It's Nobel Day - How Prize-Winning Do You Feel?
If there’s a high-water mark for brains, Alfred Nobel probably etched it. In his last will, signed in Paris on November 27th, 1895, he left the bulk of his fortune to a special prize fund. He passed away just over a year later, and his legacy lives on today with the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prizes.
Nobel wanted the money he’d made in his varied and successful life to be invested well, and each year the organization he created would award monetary prizes. The categories he specified are those he was most interested in during his own life: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. The awards would go to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
Which brings us to we mere mortals – what is our benefit to humankind? It’s common for people to wonder what their purpose in this life is, and to wonder if they’re doing enough to “earn their keep” in this world. If your thoughts occasionally venture down roads ...
