Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi, who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, joins a coveted list of 1,015 people and organisations who won the prestigious award. Here’s a closer look at the processes and nominations that goes behind selecting a laureate. And no, one cannot self-nominate for a Nobel Prize.
1 / 6Every October, individuals who have made remarkable contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace are awarded the Nobel Prize. (Image: Reuters)
2 / 6This year, Mary E , Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi received the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering research on peripheral immune tolerance, as announced on Monday, October 6. (Image: Reuters)
3 / 6Different organisations are responsible for selecting the laureates in each field. For instance, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selects the laureates for Physics, Chemistry, and Economic Sciences, while the Karolinska Institutet chooses the winners for Physiology or Medicine. The Swedish Academy decides the Literature laureates.
As far as the Nobel Peace Prize is concerned, a five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) makes the decision; they are called “the prize-awarding institutions.” The Prize in Economic Sciences was added later, in 1968, by Sweden’s central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, and first awarded in 1969. Since the following year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has been tasked with selecting the laureates for economic sciences. (Image: Reuters)
4 / 6The real process of finding potential laureates begins every September when invitations are sent to submit nominees. Thousands of academics, such as university professors, scientists and previous Nobel Prize laureates and members of parliamentary assemblies, nominate candidates they consider most fit for the prize. The deadline to do so is January 31 of the following year. And no, one cannot self-nominate for a Nobel Prize. (Image: The Nobel Prize)
5 / 6In February, the committee screens the nominations and filters preliminary candidates. This is followed by three months of consultation with experts from March through May. By September, the committee will submit a recommendation report on the final candidates to the respective “prize-awarding institutions”. From this pool, the laureates are selected through a majority vote in October. Their names are announced in the same month. The laureates receive their prize in December. (Image: The Nobel Prize)
6 / 6Interestingly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee does not disclose nominees or any information related to nominations for the prize for 50 years. For instance, the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for the first time in 1963 was not revealed until 2014. He was nominated by Colin Bell, the executive director of the American Friends Service Committee, and eight other members of the Swedish government. (Image: The Nobel Prize)
