Pathfinders and Changemakers: Nobel Prize Winners

In October 2015, the prestigious Nobel Prizes reached a grand total of 900 laureates honored since the awards' inception in 1901. Curiously, it all started with a mistaken obituary.

In 1888, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel was astonished to read about his own demise in a newspaper, which styled him as the "merchant of death." It was in fact his brother Ludvig who had passed away. However, Nobel suddenly saw his life's work of inventing tools of warfare -- of which dynamiteh is his most famous -- in a new and uncomfortable light. He decided to rewrite his last will, bequeathing his fortune to a foundation that would reward outstanding contributions to humanity in the spheres of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry and peacemaking. The award ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway. Each recipient is awarded a gold medal, a handcrafted diploma and a cash prize currently set at SEK 8 million (approximately US$1 million).

In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank added the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The 2015 recipient is the Scottish-born Angus Deaton, who works at Princeton University and has been called the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Economics. Deaton revolutionized the way statistics are collected regarding a nation's welfare and distribution of wealth. He introduced household surveys at the individual level, whereas the previous methods of aggregating data focused solely on societal averages.

改變世界的推手：諾貝爾獎得主

2015 年十月，享有盛譽的諾貝爾獎自 1901 年首頒以來，已產生九百位得主。奇特的是，這一切都始於一篇錯誤的訃聞。
1888 年時，瑞典發明家阿弗雷德．諾貝爾在報紙上看到自己的死訊大吃一驚，那則訃聞將他定位為「死亡商人」。實際上，去世的是他哥哥路德維克。不過，這突然讓諾貝爾用一種全新但又不自在的觀點來看待自己一生的 工作：發明武器——其中以炸藥最廣為人知。他決定重寫自己的遺囑，將財產遺贈給一個基金會，獎勵文學、醫學、物理學、化學與和平等領域的傑出貢獻人士。頒獎典禮每年於瑞典斯德哥爾摩及挪威奧斯陸舉行。每位受獎人都可獲頒一枚金質獎章、一張手工製獎狀和一筆獎金，目前的金額為八百萬瑞典克朗（將近一百萬美元）。
1968 年，瑞典中央銀行增加了諾貝爾紀念經濟學獎。2015 年的受獎人是出生於蘇格蘭的安格斯．迪頓，他任職於普林斯頓大學，被稱為經濟學界的歐比王．肯諾比。迪頓徹底改變了國家福利與財富分配的統計數據蒐集方式。他提出了個人層面的家戶調查，而過去蒐集資料的方法純粹只聚焦於社會的平均值。