Kolkata has often been regarded as the ‘cultural capital of India’. It is worth mentioning here that Kolkata carries a famous record of producing Nobel laureates.
Kolkata, in fact, has a strong connection with the Nobel Prize, with at least 5 Prize winners having links- either by birth or work with the Indian city.
The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards conferred in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in acknowledgement of academic, cultural, or scientific advances.
The Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, medal, and cash award. The Nobel Foundation decides on the ‘cash prize’ each year awarded to each Nobel laureate.
The cash prize is 9 million kronor ($917,000). In 2018, it was 8 million SEK (about US$1.1 million or €1.16 million).
Six Nobel Prize winners have been associated with Kolkata:
- Sir Ronald Ross (1857—1932) — Medicine, 1902.
- Rabindranath Tagore (1861—1941) — Literature, 1913; first Asian to win the Nobel Prize.
- C V Raman (1888—1970) — Physics, 1930.
- Mother Teresa (1910—1997) — Peace, 1979.
- Amartya Sen (b. 1933) — Economics, 1998.
- Abhijit Banerjee (b. 1961) – Economics, 2019.