# Nobel Explained > A free, independent course on every Nobel Prize since 2020 (physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics). Each prize is explained at three depths (ELI5, undergraduate, expert) with a one-minute video, a self-check quiz, key terms and sources. Facts (years, categories, official citations, laureate names, prize shares) are pinned from the official Nobel Prize API and checked by automated tests on every build. Explanations are written from official Nobel material and other cited sources, listed on each page. Not affiliated with the Nobel Foundation. Content may be quoted with a link to the course page. Every course has a Markdown copy: add `.md` to the course URL. Links below point to those copies. ## 2026 Nobel Prizes - [2026 Nobel Prize in Physics: A telescope made of ice: catching neutrinos from deep space](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2026-icecube-neutrinos.md): The 2026 Physics prize goes to Francis Halzen, who saw that the clear ice under the South Pole could be used to catch neutrinos, particles that almost never touch matter. - [2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Mirror molecules: how a tiny lead in handedness takes over](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2026-mirror-molecules.md): The 2026 Chemistry prize goes to two chemists who showed how a reaction can pick one of two mirror-image molecules and stick with it. - [2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine: Optogenetics: a light switch for brain cells](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2026-optogenetics.md): The 2026 Medicine prize honours optogenetics: a way to switch chosen nerve cells on or off with flashes of light. - [2026 Nobel Prize in Literature: Anne Carson: new forms from ancient fragments](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2026-anne-carson.md): The 2026 Literature prize went to the Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson, who takes broken scraps of ancient Greek and Latin poetry and builds new kinds of books from them: a novel written in verse, a translation full of deliberate gaps, an elegy for her brother folded into a box. - [2026 Nobel Prize in Peace: Peace through the rule of law](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2026-peace-through-law.md): The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a South African judge who rose from defending the opponents of apartheid to serving on some of the most important international courts of her time. ## 2025 Nobel Prizes - [2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: One circuit that behaves like a single quantum particle](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2025-macroscopic-quantum-circuit.md): The 2025 Physics prize honours an experiment that caught quantum behaviour in an object big enough to hold in your hand. - [2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-organic frameworks: crystals built around empty space](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2025-metal-organic-frameworks.md): The 2025 Chemistry prize honours metal-organic frameworks, crystals stitched together from metal nodes and rigid organic struts so that most of their volume is open, breathable space. - [2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine: The cells that stop the body attacking itself](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2025-regulatory-t-cells.md): The 2025 Medicine prize honours the discovery of the immune system's peacekeepers. - [2025 Nobel Prize in Economics: Why growth no longer stops](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2025-sustained-growth.md): The 2025 economics prize explains why, for the first time in history, economic growth became permanent instead of fading after each invention. - [2025 Nobel Prize in Literature: László Krasznahorkai: finding beauty in the apocalypse](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2025-laszlo-krasznahorkai.md): The 2025 Literature prize went to the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai for a body of work built from long, winding sentences that can run for pages with almost no full stops. - [2025 Nobel Prize in Peace: Keeping the flame of democracy burning](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2025-venezuela-democracy.md): The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize went to Maria Corina Machado, the best known leader of Venezuela's democratic opposition. ## 2024 Nobel Prizes - [2024 Nobel Prize in Physics: Memory as a landscape: the physics behind machine learning](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2024-machine-learning.md): The 2024 Physics prize honours the physics that underpins machine learning. - [2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Proteins: reading nature's shapes and writing new ones](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2024-designing-and-predicting-proteins.md): The 2024 Chemistry prize is about the shapes of proteins. - [2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine: microRNA: the cell's volume knob for its genes](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2024-microrna.md): The 2024 Medicine prize honours the discovery of microRNA: tiny RNA molecules that fine-tune which genes a cell actually uses. - [2024 Nobel Prize in Economics: Why some nations stay poor: the rules behind prosperity](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2024-institutions-and-prosperity.md): The 2024 economics prize honours the finding that a country's prosperity rests mainly on its institutions, the rules that decide who holds power and whose property and effort are protected. - [2024 Nobel Prize in Literature: Han Kang: the fragile body under the weight of history](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2024-han-kang.md): The 2024 Literature prize went to the South Korean writer Han Kang for spare, poetic prose that looks directly at historical atrocity, from the 1980 Gwangju massacre to the 1948 killings on Jeju Island, and at the fragility of the human body and life itself. - [2024 Nobel Prize in Peace: The survivors who made the bomb unthinkable](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2024-nuclear-taboo.md): The 2024 Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as the hibakusha. ## 2023 Nobel Prizes - [2023 Nobel Prize in Physics: Attosecond flashes: a camera fast enough to freeze an electron](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2023-attosecond-flashes.md): The 2023 Physics prize honours the camera shutter for the electron. - [2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Quantum dots: when size becomes colour](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2023-quantum-dots.md): The 2023 Chemistry prize honours the quantum dot: a crystal so tiny that its size, not its chemistry, decides what colour it glows. - [2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine: The base swap that let mRNA become a vaccine](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2023-mrna-base-modification.md): The 2023 Medicine prize honours the small chemical change that made mRNA vaccines possible. - [2023 Nobel Prize in Economics: Why the gender pay gap opens with the first child](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2023-gender-pay-gap.md): The 2023 Economics prize honours Claudia Goldin for explaining two hundred years of women and work. - [2023 Nobel Prize in Literature: Jon Fosse: giving voice to the unsayable](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2023-jon-fosse.md): The 2023 Literature prize went to the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, one of the most performed living playwrights, for a spare, hypnotic style that uses very few words to reach the feelings most language cannot touch: dread, grief, faith, and the silence between people. - [2023 Nobel Prize in Peace: The prize that reached into a prison cell](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2023-woman-life-freedom.md): The 2023 Peace Prize went to Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian human rights activist who has spent decades fighting the oppression of women in Iran. ## 2022 Nobel Prizes - [2022 Nobel Prize in Physics: Spooky action made real: how entangled photons settled Einstein's doubt](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2022-entangled-photons.md): The 2022 Physics prize answers a question that was once pure philosophy. - [2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Click chemistry: snapping molecules together like a buckle](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2022-click-chemistry.md): The 2022 Chemistry prize honours click chemistry: a way to build molecules by snapping two pieces together with a single fast, reliable reaction, the way a seatbelt buckle clicks shut. - [2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine: Ancient DNA: finding the extinct humans inside our genome](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2022-ancient-dna.md): The 2022 Medicine prize honours Svante Pääbo for pulling readable DNA out of bones tens of thousands of years old and sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of ours. - [2022 Nobel Prize in Economics: Bank runs: how a rumour can topple a healthy bank](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2022-why-banks-break.md): The 2022 Economics prize honours the work that explained what banks really do and why they can fail so suddenly. - [2022 Nobel Prize in Literature: Annie Ernaux: turning one private life into social evidence](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2022-annie-ernaux.md): The 2022 Literature prize went to the French writer Annie Ernaux, the first Frenchwoman to win it. - [2022 Nobel Prize in Peace: The watchdogs of a hard neighbourhood](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2022-civil-society.md): The 2022 Peace Prize went to three human rights champions from three neighbouring countries: the jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian organisation Memorial, and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties. ## 2021 Nobel Prizes - [2021 Nobel Prize in Physics: Hidden order in noisy worlds: predicting a warming planet and the physics of disorder](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2021-order-in-complex-systems.md): The 2021 Physics prize honours three scientists who found reliable patterns inside systems that look hopelessly messy. - [2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Building only one hand: catalysis without metals](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2021-asymmetric-organocatalysis.md): The 2021 Chemistry prize honours a third kind of catalyst. - [2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine: How your body turns heat and a touch into a nerve signal](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2021-temperature-and-touch.md): The 2021 Medicine prize honours the discovery of the tiny channels in your nerve endings that sense temperature and touch. - [2021 Nobel Prize in Economics: Natural experiments: reading cause and effect from real life](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2021-natural-experiments.md): The 2021 economics prize honours a quiet revolution in how we find cause and effect in the messy real world. - [2021 Nobel Prize in Literature: Abdulrazak Gurnah: the refugee's crossing between worlds](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2021-colonialism-and-exile.md): The 2021 Literature prize went to Abdulrazak Gurnah, a novelist born on the island of Zanzibar who fled to England as an eighteen-year-old refugee after the 1964 revolution. - [2021 Nobel Prize in Peace: The reporters who would not stay quiet](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2021-press-freedom.md): The 2021 Peace Prize went to two journalists: Maria Ressa of the Philippines, who co-founded the news site Rappler, and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, the longtime editor of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. ## 2020 Nobel Prizes - [2020 Nobel Prize in Physics: Black holes are real: from Einstein's equations to the heart of the Milky Way](https://nobelexplained.com/physics/2020-black-holes-are-real.md): The 2020 Physics prize honours the black hole from two sides. - [2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Genetic scissors: cutting DNA at one chosen address](https://nobelexplained.com/chemistry/2020-crispr-genetic-scissors.md): The 2020 Chemistry prize honours CRISPR-Cas9, a tool that lets researchers cut DNA at almost any chosen spot. - [2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine: Catching the hidden virus in the blood supply](https://nobelexplained.com/medicine/2020-hepatitis-c-virus.md): The 2020 Medicine prize honours the detective work that unmasked the hepatitis C virus, the hidden cause of a liver disease people were catching from blood transfusions. - [2020 Nobel Prize in Economics: The winner's curse, and the auction built to beat it](https://nobelexplained.com/economics/2020-auction-design.md): The 2020 Economics prize honours the people who explained why auction winners so often overpay, and who designed a new kind of auction to stop it. - [2020 Nobel Prize in Literature: Louise Glück: making the private self universal](https://nobelexplained.com/literature/2020-louise-gluck.md): The 2020 Literature prize went to the American poet Louise Glück for a spare, exact voice that turns her own life into something every reader can recognise. - [2020 Nobel Prize in Peace: Fighting hunger to keep the peace](https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2020-hunger-and-peace.md): The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize went to the World Food Programme, the United Nations agency that fights hunger around the world. ## About - [How the facts are checked](https://nobelexplained.com/methodology) - [About Nobel Explained](https://nobelexplained.com/about) - [Alfred Nobel and his will](https://nobelexplained.com/alfred-nobel) - [All prizes, with filters](https://nobelexplained.com/prizes) ## Optional - [Every course in one file](https://nobelexplained.com/llms-full.txt)