Rondon, Einstein's Letter and the Nobel Peace Prize
Marcio Nascimento ufba.academia.edu
We briefly discuss a letter written by physicist of German origin Albert Einstein (1879-1955) to the Norwegian Nobel Committee nominating the Brazilian military officer, geographer, explorer and peacemaker Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon (1865-1958).
This paper examines the early years of decision making in the award of the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry, and shows how the prize became a tool in the boundary work which upheld the social demarcations between scientists and inventors, as well as promoting a particular normative view of individual scientific achievement. The Nobel committees were charged with rewarding scientific achievements that benefited humankind: their interpretation of that criterion, however, turned in the first instance on their assessment of the groundbreaking nature of the ‘science’, with the applied or practical ‘benefits’ of that discovery being treated as very much secondary factors in the award. Through an interrogation of the reports sent by the committees to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, this paper shows how committee members depended on a notion of ‘post-dated utilitarianism’ in reconciling potential tension between rewarding basic and applied science, and explores the ways in which ...

Alfred B. Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm and died on 10 December 1896 in San Remo. On 27 September 1895 he wrote his Will: “I, the undersigned, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, do hereby, after mature deliberation, declare the following to be my last Will and Testament with respect to such property as may be left by me at the time of my death... The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts [emphasis added, W.O.], which shall be apportioned as follows: These five fields are following: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and fraternity between the nations (promotion of peace).”

This paper examines the process by which one Nobel laureate, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, came to be awarded the Peace Prize in 1937. It explores the interaction between, on the one hand, the Norwegian Nobel Committee and its advisers and, on the other, the peace movements in which Cecil was active: the League of Nations Union and the Rassemblement universel pour la Paix. It aims to throw light on the way in which peace movements operate, and the role played by the Nobel Peace Prize in promoting their activities. It argues that if peace movements are to be taken seriously, as recent scholarship insists, then they must be understood in all their aspects. In particular it suggests that peace activists have agendas that may not always be visible, and that the existence of such agendas must influence our understanding of the role played by peace movements in international relations.