Nobel Prizes 2025: The winners, their discoveries, and why Trump dominated the headlines
Much of the public attention this year was drawn away from the laureates themselves, as former US President Donald Trump’s campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize - and the White House’s reaction after he was not chosen - dominated the headlines
The 2025 Nobel Prizes honored scientists, writers, and humanitarians whose work spanned the arts, chemistry, quantum physics, and medical research.
Yet much of the public attention this year was drawn away from the laureates themselves, as former US President Donald Trump's campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize - and the White House's reaction after he was not chosen - dominated the headlines.
The Peace Prize: Unwavering courage in the struggle for democracy
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 was awarded to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader and longtime advocate for democratic reform.
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Machado was recognized for her "courageous and unwavering struggle to restore democracy and human rights in Venezuela," according to the Nobel Committee.
A former lawmaker and presidential candidate, she has faced years of political persecution and repeated disqualification from holding office under President Nicolás Maduro's government.
Despite these obstacles, Machado has remained a central figure in Venezuela's pro-democracy movement, mobilizing civil resistance and international support for free elections.
Her selection was widely seen as a symbolic endorsement of Venezuela's embattled opposition - and a reminder of the committee's focus on human rights amid intensifying global political pressures.
Literature: Hungary's László Krasznahorkai
The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, recognized "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art."
Krasznahorkai's dense, philosophical prose has long been associated with themes of chaos, endurance, and transcendence, placing him among Europe's most influential contemporary authors.
Chemistry: Architects of metal–organic frameworks
Three chemists shared the prize for creating metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) - structures that can capture, store, and separate gases, with broad applications from clean energy to pharmaceuticals.
Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University, Japan) demonstrated that gases could move in and out of these frameworks and predicted their flexibility.
Richard Robson (University of Melbourne, Australia) first experimented with spacious crystalline structures in 1989, laying the groundwork for later breakthroughs.
Omar M. Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley, USA) designed stable MOFs that could be tailored for specific properties - a key step in modern materials science.
Physics: Quantum effects at human scale
The Physics Prize honored John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for experiments in the 1980s that revealed macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.
Their work demonstrated that quantum effects - usually observed at the atomic level - could appear in larger, engineered systems, paving the way for technologies such as superconducting quantum computers.
Medicine: Unlocking the body's self-control
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries explaining peripheral immune tolerance - how the immune system prevents itself from attacking the body.
Sakaguchi's 1995 discovery of regulatory T cells overturned long-held assumptions about immune control. Brunkow and Ramsdell later identified mutations in the Foxp3 gene that cause severe autoimmune diseases, linking their findings to Sakaguchi's earlier work. Together, their discoveries have underpinned modern treatments for autoimmune disorders.
A year of breakthroughs, overshadowed
While the scientific and literary prizes drew praise, the Nobel Peace Prize announcement on October 10 was overshadowed by political tension surrounding Donald Trump, who had openly campaigned for the award and predicted that his global diplomacy would earn him the honor.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung accused the Nobel Committee of bias, saying it "proved they place politics over peace" and defended Trump as someone who "will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives." Trump's envoy to Venezuela, Richard Grenell, declared that "the Nobel Prize died years ago."
Despite not winning, Trump's role remained part of the narrative after Machado publicly dedicated her award "in part, to Trump for his decisive support of our cause." Trump later claimed she told him, "I'm accepting this in honor of you, because you really deserved it," and joked, "I didn't say, 'Then give it to me,' though I think she might have."
Russian President Vladimir Putin later praised Trump's global efforts while echoing his criticism of the Nobel Committee, saying the award had "lost credibility."
