Originality and Confidence by JYLYAN

Originality and Confidence by JYLYAN - December 2018 Scholarship Essay

The Nobel Prize is a highly prestigious award that only 6 people win each year. Because of this small number, I feel as if the qualities of these people should be highly esteemed as well. With this in mind, if I were a part of the committee who chose the winners of the prizes, I would want them to have originality and confidence. As odd as this seems, most research done to be awarded the prize is based on research done by others. However, in order to win, they obviously had to contribute their own ideas as well. Those with originality are the ones who stand out the most. An example of originality is seen by Marie Curie and her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. She was able to find two new elements on the periodic table using a single mineral called pitchblende. With the help of her husband, she extracted the two elements and named polonium after her home country Poland and radium because of its radioactivity. Being able to find elements in the periodic table is difficult and a woman was able to do this. To add on to her uniqueness, she was the first woman to win the prize, showing that women can be intelligent in a world dominated by men. Besides originality, confidence is also key to be awarded. If a person is confident in what they found, they can convince anybody they are right. If a recipient were to be hesitant about their findings, it would be skeptical. Confidence is important to show that whatever recipient did was true and that they did it on their own. Again, with Marie Curie, she was able to show confidence in her findings by showing the people what she found. When she brought out radium to the public, everybody was amazed by the glow and she was proud of her amazing discovery. This impacted the chemistry community because the discovery of the glowing element would forever change the future of radioactive elements. Ultimately, originality and confidence would be the qualities I would look for in recipients of the worldwide known Nobel Prize.