by Jessica Knapp

Canadians have been honoured as Nobel Laureates since 1923 when Frederick Banting received The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, and based on the fortune of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and entrepreneur. Prizes can be awarded to individuals or organizations. Since Frederick Banting there have been eighteen Canadian born recipients.

The 2015 Nobel Prize co-winner for Physics is Arthur McDonald, a professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in northern Ontario.

The Candian Nobel Laureates are as follows:

1923: Frederick G. Banting, Medicine
— "for the discovery of insulin"

1949: William F. Giauque, Chemistry
— "for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures"

1957: Lester Bowles Pearson, Peace Prize

1966: Charles B. Huggins, Medicine
— "for his discoveries concerning hormonal treatment of prostatic cancer"

1976: Saul Bellow, Literature
— "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work"

1981: David H. Hubel, Medicine
— "for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system"

1983: Henry Taube, Chemistry
— "for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes"

1989: Sidney Altman, Chemistry
— "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA"

1990: Richard E. Taylor, Physics
— "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics"

1992: Rudolph A. Marcus, Chemistry
— "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems"

1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, Physics
— "for the development of neutron spectroscopy"

1996: William Vickrey, Economic Sciences
— "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information"

1997: Myron S. Scholes, Economic Sciences
— "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives"

1999: Robert A. Mundell, Economic Sciences
— "for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas"

2009: Willard S. Boyle, Physics
— "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor"

2011: Ralph M. Steinman, Medicine
— "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity"

2013: Alice Munro, Literature
— "master of the contemporary short story"

2015: Arthur McDonald, Physics
— "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass"

All motivations listed for receiving a Nobel Prize are from The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize.