Nobel Foundation increases cash award for prizes

STOCKHOLM

One week before the announcement of the 2017 Nobel prizes begins, the Nobel Foundation said Monday that this year's winners will receive a larger monetary award worth over a million dollars.

"The Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation decided at its meeting on September 14 that the 2017 Nobel Prize will amount to SEK 9 million ($1.1 million, 944.000 euros) per prize category," the private institution based in Stockholm said in a statement.

In 2012, the cash award was reduced by 20 per cent to 8 million krona from the 10 million krona which had been awarded since 2001 in order not to put the foundation's capital at risk long term, it said at the time.

"Although continued actions will be needed in order to strengthen the Foundation's finances on a long-term basis, the situation is now regarded as having stabilised," the Nobel Foundation said Monday.

The monetary award given to the Nobel laureates comes from the fund left by the prizes' founder, Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist who invented dynamite.

The Nobel prize for medicine, traditionally the first one awarded each year, will be announced on October 2, followed by physics and chemistry over the next two days.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be revealed on October 6. No date has been set yet for the literature prize.