Nobel Prizes: 2002
Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff 
2002 Nobel Prize Winners
 Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States |
- Peace: Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president and , were cited "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."
- Literature: Sir V.S. Naipaul (UK) "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." Known for his singular style of compelling prose, Naipaul has explored alienation and the hardships of postcolonial countries in his works of fiction, nonfiction, and occasional blend of the two. In Beyond Belief (1998), he powerfully analyzed modern Islam.
- Physics: Raymond Davis, Jr., (U.S.) and Masatoshi Koshiba Japan "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos." Riccardo Giacconi (U.S.) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources." Wolfgang Ketterle (Germany), Eric A. Cornell, and Carl E. Wieman (both U.S.) "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates." In discovering the Bose-Einstein condensate, a new state of matter, the laureates have explained "the secrets of the microworld of quantum physics."
- Chemistry: One-half jointly to William S. Knowles (U.S.) and Ryoji Noyori (Japan) "for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions," and one-half to K. Barry Sharpless (U.S.) "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions." They "have opened up a new field of research in which it is possible to synthesize molecules and material with new properties."
- Medicine: Leland H. Hartwell (U.S.), R. Timothy Hunt, and Paul M. Nurse (both U.K.), for their discoveries of "key regulators of the cell cycle." Their discoveries concerning control of the cell cycle "may in the long term open new possibilities for cancer treatment."
- Economics: George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz (all U.S.) "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information." "The laureates' contributions form the core of modern information economics."
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