Navanethem Pillay (Durban, 1941), a renowned South African jurist, was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize this Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law. The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the prize for her "courage and integrity" in the defense of international justice, a commitment it considered "gives hope and is an inspiration to those who want a world at peace." Specialized in human rights, Pillay is one of the most prominent figures in the defense of international justice: she was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights between 2008 and 2014 and a judge at the International Criminal Court.

American academics Robert Hall (Palo Alto, 1943) and Michael Woodford (Chicopee, 1955) have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics for their studies on "microeconomic foundations and macroeconomic stabilization", as announced this Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

If two molecules are practically identical, why does nature end up favoring one? To understand this phenomenon, which is known as homochirality, we can perform an exercise of imagination with a pair of shoes: the right and the left are mirror images of each other – as if one were the reflection of the other in a mirror – but they cannot be swapped because each fits a different foot. With some molecules, like amino acids, the same thing happens: they exist in two almost identical forms, but they cannot be superimposed. They are the so-called chiral molecules.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this Tuesday that the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics is University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Francis Halzen. Born in 1944 in Belgium, Halzen has been awarded for having laid the foundations for a radically new type of astronomy: neutrino astronomy. His contributions have been decisive in creating the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and in discovering high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, which allows researchers from all over the world to learn more about the cosmos and its characteristics, some of which are still unknown.

Three researchers have been distinguished with the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, for having developed optogenetics, a technology that has radically changed the way the brain is studied. They are Peter Hegemann, from Humboldt University of Berlin; Karl Deisseroth, from Stanford University in California, and Georg Nagel, from the University of Würzburg. The world's most prestigious award has recognized this neuroscience technique because it allows for the control of specific neurons with light in real time while an animal is moving, sleeping, or performing some activity. It also opens the door to understanding how memories, feelings, and behaviors are generated. Currently, laboratories all over the world use it to try to unveil the mysteries of the brain.

Gender issues have been present in human societies since long before the Paleolithic era. And they remain very poorly resolved.

"[...] For having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress." The three laureates have focused their attention on the technological change that leads to sustained economic growth. Joel Mokyr has investigated the conditions that fostered the explosion of creativity and technological innovation that led to the Industrial Revolution and that has fueled a continuous flow of innovations ever since. In the early stages—the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century—the decisive factor was the convergence of skilled workers, knowledgeable in their trades and driven to improve the efficiency of their work, and highly educated people—many of whom were aristocrats or descendants of aristocrats—with a passion for observing how things worked. The former deployed what he calls "prescriptive knowledge," and the latter what he calls "propositional knowledge" (we could call it "practical" and "theoretical"), and they paid attention to each other across many societies, of practitioners or of scholars, but all interested in knowing how everything worked and why, or because. The interaction of both types of knowledge was the great "miracle" of knowledge and growth in 18th-century Britain. This is what he has called "the Enlightenment economy," and on which he has published extraordinary books for more than three decades.

The first time Pol Forn-Díaz heard about quantum information was during a summer course in the Aragonese Pyrenees. He hadn't long finished his degree and was completely fascinated when he heard about it. Antonio Acín, a theoretical physicist at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), talking about quantum information. Shortly after, while starting his doctorate in the Netherlands, he met research groups that were applying superconductivity, another topic that interested him, to quantum information. It was a revelation that pushed him to take a leap of faith and launch into research in this entirely new field.

Israeli-American Joel Mokyr, Frenchman Phillipe Aghion, and Canadian Peter Howitt are the three economists who have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has recognized the laureates' quest for "having explained economic growth caused by innovation," as explained economic growth.