Nobel Conundrums Trivia Quiz

Answer: Marie Curie

Marie Curie, born in Poland in 1867 and French by virtue of marriage, was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity. Indeed the word 'radiation' is a term she coined. She achieved a number of Nobel firsts: first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, first person to receive two Nobel Prizes and first in two different fields. The curie, a unit of radioactivity, and the element curium (atomic number 96) are both named in honour of her and her husband. It is likely that her death was brought on by radiation exposure during her working life.

Marie Curie named polonium after her country Poland, which did not exist as an independent country at the time. Although polonium poisoning has not been confirmed as the cause of Yasser Arafat's death, abnormally high levels were found on his clothes and personal belongings. Polonium has been used to assassinate people in the past, such as the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. It may have also contributed to Marie Curie's own death.

The Curie family has the distinction of receiving the most Nobel Prizes: Marie Curie received two, the 1903 one in Physics along with her husband Pierre Curie and Henry Becquerel, and the Chemistry Prize in 1911. Her daughter Irčne Joliot-Curie got her Chemistry Prize in 1935 along with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie, making five. Henry Labouisse, husband of Marie Curie's second daughter Čve, coincidentally was the director of UNICEF when it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

Answer: Erwin Schrödinger

Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian physicist who worked in various physics fields however it was for his self-titled equation that he gained his Nobel Prize. Schrödinger's equation in quantum mechanics is comparable to Newton's second law in classical mechanics.

The photo is a reference to Schrödinger's cat, the name given to a thought experiment involving a cat being simultaneously alive and dead, thereby demonstrating a problem with one interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Dirac, an English theoretical physicist, made fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He also has his self-titled equation. The Dirac equation predicts the existence of antimatter and describes fermion behaviour.

Wolfgang Pauli was an Austrian-born pioneer in quantum physics and gained his Nobel Prize for his exclusion principle. German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg was also another quantum mechanics pioneer, for which he gained his Nobel Prize, and is best known for his uncertainty principle. English physicist James Chadwick was awarded his Nobel Prize for his discovery of the neutron in 1932.

Answer: James Dewey Watson

The photograph shows a profile of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock's friend and assistant was Dr Watson. It was the real Watson, along with Crick, who deduced the structure of DNA using data supplied by Rosalind Franklin and Wilkins.

One of the rules of the Nobel Foundation is that a Prize may be not be shared by more than three people, nor does the Nobel committee give posthumous awards. Rosalind Franklin played a key role in the discovery but was not honoured with the award, having died four years earlier of cancer in 1958.

Answer: Ernest Hemingway

The book was 'The Old Man and the Sea', published in 1952. As well as displaying the style of writing which contributed to him winning the Nobel Prize, the book also won him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953. Hemingway was noted for his lean and understated style, using simple sentences to convey his narrative.

Hemingway's writing often reflected his life experiences. An example is of his time with the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War which is reflected in his book 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', published in 1940. No stranger to injuries, he won the Nobel Prize a few months after surviving two plane crashes and a bushfire in Africa, which had resulted in premature obituaries. Known for his heavy drinking, he latterly suffered from paranoia, underwent electro-convulsive therapy and committed suicide in 1961.

Answer: Penicillin

The modern world of antibiotics can trace its beginnings in penicillin. Alexander Fleming is credited with its discovery, apparently a fortunate accident, in 1928. His poor communication skills meant little interest was aroused by his findings and development of the drug was set back perhaps a decade.

When the importance of penicillin was realised, Florey and Chain were two of the more successful researchers at scaling up the production of penicillin, building on Fleming's work.

Fleming was not the first person to discover penicillin's antibiotic effects. French military doctor Ernest Duchesne was writing about penicillin in 1897 in his doctorate thesis but unfortunately it was ignored. Being unknown and aged 23 at the time probably had something to do with it.

Answer: Guglielmo Marconi

The beginning of the 19th century saw the beginnings of electromagnetism. In time this led to James Maxwell publishing a unifying theory in 1873, known as Maxwell's equations, which are the basis for modern communication and electrical technologies. Heinrich Hertz verified the theory by experiment in the late 1880s but saw no practical applications. It was left to others to develop the wireless telegraphy into the 20th century. Marconi and Braun were two who worked on the commercialisation of the technology.

Answer: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

Gorbachev introduced many reforms in the Soviet Union, such as perestroika ('restructuring') and glasnost ('openness), which were intended to revive the Soviet economy. Another reform, rescinding the Brezhnev Doctrine, led to the overthrow of various East European communist governments in 1989 and ultimately the unintended break-up of the Soviet Union. It was for relaxing the Soviet Union's ties with Eastern Europe and as a result ending the Cold War, that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded.

Gorbachev is known for his port-wine stain birthmark. Such birthmarks are caused by vascular anomalies and so named because of their reddish colour.

Answer: William Golding

On one level Golding wrote entertaining stories; on another, a deeper reading of his books exposes layers of ambiguity and a baseness in many of his characters. His writing is said in part to reflect his experiences during the Second World War, which changed his view on humanity and what people were capable of doing to other people. He is best known for his novel 'Lord of the Flies', published in 1954.

The Krugerrand is made from gold, which is the tie-in to the author's name.

Answer: The Red Cross

Founded in 1863 in order to investigate the ideas of Henri Dunant on the treatment of the sick and wounded during combat, the International Committee of the Red Cross (often shortened to The Red Cross) soon expanded to look after the naval arena, prisoners of war and civilians.

Henri Dunant was himself awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 for his ideas and work. He shared the award with Frédéric Passy, who founded the International League of Peace in 1867.

The photo shows a red cross at the bottom left.

Answer: Martin Luther King Jr.

Awarded for his work in promoting African-American civil rights through non-violence, his most famous speech is the 1963 'I Have a Dream' speech. Born in 1929, he trained in theology and became a pastor, following in his father's footsteps. Between 1955 (when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott) and 1968 (when he was assassinated), he worked towards racial integration in America.