That means making up a narrative as though that’s the only type of writing. It’s only one kind of writing and I think it’s been overplayed now.  It’s now time for other sides of writing. There is philosophy, history, biography.  There are very important disciplines and important for us to understand the world in which we live. I began of course, wishing to write because I had a talent for it because it was what was presented to me as being a writer. But because of my background, my Trinidad background, a very small background.  I came to the end of my material very quickly. I couldn’t just repeat what I had done because I had the mind.  Because I had lived a long time in England and I had travelled and I had also been to India and places like that and Africa, I used the non-fiction form to ex myself, to extend my vision. It wasn’t means of short-changing the reader or the publisher. You asked at the beginning if I was going to write fiction about Nigerian and I had to say very quickly I had just arrived, how I could do it, because you write fiction about places you know very, very well. You know people and read people your way. To do non-fiction is not to do it lesser thing because every art, including literature, is dynamic. It develops, it changes. If it doesn’t do that, it’s dead. I’ll tell you this story. Wordsworth became the poet laureate of England for many years.  He was writing wonderful little poems, the lyrical ballads, little stories in verse. Beautiful, very beautiful. Somebody said you can’t do much with this these days. There is a young man called Dickens who is writing these other books. That’s what people want to read. Before Dickens them was Wordsworth, and before him there was restoration comedy.

    There was epic poem

    Naipaul: Exactly, and Shakespeare and Marlowe and all of that. So, it’s always moving on, I think what people should do is try to see what writers are arriving at after the novel. The novel has been around too long. Everybody writes the novel. There are schools to teach you how to write the novel. I can’t imagine Dickens going to such a school.  He did it out of his own brain.  What will be the new direction? Some people think there will be no new directions. Maybe biography or writing for the films. So, there are many possibilities.

    What are the limitations of the novel? You have grappled with the idea of stopping writing the novel.  You would say this is my last and then, here is another book?

    Nadira: This is the last book on Africa

    Naipaul: Yes, that is genuinely felt because every book is exhausting to write. One gives it so much.  One has to feel that after this there can be no more.

    What is the limitation of the novel?

    Naipaul: It’s all been done before.

    You didn’t have good thing to say about the following writers: Conrad, Flaubert

    Naipau: I had few good things to say about Flaubert.

    What of Joyce, Steadhal and Proust?

    Naipaul: They so are so the European civilization. It’s so much about social ambition in that setting. It can’t have no meaning for me I have never lived in that world.  Other people have lived in that world.  They can feel moved by it. They can be informed or entertained by it, but it is too far away for me.  I think Proust (The remembrance of things Past) is too self-indulgent for way it is written. It goes on and on.

    But you have good things to say about Dickens?

    Naipaul: Early Dickens. Dickens’ carefully exemplifies the difficult of the novel. He began in 1836 with the Pickwick Papers and before that he was a reporter and writing articles…. Everything is brand new and vigour and the freshness of vision.  That makes his work much memorable.  Then very quickly he becomes very tired, he begins to copy, he begins to parody himself. And that is what people are doing most of the time with the novel.  They read the novel and try to write one like that too. They don’t write one like that too.

    Just formalistic?

    Naipaul: Yes, yes

    I think with a certain amount of pain when I began reading Dombey and son…

    Nadira: Unreadable. And Hard Times too

    Naipaul: Yes

    Nadira: Hard Times is really bad. In fact the novel killed Dickens.

    Naipaul: That’s what I said. Dickens died early. He was killed by Dickensian novel.

    That’s suicide

    Nadira: He was worn out. He died very young

    He was 58 years old.

    Naipaul: Yes Nadira: He wrote such books as David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickelby and then he ran out of material.

     

    Some people said your condemnation of those books coincide with the View that modernism is dead, so what we have now is post-modernism. This means you have to dismantle the concept of the novel as you know it today.

    Naipaul: I don’t think that will work. They tried it. The French Rob Grier tried it. They began in the 50’s I reviewed an earl Rob Grier for The Statesman, in which I made a joke, one of the many jokes people hold against me. It’s a novel so called about a man making a journey to visit his former mistress and ends in the south of France. He is in this train, stopping, yanking doors. It would be of interest if no one had been on a train before. I don’t think there is any that says we must avoid the narrative. I think the art of fiction has done its work, terrific amount of work. But literature has to move on. I mean we should set aside narrative. Everything is narrative. Without narrative there is no writing. You can’t have a string at unrelated thoughts and ideas. They have to be connected to something one way. There is no new kind of novel, it’s all been done. If you go into the classical world, the Roman world, you know there are things like novels, which come down to us. They are pretty much like novels written today.

    Let us speak about African literature.

    Naipaul: I am not an expert. I’ll talk about it nonetheless.

    We have writers like Soyinka, Achebe, and Coetzee

    Naipaul: You are bringing South Africa.

    Do you think the continent has underachieved?

    Naipaul: I am not making any judgment of their writers. You might mention Nadine Gordimer as well. The thing about writing is that it happens when they have to happen. There is little point in trying to force them. When I was in Congo or Zaire it was called in 1975, Mobutu was trying to get a novel off the ground for a celebration in Lagos.

    It was Festac in 1977

    Naipaul: He said that why can’t we get one off? You know, novels are not written like that.

    The Soviets used to commission novels

    Naipaul: Exactly.

    Would you comment on individual writers like Achebe and Soyinka?

    Naipaul: (A long pause) I think Achebe should have done more. I think he had been too tempted by the American universities. He spent too much time away from Africa. He probably has good reasons for that. I don’t know the circumstances. I last saw him during the Biafran conflicts.

    That was a long time ago.

    Naipaul: I think I saw him in New York.

    He said your writings are not really true about Africa.

    Naipaul: I won’t fight anybody who says anything like that. I can’t do it. I do what I do. If it’s untrue. I am very sorry.

    Nadira: I like his Things Fall Apart. That is the book that put Achebe on the map. After that, there is no book. We celebrated that book. You should be very grateful, Africa. That book was recommended. We had to study it.

    Naipaul: But again, it was a book about the customs of a particular people. And he had all the customs, birth, marriage, and dance, everything else. So, in a way, he had exhausted his subject. Just like Indian writers who have come out in the last 20 years or so, have grown to feel that their subjects have to be their family history. If you have written your family history, you can go home and eat your rice and stew to your heart’s content.

    Somebody once wrote that there are three things to great writing: perception, observation and language. Some are good in language like Joyce, but not so much in observation. Where would you put yourself?

    Naipaul: Observation and language. I wouldn’t claim perception because what is there is there. Language is important. Language clarifies your thought because it tells you what you feel about everything. As said, I would be sure about what I feel about Nigeria when I am writing. That is the effect of language. It requires precision. I also like to award big words. I like to reduce important ideas into very small pieces, small words and that’s a great help in clarifying ideas.

    Talking about language and precision, yon have always been compared to Joseph Conrad in other areas. Would you comment on that, because I know that Joseph Conrad used a lot of big words? Conrad used big words and some critics have accused him of a lack of restraint in the way he wrote. But then you have had similar trajectories. He was from a small country, just like you. He went to England, just like you. He also went and wrote about the Congo and Asia, just like you.

    Naipaul: I’ll tell you how all of these things began. Conrad died in 1924. He died in the University of Kent. They asked me to write a long essay about Conrad, so I read as much as I could before writing the piece (1974). And that has encouraged this idea that I am related to Conrad. In fact, the essay I wrote was full of admiration but it said the trouble I had approaching Conrad because of what it talked about.

    Nadira: Lack of restraint

    Naipaul: Lack of restraint, the wordiness, until I had grown older. I think all these things are really admirable. If you read his first novel, if someone reads it…

    Almayer’s Folly Naipaul: Yes, you can begin to see what he is doing, you can be in to feel the weather, you begin to feel the river, see the colour, see it, and he doesn’t want to let anything go. And so, that matters a lot more to me now. When I was young, it was painful. As l said that, that is what l said and I told them about his virtues, his analysis of revolutionaries 1 since heard or learnt, I just hope it is not true that as at the time he wrote that (The Secret Agent), he had not met any revolutionary. (Laughter) he had made them up in his head, and there is a very beautiful thing he did. He did a criminal revolutionary, a very fad man who he called Michaelis

    Naipaul: He gave Michaelis a patroness. What is this aristocratic lady doing with this evil who wants to blow the world up? And he worked it out. He says, she behaves that there was too much a compound of the plutocracy in the social setting and a little bomb would blow it all away and possibly her unscathed. And so, he worked that out. And one of the things I also wrote about is his gift as a middle-aged man, writing in middle age, of summing up great truths like a middle-aged man. Not the way a young man can do it. Young men don’t have the experience. I quoted a lot of it, about five or six from different books. And the one that struck me at that time because there was a kind of crisis in my own life. ‘A man to whom love comes late not as the most precious of illusions, but as an enlightening and priceless misfortune.’

    Beautiful!

    Naipaul: Conrad at that age. He would have had his up and downs. He married a Simple woman, Jessie Conrad. Her father was a warehouse man. So the great writer, his private life had one rather low. But no matter. Something else happened to her. One day, she went out shopping in the winter. The place was so frozen, she slipped and damaged her back irretrievably and she became immense. She was this elegant figure.

    That was a favourite Conrad word, immense.

    Naipaul: (Laughter) He was landed with this very big cripple and he would pretend when they went out together for their holidays or something that he had nothing to do with her (laughter)

    Naipaul: And his children, two boys, did nothing.

    The idea of priceless misfortune. That is a beautiful one

    Naipaul: Enlightening. Priceless misfortune, enlightening. To describe an affair of the heart like that, it is marvelous. No other writer has done that before in the world.

    In fact, when he was writing, in his introduction to The Secret Agent, he also reflected on how difficult it was for him. He said it was like moving from a forest into a plain. He said there is a lot of light but there is not much to see.

    Naipaul: And that led him to an act of plagiarism actually. A very early piece of writing he did. The second story he wrote. The first was called an “An Outpost of Progress” which remains a classic. A little bit overdone at the end but a classic. And then, he wrote something that tormented him called The Return. He set it in England, in London. And the story is like this: a man comes home from the railway station one day…But in that description of people getting off the train, he has inched something from Flaubert. Flaubert is writing something about the French aristocracy in the country who how an easy dominion over animals and women. And something else among the furniture… Conrad lifted that and put it in English in The Return.

    Naipaul: So that was the one thing I spotted and wrote a little piece about it in the New York Review of Books

    Conrad fascinated me at one time in my life. I read nothing but Conrad. I had to really cut myself away from him…

    Naipaul: Yes, you have to look after yourself.

    Alright, thank you very much, sir

    Naipaul: Thank you. You asked very wonderful questions. It’s been very stimulating for me.

  • Three scientists share 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

    Three scientists have shared 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.

    The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

    Peter Brzezinski, Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said that this year’s scientific invention enables us to see the molecules inside the cells and how they interact.

    “In future, we are able to see the processes of how the molecules structures move,’’ Brzezinski added.

    Brzezinski said this year’s achievement is a “good example” of inter-disciplinary researches in which technologies play crucial roles to scientific discoveries.

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement that “the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules, has moved biochemistry into a new era.”

    Speaking through a telephone interview at the press conference, Joachim Frank said “I never mind being woken up early” for the news of the Prize.

    “I was pretty overwhelmed, it’s wonderful news,’’ Frank said.

    This year’s prize is 9 million SEK (1.1 million dollars) and would be shared by the three laureates.

  • Renowned S/African author Karel Schoeman commits suicide

    Renowned S/African author Karel Schoeman commits suicide

    Renowned South African author Karel Schoeman has committed suicide, his lawyer Carl van Rensburg confirmed Wednesday.

    Media reports said Schoeman died in a retirement home in the city of Bloemfontein at the age of 77.

    Schoeman was one of South Africa’s most prolific and prize-winning authors and he was even tipped for the Nobel Prize.

    His relatively unknown status has been attributed to his writing primarily in Afrikaans, South Africa’s Dutch-related language.

    Van Rensburg denied reports that he had stopped taking food and water.

    “He found another way to end his life.

    “I presume some sort of medication must have been involved,” he said.

    Van Rensburg said Schoeman had left a letter behind.

    The daily Times Live quoted the letter as saying he did not want to be old and become a burden to anyone.

    NAN reports that Schoeman was a South African novelist, historian, translator and man of letters.

    He was the author of 19 novels and numerous works of history.

    Schoeman wrote primarily in Afrikaans, although several of his non-fiction books were originally written in English.

    His novels are increasingly being translated into other languages, notably, English, French and Dutch.

    Schoeman won the most prestigious Afrikaans literary award, the Hertzog Prize, three times: in 1971 (for By Fakkellig, ’n Lug vol helder wolke and Spiraal), 1986 (’n Ander land) and in 1995 (Hierdie lewe).

    The Recht Malan Prize for “excellence in the field of non-fiction books” was awarded to him four times.

    On the retirement of President Nelson Mandela in 1999, Schoeman was one of only two writers to be awarded the State President Award: Order for Excellent Service.

    In more recent years, his fiction garnered much praise in France, winning inter alia the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 2009.

    His 1972 novel, Na die Geliefde Land (literally: To the Beloved Country), was made into an award-winning feature film, Promised Land in 2002, with a screenplay by Jason Xenopoulos.

    Schoeman has produced and published several screenplays, including an adaptation of his first novel, Veldslag, some of which were broadcast on South African national television during the 1980s.

  • Which way the Nobel Prize for Literature?

    Which way the Nobel Prize for Literature?

    Penultimate week, at the University of Lagos, literary eggheads gathered to discuss the new trend in the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Edozie Udeze was there

    The Nobel Prize for Literature has never generated the kind of heat, controversy and debate it has done since it was announced a few weeks ago.  For the first time in the history of the Nobel, the literary community worldover was abuzz with different kinds of reasoning and ideas as to why the prize, essentially meant for literary writers, was awarded to a musician.  Although it was awarded to Bob Dylan on 13th of October “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” most literary eggheads have been pitching their arguments for and against this concept.

    This was why the department of English Language, the University of Lagos, penultimate week organized a forum to look into the pros and cons of the award.  The purpose of the forum was basically to see if it was proper for a music composer, singer and entertainer to be considered a literary poet in the tradition of the Nobel Prize in literature.

    In his opening remarks, Professor Hope Eghagha, the head of the department of English, reminded the gathering that “this is an engaging topic and it is right for us to be here today to discuss it.  It is for us to see truly the direction the Nobel is going.  Can we really influence what the Swedish Academy is doing concerning the Nobel for Literature?”, he added.  “Even then, the Nobel is the highest literary award in the world.  For this, it is significant to us because we know that fine writings are defined only by those who own and give out the award.  But then, why would the Academy at a point reject some great writers, only to give it to those who may not seem appropriate for it?”

    History is replete too, with writers who had rejected the prize in the past.  In the same way, the award had been given to some writers whose qualifications for it had been in doubt.  For Eghagha, a poet himself, “this shows that there is a great politics behind the concept of the award.  Yes, the statement said Dylan has produced music in the great American tradition.  Therefore, this qualifies his entry into the canon as a composer.  Yes, we agree that some of his lines are inspiring and memorable.  Yet, is the Academy creating an avenue to expand the frontiers of the Nobel to include creativity in other fields?  Or are they going back to the roots of poetry where Homer and the like used poetry to permeate the world? “ Eghagha queried.

    While he posed these questions, he threw the floor open for more literary eggheads to air their views on the matter.  Should the Nobel be given to a song writer?  This is in this era of more committed writers all over the world who have been in this business all their lives and have not been given even a hearing before.  Dylan is even a millionaire as it is and therefore shouldn’t this be given to a writer who needs this prize money more to be able to produce more works for literature?

    In his contribution, Dr. Chris Anyokwu insisted that Dylan is not the first musician or entertainer to be given the Nobel in Literature.  He reminded the forum that an Indian musician won it in 1930.  “Yes he was a painter and a musician and in giving the award to him the Swedish Academy noted that his works influenced his own culture and other cultures across the globe.  So, what we see here in the case of Dylan is not strange; it is not new.  Dylan wrote so much in the 1960s to influence Civil Rights Movements in America and beyond.  He is aversed to injustice.  He is deeply talented and popular and modern.  He is versed in American culture.  But here we have to look at the politics of it all.  Why hasn’t it be given to most African writers whose works really merit this award?  Anyakwu remonstrated.

    For him, even though Dylan is a performance poet, who writes good and profound poems, is he really better than Ngugi wa Thong’o of Kenya or Chinua Achebe who have been taunted by many as some of the best writers world-over?  But what we see now is that pop culture has been added to the award.  And it is the Swedish Academy that can explain why.  But here then lies the controversy.  May be it is time for writers to look into the commercial merits of what they write”,  Anyokwu, also of the department of English of Unilag, submitted.

    Professor Chidi Maduagwu observed that forever literature will remain controversial.  “It is ideal that Dylan converted his poems into songs.  Yes, he is basically a song writer.  It is his extraordinary use of the language that has distinguished him from the rest. He is ideologically inclined in his works and ways of presentation.  He is also an activist.  However, whether he rejects the award or not, it is his forever.  But whatever happens, I still feel some people are holding literature hostage.  Let literature be.  Let them not continue to hold it hostage.”

    In all, Maduagwu reasoned that Dylan deserved the award because he is qualified.  “His works are profound, universal and has varieties.  Indeed, his works touch a lot of things that the Swedish Academy is looking for”.

    Dr. Adetokunbo Pearse opined that Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, a song universally acknowledged as being deep and profound, is enough to draw attention to him.  Having sung a few lines from it, he said, “I’ve been following his works since the 1960s.  In fact, the lyrics of this song have helped me to teach literature in the US for 20 years and in Nigeria for 10 years.  It does not matter what form of literature it is; literature is literature.  These, to me, are not popular culture; they are rather profound and unique.  Even then Bob Marley is another song writer whose works can one day earn him a posthumous Nobel Prize in literature.  Not only that, his works deserve to be taught in schools because of the messages of hope that they contain,” he said.

    Although Adedayo Lamikanre is a professor in Pharmacology, his interest in literary matters is quite overwhelming.  In his own contribution, he said, “You can’t set a pattern for literature.  The boundary is too wide.  There are indeed so many good writers who lived and did not get the Nobel.  So the beauty of literature is in its varieties.  Just write and keep on writing because you do not know how much impact you can create tomorrow.  Even then Shakespeare was writing for his small audience in England.  He didn’t envisage the impact his works would create some day.  It was in 1507 that the English Language became an official court language and so Shakespeare developed it further.  So, Dylan has to be applauded for this feat he has attained,” he said.

    Handled by Dr. Patrick Oloko, also an English teacher, the session couldn’t reach any compromise as to whether the Swedish Academy was right or wrong.  But the issue still remains that as a body, the Nobel Prize is full of politics and it is only those concerned who truly understand the precepts of that politics.  Like the Igbo would say: He who has yam and knife knows how to cut it and who to give it to.  After all he who plays the pipe dictates the tune.

  • British scientists win Nobel Prize for Physics

    The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three British-born scientists for discovery about strange forms of matter.

    David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz will share the eight million kronor (£727,000) prize.

    Their work could result in improved materials for electronics and is already informing one approach to super-fast computing.

    They were named at a press conference in Sweden. They join a prestigious list of 200 other Physics laureates recognised since 1901.

    The Nobel Committee said the trio’s discovery had “opened the door on an unknown world”.

    When matter is in extreme conditions, such as when it’s cold or flat, scientists start to see unusual behaviour from atoms.

    These phenomena complement the familiar phases of matter, namely when things change from solid to liquid to gas.

    Prof Haldane commented: “I was surprised and gratified.”

    “The work was a long time ago but it’s only now that a lot of tremendous new discoveries are based on this original work, and have extended it.”

    All three researchers used maths to explain strange physical effects in rare states of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films.

    Kosterlitz and Thouless focused on phenomena that arise in flat forms of matter – on surfaces or inside extremely thin layers that can be considered two-dimensional.

    This contrasts with the three dimensions (length, width and height) with which we usually describe reality.

    Haldane also studied matter that forms threads so thin they can be considered one-dimensional.

    Acting chairman of the Nobel committee, Prof Nils Mårtensson, commented: “Today’s advanced technology – take for instance our computers – relies on our ability to understand and control the properties of the materials involved.

    “And this year’s Nobel laureates in their theoretical work discovered a set of totally unexpected regularities in the behaviour of matter, which can be described in terms of an established mathematical concept – namely, that of topology.

    “This has paved the way for designing new materials with novel properties and there is great hope that this will be important for many future technologies.”

    Phase transitions occur when matter changes from one phase to another, such as when ice melts and becomes water

    Kosterlitz and Thouless described a type of phase transition in a thin layer of very cold matter

    In the cold, vortices form (diagram) as tight pairs, but at higher temperatures, as the phase transition occurs, they separate and “sail” off in different directions

    Prof Nigel Cooper, from the University of Cambridge, told BBC News: “The Quantum Hall effect is used in metrology to give a precise definition of the Ohm in resistance.

    Just as a kilogram or a metre requires an exact definition, the maths behind today’s Nobel prize has helped precisely describe the unit of electrical resistance – how a device or material reduces the electrical conductance flowing through it.

    As an application, he said, “it’s not in your iPhone, but it’s used in government labs around the world.”

    “There are many aspects of topology people point to that could be relevant in future, but these are not things that are working today.”

    For instance, Prof Cooper explained, scientists are exploring whether topological concepts could be used in “robust quantum devices which can do things that classical computers or classical circuit elements are unable to do”.

    Microsoft’s Station Q project is taking just such an approach to the development of powerful quantum computers.

    “The topological aspects can give the quantum information a robustness against being destroyed by the usual noisy environment,” said Prof Cooper.

    In addition, he said, topological metals could be used in the manufacture of improved conductors or transistors

     

  • British physicists win Nobel Prize for ‘strange matter’ discoveries

    The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three British-born scientists for discoveries about strange forms of matter.

    David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, will share the 8m kronor (£727,000) prize, the BBC reports.

    The work could result in improved materials for electronics and is already informing one approach to super-fast computing.

    They were named at a press conference in Sweden.

    The winners join a prestigious list of 200 other Physics laureates recognised since 1901.

    The Nobel Committee said the discoveries had “opened the door on an unknown world.”

    When matter is in extreme conditions, such as when it’s very cold or flat, scientists start to see unusual behaviour from the atoms.

    These phenomena complement the more familiar phases of matter, namely when things change from solid to liquid to gas.

    Prof. Haldane commented: “I was very surprised and very gratified.”

    “The work was a long time ago but it’s only now that a lot of tremendous new discoveries are based on this original work, and have extended it.”

    All three researchers used mathematics to explain strange physical effects in rare states of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films.

    Kosterlitz and Thouless focused on phenomena that arise in flat forms of matter – on surfaces or inside extremely thin layers that can be considered two-dimensional.

     

  • Deaton wins Nobel prize in Economics

    Deaton wins Nobel prize in Economics

    Princeton University’s Angus Deaton yesterday won the Nobel prize in economics for his wide ranging work on consumption that has  helped redefine how poverty is measured around the world, notably in India.

    Deaton, 69, won the eight million Swedish kronor (about $975,000) prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for work that the award committee says has had “immense importance for human welfare, not least in poor countries.”

    The Secretary of the award committee, Torsten Persson, said Deaton’s research has “really shown other researchers and international organisations like the World Bank how to go about understanding poverty at the very basic level; so that’s perhaps the finest and most important contribution he has made.”

    Persson singled out Deaton’s work in showing how individual behavior affects the wider economy and that “we cannot understand the whole without understanding what is happening in the miniature economy of our daily choices.”

    Deaton, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and holds U.S. and British dual citizenship, said he was delighted to have won the prize and was pleased that the committee decided to award work that concerns the poor people of the world.

    In a press conference following the announcement, Deaton said he expects extreme poverty in the world to continue decreasing but that he isn’t “blindly optimistic.”

    He said there are “tremendous health problems among adults and children in India, where there has been a lot of progress.” He noted that half of the children in the country are “still malnourished” and “for many people in the world, things are very bad indeed.”

    The prize committee said Deaton’s work revolves around three central questions: How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods; how much of society’s income is spent and how much is saved; and how do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty?

    Committee member Jakob Svensson said Deaton introduced the “Almost Ideal Demand System,” which has become a standard tool used by governments to study what effect a change in economic policy – such as an increase in sales taxes on food – will have on different social groups and how large the subsequent gains or losses will be.

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also highlighted the model that has become known as the Deaton Paradox, in which he laid bare a contradiction between earlier theory and data on consumer behaviour.

    Ingvild Almas, associate professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, said the Indian government has changed its methodology for measuring poverty thanks to research from the likes of Deaton and that has affected poverty-reduction policies.

    Yesterday’s announcement concludes this year’s presentations of Nobel winners.

    The medicine prize went to three scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases. Japanese and Canadian scientists won the physics prize for discovering that tiny particles called neutrinos have mass and scientists from Sweden, the U.S. and Turkey won the chemistry prize for their research into the way cells repair damaged DNA.

    Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich won the literature award while the peace prize went to The National Dialogue Quartet in Tunisia for its contribution to building democracy in Tunisia following the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.

    The awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896, at lavish ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo.

  • Scientists win Nobel Prize for Chemistry

    Sweden’s Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and Turkish-born Aziz Sancar won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on mapping how cells repair damaged DNA, giving insight into cancer treatments, the award-giving body said on Wednesday.

    “Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments,” Reuters quoted the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as saying in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crowns ($969,000).

    Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell’s genome occur on a daily basis while radiation, free radicals and carcinogenic substances can also damage DNA.

    To keep genetic materials from disintegrating, a range of molecular systems monitor and repair DNA, in processes that the three award-winning scientists all helped map out, opening the door to applications such as new cancer treatments.

    Lindahl works at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, while Modrich is a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine in the United States.

    Sancar, who has U.S and Turkish citizenship, is a professor at the University of North Carolina in America.

    Chemistry was the third of this year’s Nobel prizes. The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.