THE NOBEL PRIZES have long celebrated the best of human curiosity — physics, peace, poetry, and more. But what about food? From chemists who made crops flourish to writers who captured hunger’s human face, plenty of laureates have fed the world in their own ways. Can you tell who’s who in this buffet of brilliance?
Q1. Which Nobel laureate’s chemistry changed the way we fertilise crops — feeding billions ever since?
A) Artturi Virtanen
B) Albert Szent-Györgyi
C) Fritz Haber
D) Robert Fogel
Q2. He’s known as “The Man Who Fed the World.” Which Nobel Peace Prize winner spearheaded the Green Revolution?
A) Norman Borlaug
B) John Boyd Orr
C) Amartya Sen
D) Wangari Maathai
Q3. This Scottish nutritionist won the Peace Prize for championing global hunger relief and founding the FAO. Who was he?
A) John Boyd Orr
B) Theodore W Schultz
C) Elinor Ostrom
D) Angus Deaton
Q4. Which chemist’s breakthrough in fermentation paved the way for modern brewing, baking, and biotechnology?
A) Christiaan Eijkman
B) Richard Kuhn
C) Dorothy Hodgkin
D) Eduard Buchner
Q5. This laureate isolated vitamin C — and his discovery still powers every citrus-forward immunity ad today.
A) Dorothy Hodgkin
B) Ivan Pavlov
C) Albert Szent-Györgyi
D) Frederick Hopkins
Q6. Who linked famine to economics rather than food shortage — changing how we measure hunger itself?
A) Amartya Sen
B) Theodore W Schultz
C) Robert Fogel
D) Abhijit Banerjee
Q7. This writer’s Dust Bowl epic turned hunger and dignity into literature — and later, a Nobel Prize in Literature.
A) Pearl S Buck
B) John Steinbeck
C) Mo Yan
D) Pablo Neruda
Q8. Which laureate fought hunger not with research papers but with tree-planting and grassroots activism?
A) Elinor Ostrom
B) Wangari Maathai
C) Malala Yousafzai
D) Mother Teresa
Q9. Which 2020 Nobel Peace Prize winner isn’t a person but still serves meals to millions daily?
A) The World Food Programme
B) Médecins Sans Frontières
C) UNICEF
D) CARE International
Q10. Which Nobel winner’s love for yoghurt and fermented milk helped popularise the idea of “good bacteria”?
A) Richard Kuhn
B) Alexander Fleming
C) Paul Berg
D) Ilya Mechnikov
ANSWER KEY:
1-C. Fritz Haber | Haber’s ammonia synthesis process, scaled up by Carl Bosch, made nitrogen fertilisers accessible worldwide — the root of modern agriculture’s bounty (and its debates).
2-A. Norman Borlaug | An agricultural scientist from Iowa, Borlaug’s high-yield wheat strains transformed food security across Asia and Latin America, earning him the 1970 Peace Prize.
3-A. John Boyd Orr | A farmer-physician turned scientist, he believed “peace cannot last where people are hungry.” His work birthed the Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1945.
4-D. Eduard Buchner | He discovered that cell-free extracts could ferment sugar, proving that life’s chemical spark could exist outside living cells. Yeast say more?
5-C. Albert Szent-Györgyi | The Hungarian biochemist identified ascorbic acid and unravelled how our cells breathe. His Nobel win made oranges and science equally fashionable in 1937.
6-A. Amartya Sen | Sen’s “entitlement theory” showed that famines often occur not from lack of food but from lack of access — reshaping global policy on poverty and nutrition.
7-B. John Steinbeck | The Grapes of Wrath immortalised America’s migrant farmworkers — their hunger, hope, and grit — earning him literary immortality in 1962.
8-B. Wangari Maathai | The Kenyan environmentalist’s Green Belt Movement linked reforestation with women’s livelihoods and food security — earning her the 2004 Peace Prize.
9-A. The World Food Programme | For fighting hunger and preventing its weaponisation in war, WFP’s win reminded the world that food is peace made visible — one ration at a time.
10-D. Ilya Mechnikov | The 1908 Medicine laureate (for immunity) later preached the virtues of fermented milk, inspiring early “probiotic” health trends in Europe.
From fermentation to famine, Nobel laureates have stirred the way we think about food. Hungry for more stories like this? Slurrp has you covered!