Dutch Nobel Prize Winners Trivia Quiz

Answer: Physics

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was born in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1853. His work involved investigating the effects of cooling materials close to absolute zero, which led to a process to create liquid helium. It is for this work that he was recognised with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913.

His work involving low temperatures also led to him discovering the phenomenon known as superconductivity, where electrical resistance decreases as temperature reduces.

Answer: Willem Einthoven

Willem Einthoven was born in 1860 in the city of Semarang in what is now Indonesia; at the time the area was part of the Dutch East Indies. He received his medical degree from the University of Utrecht in 1885, and went on to work at the University of Leiden.

Einthoven built on the knowledge that electrical currents are produced by the beating of a heart to create his electrocardiogram machine. The machine used a string galvanometer, a device which moves a string when subjected to an electrical current. By shining light on this string against photographic paper a trace of the pattern created by the string could be recorded and used to see the electrical activity in the heart. He was awarded the 1924 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this invention.

Answer: 1999

't Hooft and Veltman won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the electroweak interaction in particle physics, which is the combination or electromagnetism and what is known as the weak force. 't Hooft was born in the city of Den Helder in 1946, and started working with Veltman in 1969 when Veltman became his advisor for his doctoral degree. Veltman was born in Waalwijk in 1931 and died in January 2021.

Prior to receiving the Nobel Prize 't Hooft's work had been acknowledged in the awarding of the Wolf Prize for Physics in 1981 and the Lorentz Medal in 1986.

Answer: True

Jan and Niko Tinbergen have both won Nobel Prizes, Jan in Economics and Niko in Physiology or Medicine. They are the only siblings to win Nobel prizes in the 20th Century.

Niko Tinbergen was an ornithologist who was regarded as one of the founders of the study of animal behaviour known as ethology. He was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their work on social behaviour patterns in animals.

Jan Tinbergen won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on macroeconomic models. Macroeconomics is the study of economics at a regional or national level rather than at the level of individual businesses or people. Jan Tinbergen created macroeconomic models on which much modern, western financial policy is predicated, and it is for this work that he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Answer: False

This is false, as no Dutch citizens were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature during the 20th century. Willem Frederik Hermans was a renowned Dutch author who was awarded the 1977 Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, the highest prize awarded in the Netherlands for literature.

Hermans primarily wrote bleak, existentialist works with a number set during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.

Answer: Tjalling Koopmans

Tjalling Koopmans and Leonid Kantorovich were joint winners of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics. Koopman started his academic studies in maths at Utrecht University before switching to theoretical physics. After meeting Jan Tinbergen in 1933, he was inspired to study mathematical economics and gained his PhD from Leiden University in 1936. Koopmans moved to the USA in 1940 to work at the University of Chicago and became a US citizen in 1946.

Answer: Vitamins

Christiaan Eijkmann was born in the city of Nijkerk in the Netherlands in 1858. He trained as a medical officer for the Netherlands Indies Army at the Military Medical School at the University of Amsterdam. Eijkmann was sent to the Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony consisting of much of what is today Indonesia, to study the disease beriberi. He noticed that chickens fed polished rice developed beriberi but recovered when fed unpolished rice leading him to theorise that there was something lacking in the polished rice that caused the disease.

This work formed the basis for others to work out that the missing component was thiamine otherwise known as vitamin B1. It was for this work that Eijkmann was jointly awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Answer: International legal relations

Tobias Asser was born in Amsterdam in 1838, and studied law at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University. He worked primarily in the area of private international law, which deals with how issues that affect more than one jurisdiction can be resolved when the laws in those jurisdictions differ.

Alfred Fried was an Austrian journalist who believed that trouble in international relations was the leading cause of war and campaigned for instruments to help ameliorate this.

Both men were jointly awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to improve international relations.

Answer: Paul Crutzen

Paul Crutzen was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland for their work on atmospheric chemistry and in particular their work studying the ozone layer. Crutzen was born in 1933 in Amsterdam, he wanted to study science at university but did not qualify for a scholarship so instead studied Civil Engineering at a professional education school with lower fees.

He got involved with meteorological and atmospheric chemistry when he took a job as a computer programmer at the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University, where he was able to complete a PhD.

Answer: 1901

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff was a Dutch chemist and the first ever winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry which he was awarded for his work on the chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. van 't Hoff was born in Rotterdam in 1852, and studied to be a chemical technologist at Delft University of Technology graduating in 1871.

He undertook further study at the University of Leiden and in Bonn before obtaining his doctorate degree at the University of Utrecht. His work with solutions showed that dilute solutions behave similar to gases and follow similar mathematical laws. van 't Hoff died from tuberculosis in 1911.