From Ozheshko To Statkevich
- 15.10.2026, 14:29
Which Belarusians and people born in Belarus have been nominated for the Nobel Prize?
The Nobel Prize has been awarded for more than 125 years. The 2026 laureates were announced during Nobel Week (October 5–12). The awards ceremony will take place on December 10 in Oslo (Peace Prize) and Stockholm (the other prizes).
Over the past century and a quarter, the nominees have included writers, scientists, and public figures who were born and/or lived in what is now Belarus, writes "Pozirk".
Some of them won, others came close to winning, and many were nominated repeatedly but never became laureates.
How the Nobel Prize Came to Be
The prize was established by the Swedish inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, who became famous for inventing dynamite.
In his will, signed on November 27, 1895, in Paris, he stipulated that the bulk of his fortune be used for annual awards to those who have done the greatest service to humanity.
Originally, Nobel envisaged five categories: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and the Peace Prize.
After his death in 1896, it took the executors of his will several years to organize the award system. The first prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901—the anniversary of the death of the award’s visionary founder.
In 1969, the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, established by the Bank of Sweden, was added to the five original categories.
Formally, it differs from the five prizes stipulated in the will, although it is awarded within the same system.
The science prizes and the prize in literature are awarded in Sweden, while the Peace Prize is awarded in Norway.
Nominations are made by members of parliaments and governments, heads of state, past laureates, university rectors, professors in relevant fields of science, and others. The mere fact of a nomination does not mean that the candidate was among the finalists or came close to receiving the award.
The names of the nominees are not made public until 50 years later. Therefore, information about the nominations of contemporary writers and scientists is often based on reports from organizations that have announced their initiatives, rather than on the Nobel Committee’s public archives.
Where does the money come from 125 years after Nobel’s death?
The Nobel Prizes continue to be funded by Alfred Nobel’s estate. After his death, the bulk of his estate was transferred to the Nobel Foundation, which invests in stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets.
The income from these investments allows the prizes to be awarded annually and covers the costs of awarding them, while preserving the fund’s capital for future generations. In 2026, the amount of each full Nobel Prize will be 11 million Swedish kronor (1.1 million U.S. dollars).
How the award ceremony takes place
The Nobel Prize award ceremony takes place on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Economics are awarded in Stockholm.
The laureates receive a gold medal, a diploma, and a certificate confirming the monetary award from the King of Sweden. After the ceremony, a gala banquet for more than a thousand guests is held at Stockholm City Hall.
The Nobel Peace Prize, as stipulated in Nobel’s will, is awarded separately—in Oslo. The ceremony takes place at City Hall in the presence of the Norwegian royal family. The award is presented by the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
This distinction has existed since the prize was established: during Nobel’s lifetime, Sweden and Norway were in a union, and the inventor entrusted the selection of the Peace Prize laureate to a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament.
Who Won the 2026 Prize
In 2026, the Literature Prize was awarded to Canadian poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson—for “pioneering work that combines various literary forms and the ancient tradition.”
The Peace Prize was awarded to South African lawyer Navi Pillay for “her efforts to strengthen international law and promote peace.” And she has a connection to Belarus.
From 2008 to 2014, Pillay served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. During that time, she repeatedly criticized political repression in Belarus.
In December 2010, following the crackdown on protests against the official results of the presidential election, Pillay expressed concern over the use of force against demonstrators, the detention of opposition candidates, and pressure on civil society.
In April 2012, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights prepared a report on human rights violations in Belarus. The document mentioned, in particular, the arrest of the director of the “Viasna” Human Rights Center Ales Bialiatski—a future Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
In July of that same year, the UN Human Rights Council established the mandate of a Special Rapporteur on the situation in Belarus.
Belyatsky welcomed the awarding of the prize to Pillay, calling it “an important signal of support from international human rights institutions.”
In the field of physiology or medicine, the prize was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegeman and Georg Nagel for their discoveries related to light-sensitive ion channels and optogenetics.
The prize in physics was awarded to Francis Halzen for his contributions to the creation of the IceCube neutrino observatory and the discovery of neutrinos of astrophysical origin.
The laureates in Chemistry are Henri Kagan and Kanso Soai for their work on the asymmetric synthesis of molecules.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Robert Hall and Michael Woodford for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization.
Who has won the prize in Belarus’s recent history
Belarus became the first post-Soviet country to win both humanities prizes—in literature and for peace—and this happened in just seven years.
Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. The Swedish Academy recognized her “polyphonic works, which reflect the suffering and courage of her contemporaries.”
Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, and grew up in Belarus. It is known that between 2003 and 2015, she was nominated at least nine times. It can be said that Alexievich received the prize fairly quickly.
It took the famous German writer Günter Grass 33 years, and the Czech Nobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert 30. There have been even more interesting stories.
There is a well-known case of a writer who was nominated for the Nobel Prize 155 times. He was the Spanish philologist, historian, and folklorist Ramón Menéndez Pidal. He was nominated for the award 26 years in a row, and the nomination campaign peaked in 1956, when the Swedish Academy received 95 applications in his support all at once.
This was the first and last large-scale international “flash mob”: a coordinated effort by hundreds of scholars, writers, and critics was intended to literally force the committee to award the prize to Pidal.
However, the unprecedented pressure did not work: The Nobel Committee ignored this mass appeal and awarded the prize to another Spanish author, the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, proving that the number of letters by no means guarantees victory.
Ales Beliatski, founder of the “Viasna” Human Rights Center, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, sharing it with the Russian human rights organization “Memorial” and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. The award was granted for “efforts to defend human rights, democracy, and peaceful coexistence.”
According to public sources, the human rights activist was nominated at least seven times.
He was born in Karelia but grew up in his parents’ homeland of Belarus starting at the age of three.
Who was born in Belarus but received the prize while living outside the country
Zhores Alferov (1930–2019) was born in Vitebsk. The Soviet and Russian physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 jointly with the German scientist Herbert Kremer.
Half of the prize was awarded to them for the development of semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed electronics and optoelectronics. The other half was awarded to American engineer Jack Kilby for his contribution to the invention of the integrated circuit. Alferov pursued his scientific career in the USSR and Russia.
Menachem Begin (1913–1992) was born in Brest-Litovsk—now Brest. He became Prime Minister of Israel and, in 1978, received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
They were awarded the prize for the negotiations that led to the conclusion of a peace agreement between the two countries. An important milestone in the negotiations was the Camp David Accords, brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Shimon Peres (1923–2016) was born in the village of Vishnevo, which is now located in the Minsk Region. He served as Prime Minister and President of Israel and headed the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 1994, Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for their efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. The award recognized the negotiation process that led to the signing of the Oslo Accords.
Eliza Ozheshko: the first known nominee from Belarus
The first known nominee for the Nobel Prize born on the territory of modern-day Belarus was the Polish-speaking writer Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910).
She was born on the Milkovszczyzna estate near Grodno and became one of the most prominent figures in 19th-century Polish literature. A monument to Ożeszko stands in Grodno, and her house-museum—an exact replica of the house where she lived and worked—is located on the street bearing her name.
In 1905, Ożeszko was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to published data, she received eight nominations and made it to the final round of consideration alongside Leo Tolstoy and Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Some committee members proposed splitting the award between Ożeszko and Sienkiewicz, but in the end, the prize was awarded solely to Sienkiewicz.
According to one of the academicians, Ozheshko was inferior to Sienkiewicz “as a narrative artist and master of language,” but possessed what, in Nobel’s own words, “would carry greater weight than great epic scope”: “She has a big, rich, loving heart.”
The Belarusian-born writer had a real chance to become the first woman to receive the highest literary award. But that did not happen, and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909 was the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf.
The first woman to receive a Nobel Prize was the Polish scientist Maria Skłodowska-Curie. She remains the only person to have won both the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911).
How, contrary to ethical norms, a son nominated his father
Professor Lev Rozanov, who headed the Department of Normal Physiology at Belgorod State University and had been granted the official right to nominate candidates, made an extraordinary use of this privilege in 1928.
Contrary to academic ethics, he nominated his own father—the rural physician and epidemiologist Pavel Rozanov—for the highest scientific award.
However, the nominated candidate had no serious scientific works to his name, and his name was mentioned in medical journals only once. The Nobel Committee refused to consider this proposal.
Scientists from Belarus whose discoveries were considered for the prize
Napoleon Tsybulsky (1854–1919)—a physiologist born in Krivonosy in what is now Belarus (Grodno Region). He studied the physiology of blood circulation and the endocrine system. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1911, 1914, and 1918. He did not win the prize.
Leonid Mandelstam (1879–1944) was born in Mogilev and was one of the greatest physicists of his time. In 1930, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Mandelstam, together with Grigory Landsberg, discovered combinatorial light scattering—a phenomenon that later became known as the Raman effect (in 1930, the Nobel Prize for research on light scattering was awarded to the Indian physicist Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman).
Moses Kunitz (1887–1978) was born in Slonim. He was a biochemist and studied enzymes, including trypsin and ribonuclease. Kunitz, along with John Northrop, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937 and for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1941. Northrop received the prize in 1946.
Philip Levine (1900–1987) was born in Kletsk. After moving to the United States, he became a renowned immunohematologist, researching blood groups, particularly the Rh factor and its connection to hemolytic disease of the newborn.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946, 1950, 1952, and 1953.
Yakov Zeldovich (1914–1987) was born in Minsk. A theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, and physical chemist, he contributed to the study of nuclear reactions, cosmology, and the evolution of the universe. Zeldovich was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968 and for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971.
In the latter case, his candidacy was proposed alongside that of American astrophysicists Maarten Schmidt and John Wheeler.
Vitaly Goldansky (1923–2001) was born in Vitebsk. He was a researcher in the fields of nuclear chemistry, nuclear physics, and Mössbauer spectroscopy.
In 1971, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with the Swedish physicist Kai Sigban.
A record of the nomination has been preserved in the Nobel Prize archives: the chemist who nominated them, Nikolai Emanuel, believed that the award should have been shared between the two scientists. However, they were not awarded the prize at that time. Sigban received the Nobel Prize 10 years later—without Goldansky.
The man who changed international law was born in Belarus
Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) was born near Volkovysk. A lawyer of Jewish descent, he dedicated his life to developing mechanisms under international law to prevent the mass extermination of people.
Lemkin’s views were shaped by the trial of the Armenian Soghomon Teylirian, who in 1921 shot and killed Talaat Pasha, the former Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire—one of the main organizers of the Armenian Genocide—in Berlin.
The trial addressed the mass killings and deportations of Armenians, and the German jury acquitted Teylirian, ruling that the young Armenian had acted in the heat of the moment.
These events are mentioned in a new novel by the well-known Belarusian writer Algirdas Baharevich *Padzemnye Perahody* (perhaps he will one day become the next Nobel laureate from his homeland?).
Teiliryan’s trial led Lemkin to ponder why the mass extermination of people is not prosecuted as a separate international crime and whether an individual can administer justice in place of a court.
Later, these reflections became one of the driving forces behind his work on the international legal definition of genocide and the mechanisms for punishing it.
Lemkin introduced the concept of genocide into international discourse and played a key role in promoting the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948.
He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on multiple occasions—according to published biographical data, six times between 1950 and 1959. However, he never received the prize.
Włodzimierz Kolos (1928–1996) — a Polish chemist and physicist born in Pinsk. He became one of the founders of modern quantum chemistry and is known for his pioneering calculations of the electronic structure of molecules.
In 1973, Kolos was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with physicist and chemist Clemens Rutan and chemist Lutosław Wolniewicz.
A record of the nomination has been preserved in the Nobel Prize archives, but the scientists did not receive the award.
Avrom Sutzkever (1913–2010) — a Jewish poet and one of the greatest authors to write in Yiddish. He was born in Smorgon; as a child, he was exiled to Siberia with his family, and later lived in Vilna (Vilnius). During World War II, he was in the Vilna Ghetto, participated in the resistance against the Nazis, and saved Jewish cultural artifacts.
In 1970, 1974, and 1975, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The nominations are recorded in the Nobel Committee’s archives. Sutzkever did not win the prize.
Which other Belarusian writers were nominated
In Belarus’s recent history, literary organizations have also announced nominations for the Nobel Prize.
Rygor Borodulin (1935–2014) — poet, translator, and People’s Poet of Belarus. In 2005, the Belarusian PEN Center announced its decision to nominate him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Publications about the poet also noted that he was among the nominees in 2006.
One of the works that received particular attention from Borodulin’s supporters was the collection of religious poetry *Ksty*.
Vasily Bykov (1924–2003). One of the most famous writers of the 20th century, renowned for his prose on World War II, moral choices, and human responsibility. His works have been translated into many languages.
Bykov’s name was mentioned among the possible contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature; foreign writers spoke out in support of international recognition of his work.
According to various historical accounts (in particular, Borodulin’s diaries), the first attempt to nominate Bykov for the highest literary award was made in 1993.
Attempts were made periodically, but Bykov did not live to see the tenth anniversary of that effort. He passed away in 2003.
Vladimir Neklyaev (1946) — poet and prose writer. In February 2011, the Belarusian PEN Center supported a proposal to nominate him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The initiative was launched by poet and public figure Gennady Buravkin.
In 2012, a new nomination of Neklyaev was reported as a joint initiative of the Belarusian PEN Center and the Union of Belarusian Writers (independent). He did not receive the prize.
Georgy Marchuk (1947–2023) was a writer, playwright, and screenwriter. He served as editor-in-chief of the “Belarusfilm” film studio and headed the “Mastatskaya Literatura” publishing house.
His nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature was reported in 2009. The nominator was, for the first time, the pro-government Union of Writers of Belarus. No information on subsequent nominations from this organization could be found.
It is important to distinguish between a publicly announced nomination and a confirmed entry in the Nobel Committee’s archives. The names of nominees from recent decades are not officially disclosed for 50 years, so the ability to independently verify such reports is limited.
Ales Ryazanov (1947–2021) — poet, translator. He experimented with poetic forms, wrote verses and short philosophical texts, and translated works by foreign authors.
In Belarusian literary circles, Ryazanov was considered a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature; in particular, the writer Vladimir Orlov mentioned him among domestic authors who could be in the running for the award. However, no reliable confirmation of a specific nomination could be found in open sources.
Which Belarusian politicians were nominated for the prize
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova, and Veronika Tsepkalo were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. The nomination was initiated by Norwegian Member of Parliament Geir Tuskedal, who highlighted their fight for fair elections and their contribution to the peaceful resistance against the Belarusian authorities.
The trio of women became a symbol of the protest movement following the 2020 presidential election. They did not win the prize.
In 2021 and 2022, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was nominated separately. She was nominated, respectively, by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and Norwegian parliamentarian Haareke Elvenes.
Nikolai Statkevich (1956) — an opposition politician. In January 2025, Lithuanian Member of the European Parliament Petras Auštrevičius nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
At that time, Statkevich was in prison, serving a 14-year sentence on charges of “organizing mass riots.” Statkevich did not win the Nobel Prize.