This year’s laureates have provided new insights into why there are such vast differences in prosperity between nations. One important explanation is persistent differences in societal institutions. By examining the various political and economic systems introduced by European colonisers, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have been able to demonstrate a relationship between institutions and prosperity. They have also developed theoretical tools that can explain why differences in institutions persist and how institutions can change.

Daron Acemoglu, economic sciences laureate 2024, had just given a talk in Athens, Greece when he learnt about his prize. In this interview, he highlights the importance of democracy and his fears regarding AI. 

Read the interview transcript

Professor Hans Ellegren, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, presented the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024.

Watch an interview with Professor Jan Teorell

Ever wondered how Nobel Prize laureates think about the world? According to 2002 economic sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman, reacting to threats helped us to survive through our evolution history.

More videos on how to think like a laureate

The grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again. The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of a nuclear taboo.

Press release
Prize announcement

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 is about proteins, life’s ingenious chemical tools. David Baker has succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures. These discoveries hold enormous potential.

This year’s laureates used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created a structure that can store and reconstruct information. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can independently discover properties in data and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use.

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery in the small worm C. elegans revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation. This turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.

Discover more about the Nobel Prizes with the easy-to-use Nobel Prize Lessons. Watch the videos, look through the manual and slides, print the texts for students and start the class.