NOBEL PRIZE NOBLE : HISTORY SUM

Last year, the Economics Prize honour went to French-American Esther Duflo, Indian-born Abhjit  Banerjee of the US, and American Michae l Kremer for their experimental work on alleviating poverty.

Even if it might be the most prestigious prize an economist can hope to receive, the economics prize has not reached the same status as the awards originally chosen by Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will founding the awards, which included medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

It was instead created in 1968 through a donation from the Swedish Central Bank and detractors have thus dubbed it ''a false Nobel.''

The award closes the 2020 Nobel season, which saw the closely-watched peace prize awarded to the  UN's World Food Programme.

Women have been more prevalent than usual this year, with  American poet Lousie Gluck winning the literature prize.

Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna became the first all-female duo to win a scientific Nobel one last Wednesday, clinching the chemistry award for their discovery of the  CRISPR-Cas0 DNA snipping ''scissors''.

While the number of female winners has risen sharply since the turn of the century, they still represent only about one out of 20 Nobel medals since 1901.

Winners would normally receive their Nobel from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, but the pandemic means it has been replaced by a televised ceremony showing the laureates receiving their awards in their home countries. [AFP]