Speculate No More: Medical Prize Opens Week of Nobels

In a tradition that has become as venerable as the 103-year-old Nobel Prizes themselves, the guessing game over who will take home the world’s most coveted awards this week has entered full swing.

The first announcement of 2004 winners comes today with the physiology or medicine prize, followed by a week of announcements of winners for physics, chemistry, economics, peace and possibly literature. The committees behind the awards are notoriously tightlipped and refuse to say who was nominated, and candidates are not revealed publicly for 50 years.

The physiology or medicine prize includes a $1.3 million award.

There are no set guidelines for deciding who wins. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards that bear his name, simply said the winner “shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine.”

The assembly that selects the medicine prize winner invites nominations from previous recipients, professors of medicine and other professionals worldwide before whittling down its choices.

The award for medicine opens a week of Nobel Prizes culminating Oct. 11 with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The peace prize, the only one bestowed in Oslo, Norway, will be announced Oct. 8. The awards always are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

The physics award will be announced Tuesday and the chemistry prize will be announced Wednesday in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.